E-Commerce: Lesson 1
Selling on Your Website
Jeremy LaDuke, Founder of Epic Nine Marketing Outfitters, will be mapping out the best trail on the E-Commerce mountain.
Topics:
- What is E-Commerce?
- Can My Service or Product be Purchased Online?
- What Software Should Be Used to Power the E-Commerce Operation?
Test Your Knowledge
To receive credit for taking this course through TSBDC, watch the video and take the quiz that will appear below to demonstrate your knowledge.
Video Lesson Topics
- 0:15
- What is E-Commerce?
E-Commerce means any monetary transaction that happens online. Examples of this include, buying a product on a website, collecting donations for a non-profit, purchasing a gym membership, and paying for your Netflix account.
- 0:31
- Can My Service or Product be Purchased Online?
Consider shipping your product especially the size of the product and what that would do to the cost of shipping. Think about the bandwidth of your business around shipping and the extra layer of work that will come with that. Will you have to hire an additional staff person to complete orders?
If you are selling a taxable good, you will have to collect and dispense taxes to correct states. This can be a time consuming task. However, there are some softwares that exist to calculate the various tax rates and pay them on your business’ behalf.
Another factor to consider would be inventory and if you have that in your workspace. Will the online and in-store systems talk to each other. Will the system let the online store know when your in-store products are out of stock.
- 1:53
- What Software Should Be Used to Power the E-Commerce Operation?
If you are selling just a single item online, then a whole e-commerce store will most likely not be needed. A single PayPal forum could be used instead.
However, if you sell multiple products then you are going to want to set up a whole e-commerce system.
The basic but pretty cheap sites include: Wix, Squarespace, and Weebly. These are low-investment; low-return options that can be used to test the waters out. The pros of these websites are no upfront investment and they can be used for simple products with little variation. Cons would include the lack of control of design and functionality and you never own your site.
The next level up sites like Shopify and Woocommerce are a little more advanced, can cost more in the front end or a higher cost month-to-month. Shopify has great pre-made templates to use without having to hire a web designer, including add-ons to customize your website even more. Cons of Shopify are that it does have a steeper learning curve and you do not own your site. Woocommerce also has a great pre-designed themes but has many more add-ons for customization. Woocommerce can also be fully customizable in functionality and design along with owning your site. Cons for Woocommerce include the steeper learning curve and a higher investment in the front end.
Topics & Lessons
Each Below Topic Contains a Video Lesson and Helpful Downloadable Information
Selling on Your Website
Selling on Social Media
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