Christy Rae SCC WEB120 Big Project
The Shopping Cart Page
Monetizing your website is a hard decision to make, however, if you have a product or service that is something you can easily sell via a website the decision to monetize can be a part of necessary growth for your business. Once you decide to make money via your website it now comes time to decide how you will make this money, at one time it was an easy decision, but now there are multiple options to choose from.
The three main paths to take when making this decision are; using simple payment buttons, investing in a full-service shopping cart, or joining an online marketplace. Each method can be the right decision for your business and we will explore all three and which decision is the best for your line of business.
First, If you are just starting out or have a product/service that is small in number and has little to no need for inventory control software PayPal payment buttons are likely your best choice. PayPal is a simple solution due to the fact that you do not need to acquire a merchant account for processing sales. Melissa Johnson points out that, “A merchant account is unique to you. When you apply, the company’s underwriting department will look at your industry, your processing history (if any), your personal credit, your business’ creditworthiness, and other factors. The process isn’t nearly as complicated as it used to be even just a few years ago, but compared to third-party aggregators such as PayPal, it’s a lot more intensive.” (Johnson) One of the other benefits involved is the PayPal brand name itself, being a trusted known brand is a good way to engender confidence in your sales transactions, this is because the process uses PayPal’s secure payment center to process all transaction. Further, it is very easy to code and generate a payment button for each product, as well as any new products you add. All of these coded buttons can include your tax and shipping rates in one single process.
The second option to consider is a full shopping cart system. If you sell a wide range of products a shopping cart could be your best solution but does require being fully engaged in marketing as well as managing the shopping cart system.
There are two types of shopping cart solutions to consider. One is a hosted shopping cart like WooCommerce, Wix or Weebly. A hosted shopping cart has a solid benefit in that the hosted solution allows the use of a shopping cart for your business/website where the hosting space will often offer any maintenance or backups. Big Commerce points out that “The beauty of a hosted solution is that hosting comes free, which means it doesn't cost anything for the third party to keep your site functional on the Web.” (Big Commerce) The second solution is to buy a software license and run the shopping cart on your own; like Magento, X-Cart, or Zen Cart. There are benefits here in that you can create your own visual space and have greater control of features and style of the system. As BigCommerce states, “There is much greater flexibility in changing features and functionality, as well as in adding third-party tools if need be. However, the upfront costs are often higher and require more hands-on expertise for troubleshooting issues and technical support.” (BigCommerce)
Third, joining an online marketplace could be a solution if you want to join a community where specific items are being sold. An Online Marketplace like Etsy for handmade products, eBay for original, collectibles or antiques; CafePress for logo items on everything from stickers, to t-shirts, and even coffee mugs; Shutterstock for photography or vector graphics; Zatista, Artsy or Artplode for original art; Tunecore for music; property rentals on VRBO or Airbnb; and finally both Amazon and Shopify offer a wide range of product categories; all of these can see your product thrive if you select the right setting. With such a long list outlined it is clear that the Online Marketplace requires careful review and selection before you investment in any one platform, it will further require careful management and as well as consideration of being on multiple platforms. As Ezako shares regarding Online Marketplaces, “It does not replace E-commerce but it does augment the offering. Online marketplaces target a different audience... A marketplace offers a large choice of products. And because many producers sell on the same platform, there is a broader diversity than in a regular online store with a small set of brands.” (Ezako) However, there is a danger with inventory management when appearing on more than one space. As Jillian Hufford points out, “You could have a product listed in-stock on two different sites, when you really only have one product left in inventory. A customer from each site can purchase the last product you have. You can imagine the problem explaining to a customer that you can’t actually ship anything to them.” (Hufford)
Finally, one solution to consider is coding your own shopping cart using PHP, although this is not a recommended path for the reason that it will require constant and rigorous maintenance as well as could be potentially problematic if there is anything incorrectly coded or maintained. Further, the investment in self coding a full shopping cart is likely something that would require a team of developers and be quite costly.
Regardless of which path chosen, and currently there are clearly many ways that you can chose to monetize your website and see your product or service to market. Whichever path chosen, with careful marketing you can see a potential income in hand through electronic sales.