As time goes by, technology advances and becomes more and more part of our life, so it is important to keep our cosmetics business at the forefront.
Having your own online store implies many advantages, such as the fact that you can be selling 24 hours a day, it is easier to keep your statistics because purchasing systems are managed, you can assemble all the products that you have for sale and the new products that you go acquiring, have your own payment buttons and offer the means of payment you may have, configure your shipments and all from the same place.
There are many platforms that can help you develop and create your online store, the important thing is to know and distinguish which would be the most appropriate option according to your needs, we expose some more recognized options so that you can make the most appropriate decision for you and your store.
Woocommerce / Wordpress
It is a free plugin that you can use from WordPress, it is a totally intuitive and easy-to-use tool, it offers many more functionalities than other WordPress e-commerce plugins, you can find good tutorial material about the plugin, which means that it has good documentation, it also has good support.
It has a good group of plugins that complement its basic functionalities, apart from the fact that it also allows you to have a multilingual store, which means that you can translate all your content in the language you require, and you can even have products in different languages.
Let's highlight its different functionalities:
It allows us to easily create discount coupons, by quantity or by percentages, for specific products or for certain product categories.
It offers reports on the status of orders, customers and on your sales.
It allows adding variations or product attributes such as color sizes, among others.
You can sell physical and / or digital products.
It has different forms of payment such as PayPal, cash on delivery or cash on delivery, through bank transfers or checks.
Tax settings.
Configuration of shipping costs depending on where you are
Which countries you can sell to or which countries you exclude from your sales.
Inventory reports.
"Working with little investment of time and money you can create a store very easily and quickly."
Disadvantages of Woocommerce:
The options for free themes are limited.
Depending on the products that you will offer in your store, it may be insufficient.
If you want more functionality than what it offers, you will mostly have to pay for it.
You must be responsible for the security of your online store as well as the accommodation.
Shopify
You can create your online store without any knowledge of code or programming, very easy to handle. You can make your own store in a few minutes. Its interface is very flexible when it comes to interacting with users, like you, who want to create their own store in a simple way.
“The only thing you will need is to access their website and add an email to start creating your online store. Then fill in all the information requested (this step is very simple), choose a payment plan and finally a template that you are going to use. It has more than 100 so you will have a lot to choose from. Both free and paid and also ordered by business sectors (fashion, art, technology, etc.). "
As you can read previously, unlike Woocommerce which is free, Shopify has some excellent plans, which are adapted according to your needs, I show you below.
Shopify offers different plans to suit your needs:
SEE PLANS
Its advantages can be:
Simplicity in the creation and management of your online store. It will be very easy for you to create, customize and prepare your online store to start selling in a short time, and you can also design a blog to promote your store with it.
Hosting included so you won't have to worry about the loading speed of your store.
Good customer service. Assistance through forums, email or even chat. It also has Shopify Academy, a platform with free courses to help you with the management of your business.
Customer statistics (on higher payment plans), which will help you guide your sales strategy.
Payment facilities, since they have more than 70 international payment currencies that allow you to sell locally and in other countries.
You can sell even without having the product itself since it integrates with Dropshipping sites with apps like Ordoro or Inventory Source.
Automatic tax system, so you don't have to worry about anything since Shopify automatically takes care of state and country taxes based on location.
Unlimited products that can be varied according to characteristics, with the possibility of importing or exporting the products with csv files or one of the store's import / export apps.
Accept and manage orders in a matter of seconds, since you will receive an email or mobile notifications every time you receive a new sale. Customers like the immediacy of the service.
Disadvantages of Shopify:
It is not open source. So if you opt for this platform, you will have to pay to access their plans.
You will not have great modification options in the “Check Out” processes and they could be considered as “limited”.
It has a cost that you must face every month.
Finally, keep in mind that there are some features such as paid subscriptions that, if you want to have them, you will have to pay a commission for using them.
Wix
As many may have already seen, Wix has a fairly basic handling, that anyone could create a website from there, but Wix also has its eCommerce, which has been the same but here you can already create your own online store "dragging and dropping" elements, quite intuitive, you don't have to worry about web hosting, you just choose your template and start editing, it's that easy.
"It is not a specialized e-commerce platform like Shopify or BigCommerce, but rather a web page editor that allows you to add e-commerce functions to a web page."
Wix's free plan is quite generous. It gives you all the time you want to create your online store and prepare it for publication. However, if you want to receive payments and make money (and we assume that it is), then you will have to subscribe to a payment plan.
There are three plans: SEE PLANS
Advantages of an online store on Wix:
Never edit blindly - the Wix editor shows you how your changes affect the design of your virtual storefront.
Beginner-friendly: its interface is easy to use, as it includes a drag-and-drop editor, as well as mobile-friendly templates.
First, the brand, then the products: the priority is to create a strong and attractive brand with which to sell products.
Attractive designs: add videos of your products to offer a better shopping experience to your customers.
Advanced e-commerce tools, including abandoned shopping cart recovery, to attract customers who have not yet completed their purchases.
Multilingual pages: grow your business internationally by creating different pages for different countries.
Disadvantages:
It does not allow integration with social networks, which prevents selling through different channels, such as Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.
Too much creative freedom, which may contravene online store design best practices.
Squarespace
It is a fairly easy platform to use, because it has the same Wix system, "drag and drop" which has been "drag and drop", allows you to create websites, blogs or online commerce.
When it's good to use Squarespace:
If you don't have any kind of knowledge.
If you value design a lot and need a lot of customization.
It can be very attractive to photographers, musicians, designers (portfolios).
To create wedding and event sites.
If you have minimalist aesthetic tastes.
Squarespace can be a good alternative if you want to impress with an elegant website as a "business card".
Squarespace has several payment plans: SEE PLANS
Advantages:
High quality design templates.
Unique customizable home.
Adapted to mobile devices.
Many aesthetic customization options. This is something that has surprised me quite a bit.
Easy to use. Zero update maintenance. By paying a monthly fee you have all this included.
The Control Panel is finally available in Spanish.
Disadvantages:
So many customization options can slow down your system. If you are not a designer it can be somewhat overwhelming.
Many think that the editor is a bit complex to use compared to others.
Aesthetic difference from mobile devices, but it is normal.
There is no free plan. You have 15 days of testing to decide.
The prices are not too cheap.
Conclusions
If we want a totally professional store we can come to the conclusion that our first two options are the best, however for Woocommerce you should know a little more about code and web page management since you have to manage the hosting of your site, so for security, ease and professionalism we would say that in many cases perhaps the best option is Shopify, or what do you say ?.
Let us know your comments and experiences that you may have had with some of these tools and which one you liked the most.
