Selling online is increasing day by day. More offline and home stores are going digital. They have the options to sell on marketplace, their own website or a webstore. A webstore is also called webpany (web company).
After searching on web for various options available, this article focuses on hosted webstore.
Marketplace
When a seller wants to sell online, marketplace is a good option. An established marketplace offers good visibility of products. Though there are several factors like promotion within marketplace but it has many advantages. Shipping is generally handled by marketplace. Very few queries by buyers so seller has more time in managing store. Downside is commission, fixed fee, other charges and return policy.
Site Webstore
Selling through seller’s own site. This means technical deployment of all online selling tools like cart, payments, product pages, returns, customer support etc. In this case technical team would be required, costing for site hosting, domain and payment gateway fees. Addons like CMS can be added to site like Woocommerce on WordPress, Magento etc.
Hosted Webstore
Like a marketplace it is 3rd party site. Seller hosts products on this platform. Based on the features offered by webstore it can have webstore branding as well. Various tools like cart, payments, product details page and others are provided by webstore. There are many webstores available for this. Some start with free plans with limited features and others have all paid plans. One of the popular webstore with which many sellers are familiar is shopify. Listing some other webstores available in Indian context.
- Instamojo
- Bikayi
- Shiprocket Social
- Shopmatic
- Ecwid
- Shopify
There are some more stores and apps available. Apps are generally for home based business and doesn’t have a web site. They generally cater to grocery stores. There is a need for website for sellers as websites offer easy options to manage business.
What features to look in a hosted webstore?
A hosted webstore offers various features which could be free or paid. There could limits set for a particular feature based on the plan. Some features might not be available in any plan. Following is a brief checklist for features, it doesn’t cover everything though.
- Manage from Website
- Manage from App
- Store Branding
- Store Logo
- Store Banner
- Remove Webstore Branding
- Upload single product
- Upload products in bulk
- Custom domain linking
- Store themes
- Shipping Management
- GST Tax
- HSN Code
- Multiple images for a product
- Add video to product
- Policy pages
- In built payment gateway
- Self/custom payment gateway
- COD on/off
- Direct Payment on/off
- Enquiry
- Reviews
- Ratings
- Advance Booking
- Whatsapp alerts
- Social Network sharing
- Social network account links
- Customer search
- Order processing status
- New order alert on email/sms/whatsapp
- Analytics stats
- Reports
- Tax Reports
- Returns management
- Similar items
- Product Category
- Highlight product
- Promotions
- Coupons
- Out of stock product
- Search products
- Store SEO
- Product SEO
- Reseller on/off
- Anonymous Product – As the hosted webstore would have many seller stores, anonymous product catalog is a very good option. This is useful for resellers. Many times resellers ask seller stores to provide unbranded images. In a normal seller store if reseller shares the product or image then it will have the store branding in form of image, text or link. In anonymous product catalog, image, text and detail page link would be without seller branding. Link would be general (of hosted webstore or some other domain) with images and all product details except selling price. Detail page won’t have buy now, contact details etc. so that reseller’s customer can check all details but places order to reseller only.