Ecommerce Software: Be Careful!
The most critical part of your ecommerce business is the software used to run your website. It controls the look and feel of the site, the way products are displayed, the features available to your customers and the checkout part of your online shop. Your ecommerce software handles customers payments, communications between you and the customer and is the face of your online business. With all this in mind it is worth investing in proven ecommerce software given all that it is responsible for.
The Dangers Of Free Ecommerce Software
In my experience building and running ecommerce websites for both large and small businesses I have established several rules of thumb which I pass on to my small business customers. One point I am quick to highlight is cost and the dangers of using free software to sell online. Incredibly some people still expect to be able to avoid paying for their ecommerce software even though it is the most important part of their online business. If you were opening a high street store would you expect the shop to be free? Of course you wouldn’t.
There’s no free lunch, not even on the internet. If you are serious about ecommerce for your small business, stay away from free ecommerce software products.
The world of ecommerce is huge and consequently there are many ecommerce software products available. The thought of establishing an ecommerce site for free may sound tempting but it’s full of pitfalls. For example, there are a lot of so-called “open source” ecommerce products on the market. Open Source means the programming code is open to the public and, if you are a developer or programmer, you can work on the product to improve it’s use and write add-ons and modules. Whilst this may be fine for many types of software I am of the firm belief that free Open Source software should not be used for ecommerce.
Basically, if you didn’t program the software yourself you don’t know whats in it. In addition, open source ecommerce software products often have a poor support network and dubious security breaches, usually relying on the customers themselves helping each other through forums. Often there is no “company” to talk to at all.
I know of one instance where a small household appliance company used free open source software to run their ecommerce shop. It looked just fine and after a while the owner decided to add a newsletter module, also free, which had become available for the software. The newsletter worked just as the business owner expected it to, however unknown to him there was another program running silently in the background. It’s job was to harvest and copy all the credit card details from all the store’s transactions and send those details off via the internet to a central computer in Russia. Only when the police were on his doorstep did he realise something was terribly wrong. Extreme perhaps, but very common, and just to save a few hundred pounds at the beginning.
Free or Open Source software may be fine if you are selling pencil drawings from your kitchen via PayPal but it’s no way to run an online shop for any small business. You should always expect to pay for your ecommerce store and why not? After all, if you are serious about selling online it’s a worthwhile investment!
My general rule of thumb is: If your ecommerce store costs less than £500, don’t do it. Realistically you should be looking at spending upwards of £1000 for a professional solution. Most of my own small business clients have spent between two and five thousand pounds establishing their online shops. They were happy to pay for a safe, tested solution to their ecommerce needs.
Having a successful online business is about being professional, efficient and secure. It’s also about taking money from your customers online. Don’t use free ecommerce software to run your business, it will bite you in the end.
Lastly, if you are using an ecommerce company to build your online shop for you, make sure they arn’t using free software either. Believe it or not some do and it’s not something that should be given to any business customer. In the next article I will outline what you should expect from a good ecommerce design company.
