Webshop In 5 hours

Webshop in 5 hours

We are living in crazy times with the lockdown of entire economies.Because of COVID-19, many companies are facing great challenges.But necessity is the mother of invention. When physical shops are closed, it is still possible to sell products online. In the last few days, we have received many enquiries from small and medium-sized enterprises who do not want to remain idle. Therefore, we would like to show you in the following article how you can create a webshop in a short time and sell your products online in order to reduce possible financial losses.

The situation could not be more different at the moment. On the one hand, all non-essential shops in the cities are being closed, while at the same time online players are experiencing delivery problems.

Digitec, LeShop are reaching their capacity limits.

On the following lines, we have certainly compiled an incomplete selection of possible solutions. We focus on tools that make it possible to open a "webshop" quickly and unbureaucratically without having to have the relevant expertise. At the same time, it should be possible to offer the most commonly used payment methods in Switzerland, such as credit card, invoice, TWINT and PostFinance Card / e-finance.

Hosted webshops

The advantage of hosted webshops is that you don't have to worry about hosting and running the shop. These solutions work in such a way that you can simply choose your template (design) and start entering the products. Hosted solutions also offer a variety of interesting features and integration with different social channels, allowing you to sell or offer your products on channels such as Facebook, Instagram,Google Shopping, etc. at the touch of a button. All this without any developer know-how. In addition, these providers ensure that you are up to date with the latest technology and that all the necessary features such as responsive templates (for mobile websites) and Google website optimisation are alreadyincluded in the standard package.

On the other hand, you have no or only limited possibilities to adapt the shop programmatically. Therefore, certain compromises may have to be made.

Sell on all channels. Also in social media to reach as many customers as possible.

Shopify.com

Shopify is one of the most popular hosted solutions currently available, you can choose between the full online shop orthe Shopify Buy button, which is about offering only single products for purchase.

Shopify offers the Buy Button as Shopify Light from 9 USD / month and the basic version of Shopify from 29 USD / month. It is important to understand that Shopify offers its own payment solution, as a customer who wants to receive payments via loose payment methods such as TWINT, PostFinance or invoice with payment slip, you must switch to an external provider such as wallee.com. However, Shopify charges a surcharge of 0.15% - 2% (depending on the selected version of the product), which can quickly become expensive. You can find more information on the Shopify pricing page.

Advantages

1. Easy to use - no programming knowledge necessary.
2. Due to its popularity, thousands of integrations exist in other systems, which can be integrated with one click from the App Store.
3. There is comprehensive and easy-to-use integration with all other sales channels and tools such as Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads, etc.
4. Local payment methods such as TWINT and PostFinance can be connected through wallee. Other providers also exist for TWINT.

Disadvantages

1. Shopify quickly becomes expensive, especially due to additional fees through the additional apps or when using external gateways.
2. We do not know of any simple way to integrate a Shopify shop via iFrame into an existing website. The "only" option is to use the Shopify Buy button.
3. Shopify cannot currently support multilingualism without additional services.

Ecwid.com

ECWID is also an American SAAS company that offers hosted webshop solutions. Ecwid offers a free version of the shop, which allows you to offer 10 products for sale. However, if you want to use additional apps and external payment service providers, you need at least the Venture package for 15 EUR / month. More information on pricing can be found on the ECWID pricing page.

From our point of view, Ecwid offers a very interesting feature that makes it possible to easily integrate your webshop as a channel into your website (see also examples below).With a little JavaScript, which you copy into your website, you can expand your existing website into a fully-fledged shop with all the advantages mentioned above. Extensive instructions already exist for many tools such as WIX, WooCommerce, Joomla, Weebly, etc. In the current situation, this should be a very interesting and decisive feature for many traders.

We use ECWID for our terminal shop, which we have integrated directly into our website with a few lines of JavaScript:

ECWID can be easily integrated into the existing website using iFrame and a clinical code snippet.

Advantages

1. Easy to use - no programming knowledge necessary.
2. ECWID can be integrated into an existing website very quickly and easily.
3. There is comprehensive and easy-to-use integration with all other sales channels and tools such as Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads, etc.
4. Local payment methods such as TWINT, PostFinance can be connected through wallee.

Disadvantages

1. The design options in the checkout are somewhat limited. External payment providers can only be integrated via a redirect.
2. Integrations with other systems available, but significantly less than with Shopify.

Lightspeed.com

Lightspeed eCommerce is another solution that, like Shopify and ECWID, enables the merchant to sell goods immediately. Like the other providers, Lightspeed has set itself the goal of serving the retailer on all channels. In addition to the e-commerce integration, Lightspeed has focused even more on the gastronomy sector with the acquisition of Gastrofix and iKENTOO and also offers industry solutions.

Lightspeed also has a large selection of external integrations that can be installed via the Appstore.Further information on prices and functions can be found directly on the Lightspeede-commerce page.

Advantages

1. Easy to use - no programming knowledge necessary.
2. There is comprehensive and easy-to-use integration with all other sales channels and tools such as Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads, etc.
3. Local payment methods such as TWINT, PostFinance can be connected through wallee.

Disadvantages

1. The design options in the checkout are somewhat limited. External payment providers can only be integrated via a redirect.
2. Onboarding from Switzerland only possible via partner or demo.

WooCommerce the alternative without monthly costs

If you are looking for an alternative where you don't pay a fixed monthly fee for the operation, WooCommerce is recommended. WooCommerce is an extension for WordPress with which you can turn your WooCommerce CMS into a webshop. The use of WooCommerce is free of charge, and there are also numerous extensionsfor WooCommerce / WordPress whichcan usually be installed free of charge.

Due to the large availability of extensions, WooCommerce offers more flexibility for complex sales processes such as the sale of services, food delivery services or events.

If you would like to test WooCommerce yourself, we would like to refer you to ourWooCommerce Showcase.

Advantages

1. No further fixed costs for operation and hosting.
2. Incredible number of extensions and add-ons for WooCommerce for all industries.
3. Plugins exist for practically all payment service providers, which can be easily installed.
4. A variety of ready-made templates for a customised look and feel.
5. Can be extended as required and integrated checkout flows can therefore be built with a good user experience.

Disadvantages

1. Hosting must be organised.
2. Asa rule, it takes technical knowledge to get WooCommerce up and running.

Minishop / Donation Form

Many businesses may not need a complete web shop. Instead, it is sufficient if payments can be accepted in a simple form. For this purpose, we offer a simple solution of so-called payment links, which you can integrate on your website. We have already discussed the possibilities of using them, including integration in WIX, Weebly etc., in one of our blog posts.

We offer ready-made examples for this on ourGithubpage.

How do I proceed now?

So much for our overview and presentation of possible solutions. Now we would like to briefly describe in a 5-point plan which steps are necessary so that you can reach your goal as quickly as possible.

1. Choose the software solution that suits you best and integrate it into your existing website or create a new URL under which you want to operate your webshop.
2. Capture your products with good images and descriptions
3. Choose the right payment provider. There are, of course, a variety of solutions. Thedecisive criterion from our point of view is that you use a partner with whom you have integrated all the payment providers relevant in Switzerland and with whom you can start quickly.wallee.com offers you a cost-effective way to start payments of all the payment methods relevant in Switzerland, such as STINT,PostFinance, credit cards and ESRbills immediately.
4. Install the necessary extensions.
5. Go Live

For the acceptance of credit cards it is necessary to identify you comprehensively due to money laundering laws. Wallee.com already offers digitalonboarding. The activation of credit cards can therefore take up to 3 days. However, you can start gradually and activate the payment methods as soon as they are available.

Example

We have already been able to help some companies in the last few days. As an example, we would like to mention the Chocolaterie Kölbenerinin Eastern Switzerland, who integrated their own webshop with ECWID into their website within a few hours and are now offering their products online.

Questions / Help

We hope that we have been able to answer your most pressing questions. If you need further input, have any questions about wallee or any of the offers presented here, please contact oursupport team quickly and easily.

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