Open online shop

Would you like to create a professional-looking e-commerce site but have no programming skills or Web design skills? Would you like to expand your business by opening an online store but, at least for the moment, you don’t have large sums to invest in this project? Don’t worry: there are several solutions you can rely on to achieve your goal, and I’m here today to show you.

If you dedicate a few minutes of your free time to me, I can suggest some sites that allow you to open an online store in a few clicks, spending little and with the opportunity to test its operation at no cost for a limited period of time. Furthermore, if you have the necessary skills to do so, I will show you some solutions to create an online store by customizing a CMS (content management system) on a separately purchased webspace.

In short, whatever your current needs and knowledge in the field are, you will surely find a solution to start your online commerce business. Come on then: roll up your sleeves, take a look at the quick instructions below and try to put them into practice. I assure you that you will not regret it!

Index

• Open online shop for free
  • Shopify
  • One Minute Site
  • Other solutions to open an online store
• CMS to open online stores
• Open an online store on existing platforms
  • Open online store on Amazon
  • Open an online shop on eBay

Open online shop for free

If you do not have great programming and/or web design skills, you can rely on services that allow you to open an online store and manage it in a few clicks, directly via browser or app.

They include hosting (i.e. space on which to host the site), domain (i.e. the address associated with the site) and include trial periods or free plans: here are some of the most interesting.

Shopify

Shopify is one of the best solutions you can rely on if you need to open an online store but don’t have advanced skills in web programming and/or web design. It is, in fact, a service with already active over 1,000,000 stores around the world that allows you to create professional e-commerce in a few clicks, or taps (it is also available as an app for Android and iOS / iPadOS ).

It offers tons of customizable themes to choose from, unlimited secure hosting, free unlimited bandwidth, SSL certificate, blogging function and a free shopify.com domain name, with the option to purchase a custom one or use an existing one. It then allows you to launch marketing campaigns on Google, Facebook, email or SMS, view advanced sales statistics and easily manage orders, inventory, customer lists, sales, discount codes and more.

You can try it for free for a limited period of time (without entering payment details or renewal obligation), after which you can choose from various available plans, suitable for all budgets and all needs: the basic one starts at $ 29 / month and includes unlimited products; 2 staff accounts; 24/7 assistance in English; manual creation of orders; the ability to use sales channels such as marketplaces and social media; recovery of abandoned carts and much more.

To create your e-commerce with Shopify, connected to the official website of the service, type your email address in the appropriate field and click on the button Start the free trial, and then type the password you want to use for your account, the name you want to assign to the store and press the Create your store button.

On the next page, specify if you have already started selling, what your current income is and if you are creating a store for a customer, provide the other requested information, click on the Next button (or on the Skip button, if you want to skip the step) and fill out the address form to receive payments.

At this point, you should be in front of the Shopify management panel with, on the left, the menu that allows you to quickly access all the sections of the service: by clicking on Home you can access the main e-commerce dashboard; by clicking on Orders, Products, Customers and Analysis you can manage orders, products, customers and view sales data; pressing on Marketing you can set up marketing campaigns; by clicking on Discounts you can set discount codes, while in the App and Online Store you can customize the functions and appearance of the store.

To find out more, I invite you to consult my tutorial on how to create an e-commerce with Shopify, in which I have shown you how the service works in even more detail.

One Minute Site

One Minute Site is another well-known name in the creation of websites for e-commerce (and not only). It allows you to open a free online store with three products and a third-level domain oneminutesite.it using ready-to-use themes also optimized for mobile.

To place more than three products in the store, you need to switch to one of the paid plans, such as One Minute Site Professional which allows you to sell 20 products at 8 euros/month + VAT, or Try & Buy which provides a 3-month free trial of the Business plan ( 16 euros/month + VAT) and allows you to insert unlimited products in the shop.

The plans also include HTTPS security certificate, Custom domain, 3 email boxes that can be activated, 200MB of Webspace, Pro assistance within 24 / 48h, no advertising, HTML and CSS that can be changed, telephone number with voicemail that can be activated for free, Google Analytics Code, Google Maps Key, Google Search Console, Price Finder Integration, Coupon Codes and more. There are no sales commissions. More info here.

To open your e-commerce on One Minute Site, connected to the home page of the service, click on the CREATE E-COMMERCE button and choose a theme from those available. Then fill out the form that is proposed to you with the name of the store, email address and password, check the box relating to general contact and captcha and press the Create your online store button.

At this point, decide whether to start the site creation wizard (to be guided in customizing it) or the do-it-yourself one (if you prefer to manually build your site), click on Select and continue and proceed following the instructions on the screen. In the case of the wizard, you will need to answer a series of questions related to your site.

At the end of the initial setup, you can take advantage of the One Minute Site editor to build your e-commerce. The elements displayed on the screen can be customized with a simple click on them. To manage the store catalog, on the other hand, you can click on the eCommerce tab (top) and then on the Activate e-commerce button.

Once you have performed the initial store configuration (by entering general settings, payment methods, shipping costs, documents, etc.), you can easily manage your products, as also explained in the official One Minute Site guide.

Other solutions to open an online store

The services for opening an online store mentioned above are among the best, but they are not the only ones. So here are some other interesting alternatives you might want to consider.

• Blomming – this is a well-known service for creating e-commerce and selling your products online, including via Facebook. It has a 15-day free plan, after which it costs 9.99 euros/month with 5% commissions or 19.99 euros/month with 3% commissions. Billing is annual. I told you about it in more detail in this tutorial of mine.
• Wix – a well-known service for creating websites without programming knowledge. It allows you to create a free site associated with a third-level domain. com with paid plans for e-commerce starting from 17 euros/month. I told you about it in my guide.
• Jimdo – another well-known name in the field of “on the fly” website creation. It allows you to create e-commerce sites starting from 15 euros/month (with annual billing) with domain included, 10GB of space and zero commissions.

CMS to open online stores

If you are familiar with the “manual” creation and management of websites, you might consider installing a CMS (a content management system) on a separately purchased webspace (through a hosting service, to be associated then to a domain, also to be purchased separately) and to manage your e-commerce through the latter.

You will lose the convenience of having a solution that does everything in one click, but you will gain both in terms of flexibility and fixed costs. There are several CMSs you can think of contacting: here are some of the best-known examples.

• WordPress– is the most used CMS in the world for creating blogs and websites. Free and open-source, it has numerous plugins and themes that allow you to expand its functions and shape it according to the user’s needs. Among the most interesting plugins, from an e-commerce perspective, there is WooCommerce which allows you to create an online store in a few simple clicks. For more information on how WordPress works, see my tutorial dedicated to the topic.
• Joomla– is one of the best alternatives to WordPress. It is a CMS that can be used for the creation of sites, traditional blogs and even e-commerce, through plugins such as Virtuemart. More info here.
• Magento– Open-source CMS widely used for the creation of online shops with medium-high business volumes. Definitely less intuitive than WordPress, it is however very powerful and flexible. Its basic version ( Open Source ) is free but there are also paid ones ( Magento Commerce ), with greater potential. More info here.
• Drupal– is a free and open-source CMS used in the creation of medium-large e-commerce. It is extremely powerful and flexible but, for this very reason, it requires some technical knowledge to be used profitably. More info here.
• Prestashop– open-source CMS considered as one of the best and simplest alternatives to Magento. You can download it for free or buy it already installed in all-in-one packages that also include hosting and domain. More info here.

If you are looking for solutions for hosting your e-commerce or for purchasing a domain, do not hesitate to consult my tutorials dedicated to these topics.

You must know, then, that there are simplified solutions for CMS that, for a rather low monthly or annual expense, allow you to have ready-to-use CMS installations including hosting and domain. One example above all is Aruba Managed WooCommerce Hosting.

With Aruba Managed WooCommerce Hosting, you can create a WordPress- based online store and WooCommerce plugin with unlimited storage on SSD, a 2GB database on SSD, SSL DV certificate, support for traffic up to 500,000 monthly visitors, automatic backup, staging environment, and much more. Prices start at 124.50 euros + VAT for the 1st year and then 249.00 euros + VAT/year. For more information, see my Aruba Managed WooCommerce Hosting tutorial.

Open an online store on existing platforms

If you do not want to open your own e-commerce but want to take advantage of the viability of platforms already established in this sector, here are some alternatives that could be for you.

Open online store on Amazon

Amazon is the most famous online store in the world and putting your products for sale on the latter is equivalent to having enormous visibility.

To open an online store on Amazon, you can choose whether to opt for a basic account (less than 40 items on sale per month) by paying a fixed closing fee of 0.99 euros + a referral fee depending on the category of the product sold. , or a Pro account that has no limits on the products sold and provides a recurring cost of 39 euros/month + a commission per referral depending on the product sold.

For more details on how to sell on Amazon, see the tutorial I dedicated to the topic and the official Amazon page.

Open an online shop on eBay

Even eBay, the famous online auction site, offers the possibility of creating a shop for those who need to make high sales volumes. There are three plans available: Basic with 300 Buy It Now free listings at € 19.50 / month; Premium with 10,000 Buy It Now free listings at € 39.50 / month and Premium Plus with Buy It Now free unlimited listings at € 149.50 / month.

For more information on how to open an eBay store, consult the tutorial I dedicated to the topic and the official eBay page.