If you have run a business either as an owner, partner or manager then you know the commitment it takes to be successful in business. Running an ecommerce business takes just as much effort and commitment as any other type of business, so don’t be fooled into thinking an online business is somehow easier.
That said, if you are committed to starting an ecommerce business than you should first be prepared to commit the following:
- Time: The more time that you can commit to, the better managed your ecommerce business will be.
- Funding: As they say it takes money to make money, and an ecommerce business is no exception.
- Experience: If you have no business management experience, then you would be smart to partner with someone who does.
- Accounting: Maybe the most critical component of long-term success for any business, accounting is crucial for success.
- Advertising: If you don’t advertise you won’t make enough sales to survive. So, make sure you have an advertising budget.
- Marketing: Implementing a long-term marketing strategy when your store opens, ensures sales will grow over time.
- Shipping: The crux of every ecommerce business, the goal is to find fast shipping and a low cost.
- Products: Equally important as accounting, but way more difficult to get right. Get a dependable supplier that will extend terms to pay.
- Software: We saved this for last because this is where most inexperienced ecommerce business owners get stuck.
Most of the items listed above are as they say “no-brainers”, however there are a few that can really send your new business into debt faster than you can imagine.
To give our clients the best possible path forward for managing their ecommerce website, and for marketing and promotion post-launch, we recommend the following ecommerce platforms. Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Magneto. While there are many different ecommerce platforms on the market, most can be difficult to learn and even more difficult and costly to configure and manage.
Our goal is to get your ecommerce website up and generating revenue as soon as possible, the last thing we want to do is deliver an overly complicated ecommerce platform to our clients.
Shopify Development
When your new website design project is going to be developed on Shopify, you need a marketing agency with years of Shopify experience. We have Shopify designers, Shopify developers, and Shopify programmers. This will mean the difference between developing your new Shopify website correctly and completely the first time, and not having to continuously go back and fix or change configurations.
The Affordable Marketing process for website design and Shopify development is quite different from our competitors, that is because of our years of experience. There are no surprises in Shopify that we have not seen and worked with, so when you hire Affordable Marketing, you can feel confident that we will get your Shopify website properly configured the first time.
As we have mentioned before, ecommerce is not the place you want to test your DIY skills, especially when you’re configuring a new Shopify ecommerce website. Why waste precious time and resources, when you can have a partner build your ecommerce website and help you every step of the way to your revenue generation.
WooCommerce Development
There is a flood of ecommerce websites moving from the Shopify ecommerce platform to WooCommerce. While the reasons for these migrations vary, the reasons we hear the most are the desire to break free from the “one size fits all” platform, more control over the web server and database customization’s and more options for credit card processing. WooCommerce is also Open Source, which gives business owners more flexibility for building out web components such as shipping modules and other custom coded functions which you are not able to do on the standard Shopify platform.
BigCommerce Development
While we do work extensively within the BigCommerce ecommerce platform, this can be one of the more complicated ecommerce platforms to learn how to manage. For those ecommerce websites already in BigCommerce, we are ready to take on your project. For those thinking about using BigCommerce as their ecommerce platform, we might recommend more user friendly options such as Shopify or WooCommerce, depending on your needs.
Magento Development
Many larger companies and ecommerce sites gravitate towards Magento due to its robust programming engine and higher than normal security features. Now that Adobe has purchase the program it has become quite expensive. You can however still setup an Open Source ecommerce website, but the costs tend higher than Shopify or WooCommerce due to the complexity of the platform. If Magento Open source is your decision, then we bring 15+ years of Magento development experience to your project and will get your website online faster and for less than any of our competitors.
Adding a WooCommerce ecommerce website to your WordPress sites is one of the fastest growing ecommerce platforms and its super easy to learn. Get the most out of your WordPress website by upgrading to ecommerce, this is by far the fastest and least expensive way to get an ecommerce website up and running.
These types of ecommerce websites are perfect for:
- Retail Ecommerce
- Brick & Mortar Retail
- B2B Ecommerce
- Dropshipping
New Website Launch
Launching a new website is truly something special, if you’re a business owner this is a milestone that will change the way you acquire new customers. With the launch of your new website, you’re going to need marketing to begin the customer acquisition journey.
Affordable Marketing has been helping our customers achieve competitive dominance in their markets since 2003, we have a team of highly qualified marketing and advertising specialists that will take your new website to the next level and beyond.
We offer the following marketing and advertising services: