Webshop in 5 hours

We are currently experiencing crazy times with the lockdown of entire economies. Because of COVID-19, many companies are facing major challenges. But necessity is the mother of invention. If the physical shops remain closed, it is still possible to sell products online. In the last few days we have received many requests from small and medium sized companies who do not want to remain inactive. In the following article we would like to show you how you can create a web shop in a short time and offer your products online.

There are numerous online tools that help merchants in the current situation to sell their products online — without programming knowledge.

The current situation could not be more split. On the one hand, all non-essential shops in the cities are being closed. At the same time, there are delivery problems with the online players.

Digitec, LeShop reach their capacity limits.

We certainly have an incomplete selection of possible solutions on the following lines. We focus on tools that allow you to open a “web shop” quickly and unbureaucratically, without the need for expertise. At the same time, it should be possible to offer the most commonly used means of payment in Switzerland, such as credit card, invoice, TWINT and PostFinance Card / e-finance.

Hosted Webshops

The advantage of hosted webshops is that you do not have to worry about hosting and running the shop. These solutions work in such a way that you can simply choose your template (design) and start creating products. In addition, hosted solutions offer a variety of interesting features and integration into different social channels, which allows you to access channels like Facebook, Instagram, Google Shopping etc. at the push of a button, where you can sell or offer your products — and all this without any developer know-how. Furthermore, these providers make sure that you are on the latest state of the art and all necessary features, such as responsive templates (for mobile websites) and Google website optimizations, which are already included in the standard package.

On the other hand, you have no or only limited possibilities to adapt the shop programmatically. For this reason, you may have to make certain concessions.

Selling across all channels, such as social media, to reach as many customers as possible.

Shopify.com

Shopify is one of the most popular hosted solutions currently available. You have the choice between the full online shop or the Shopify Buy button, which is about offering only single products for purchase.

Shopify offers the Buy button as Shopify Light from 9 USD / month. The basic version of Shopify is already available from 29 USD / month. It is important to understand that Shopify offers its own payment solution. As a customer who wants to receive payments via local payment methods such as TWINT, PostFinance or ISR payment slips, you will have to switch to an external provider such as wallee.com. Here, however, Shopify charges a surcharge of 0.15% — 2% (depending on the version of the product selected), which can quickly become expensive. You can find more information on the Shopify pricing page.

Advantages

• Easy to use — no previous knowledge necessary.
• Due to its popularity, there are thousands of integrations into other systems, which can be integrated with a click from the App Store.
• There is comprehensive and easy to use integration with all other sales channels and tools such as Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads, etc.
• Local payment methods such as TWINT, PostFinance can be connected by wallee. For TWINT there are also other providers.

Disadvantages

• Shopify will quickly become expensive, especially due to additional fees from the additional apps or when using external gateways.
• We are not aware of a simple way to integrate a Shopify Shop via iFrame into an existing website. “Only” the Shopify Buy Button can be used for this purpose.
• Shopify can not currently support multiple languages without additional apps

Ecwid.Com

ECWID is also an American SAAS company that offers hosted web shop solutions. ECWID offers a free version of the shop, which allows you to offer 10 products for sale. However, if you want to use additional apps and external payment service providers, you will need the minimum venture package for 15 EUR / month. More information about pricing can be found on the ECWID pricing page.

ECWID offers from our point of view a very interesting feature, which makes it possible to easily integrate your web shop, as a channel into your website. With a little JavaScript, which you copy into your website, you can expand your existing website with a full-fledged shop with all the advantages mentioned above. For many tools like WIX, etc. there are already extensive instructions. In the current situation, this should be a very interesting and decisive feature for many merchants.

We use ECWID for our terminal shop, which we have integrated directly into our website with a few lines of JavaScript:

ECWID can be easily integrated into the existing website using an iFrame and a small code snippet.

Advantages

• Easy to use — no previous knowledge necessary.
• ECWID can be integrated very quickly and easily into an existing website.
• There is comprehensive and easy to use integration with all other sales channels and tools such as Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads, etc.
• Local payment methods such as TWINT, PostFinance can be connected by wallee. For TWINT there are also other providers.

Disadvantages

• The design options in the checkout are somewhat limited. External payment providers can only be integrated via forwarding.
• Integration with other systems available, but significantly less than with Shopify.

Lightspeed.com

Lightspeed eCommerce is another solution that, like Shopify and ECWID, enables merchants to sell goods immediately. Lightspeed, like the other providers, has set itself the goal of serving the merchant on all channels. In addition to e-commerce integration, Lightspeed has focused even more strongly on the catering industry with the purchase of Gastrofix and iKENTOO and also offers industry solutions.

Lightspeed also has a wide range of external integrations that can be installed via the App store. Further information on prices and features can be found directly on the Lightspeed e-commerce page.

Advantages

• Easy to operate — no previous knowledge necessary
• There is comprehensive and easy to use integration with all other sales channels and tools like Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads, etc.
• Local payment methods such as TWINT, PostFinance can be connected through wallee.

Disadvantages

• The design options in the checkout are somewhat limited. External payment providers can only be integrated via forwarding.
• Onboarding from Switzerland only possible via partner or demo.

WooCommerce — The Alternative without Monthly Costs

If you are looking for an alternative where you do not pay a fixed monthly fee for the operation, WooCommerce is recommended. WooCommerce is an extension for WordPress with which you can turn your WooCommerce CMS into a web shop. The use of WooCommerce is free of charge. There are also numerous extensions for WooCommerce / WordPress, which can usually be installed for free.

Through the wide availability of extensions, WooCommerce offers more flexibility for complex sales processes such as the sale of services, food delivery services or events.

If you want to test WooCommerce yourself, we refer you to our Wallee WooCommerce Showcase.

Advantages

• No further fixed costs for operation and hosting.
• Incredible number of extensions and enhancements for WooCommerce for all industries.
• There are integrations for practically all payment providers, which can be easily installed.
• Variety of ready-made templates for a customized look.
• Can be extended at will and therefore integrated checkout flows can be built with good user experience.

Disadvantages

• Hosting must be organized.
• As a rule, technical knowledge is required to put WooCommerce into operation.

Mini Shop / Donation Form

Many shops may not need a complete web shop. It is sufficient if payments can be accepted in a simple form. Therefore we offer a simple solution of so-called payment links, which you can integrate on your website. We have already discussed the possibilities of use including integration in WIX, Weebly etc. in one of our blog posts.

We offer ready-made examples on our github page.

How do I proceed?

Here is our overview and presentation of possible solutions. Now we would like to briefly describe in a 5 point plan, which steps are necessary to reach your goal as quickly as possible.

1. Choose the software solution that suits you best and integrate it into your existing website or create a new suitable URL under which you want to operate your web shop.
2. Create your products with good pictures and descriptions.
3. Choose the appropriate payment provider. There are of course a variety of solutions. The decisive criterion on our part is that you use a partner with whom you can reach all payment providers relevant in Switzerland and with whom you can get started quickly. wallee.com offers you a cost-effective way to start payments of all payment methods relevant in Switzerland such as TWINT, PostFinance, credit cards, ISR invoices immediately. For credit cards we offer fast onboarding, so you can usually accept payments within 3–4 days.
4. Install the necessary extensions.
5. Go Live

For the acceptance of credit cards it is necessary to identify you comprehensively. Wallee.com already offers digital onboarding. This allows the activation of credit cards to take up to 5 days. However, you can start step by step and activate the payment methods as soon as they are available.

Example

We have already been able to help some companies in the last few days. For example Chocolaterie Kölbener in Eastern Switzerland, who integrated their own web shop with ECWID into their website within a few hours and now offer their products online.

Questions / Help

We hope that we were able to answer your most urgent questions. If you need further input, have questions about wallee or about the offers presented here, please contact our support quickly and easily.