Webman Studios Ecommerce - building a future online ecommerce network.

Recovering from the PayPal Here disaster!

If you like many hundreds of Australian online retailers have had the carpet ripped from underneath you, had the wind blown right out of your sales ...

The announcement made by Paypal that they are discontinuing the Paypal Here in store card readers was absolutely horrifying and has left many etailers scratching their heads on what to do.

The options go to the big banks and pay ongoing equipment maintenance fees and high transaction fees and charges, or you could get smart and do what we did and switched over to the Square Card Reader System!

Square has a card reader / chip reader that connect to a phone app with a low reader purchase price and low transaction fees ...

How reliable is Square Card Reader System?
We have been using square now on a number of web sites, in store, at regional markets, and at pop-up shops and the verdict is in ... Square reader has worked flawlessly fro over 3 years now!

On all our transactions, in all our sales environments we have had experienced zero transaction processing failures and the great surprise Square even accepts EFTPOS cards and American Express which Paypal Here never supported.

Click / Tap Here to check out how Square can help you recover from the PayPal Here disaster!

Webmans' guide to setting up your very own online shop.

For over 10 years I have been setting up and customising online shops for customers from all walks of business life. From small start up businesses to large corporate business ecommerce solutions. Some we national wholesalers whilst other simply wanted a self-managed drop shipping ecommerce solution. In all cases it was required to either purchase a professional ecommerce solution, or install free online shop software. Professional out of the box shopping cart software cost from $600 - $2500!!!

Once the online shop software was purchased it had to be installed on a server, this had to be rented on an annual basis. To ensure the privacy and security of my clients customers a SSL secure online shopping certificate needed to be purchased and installed. Regardless of the online shop software purchased there was always many hours of customising, adapting, installing and setting up add on modules to suit the individual needs of the client.

All the resources, installation and custom work costs money. As a guide, a basic reliable online shop server was in the area of $100 - $250 per year. A reputable SSL service providers SSL would cost in the order of $100 - $150.00 per year. Installing and setting up the online shop software could cost anywhere between $600 and $2500 depending on the features required. Overall, that gives an approximate total cost of establishing an online shop of about $800 - $3500!.. plus the weeks it may take to finally have your online shop established and ready to accept products.

The above cost guide do not include ongoing shop software updates, regular maintenance or programming management of the online shop. These cost could quiet easily double the cost of establishment of an online shop! Remembering we are only talking about establishing your online shop. Populating, training, marketing and promotion are whole other kettles of catfish!

Looking at the above costing you would have to agree it would seem fairly cost prohibitive for an established business to establish an online shop. It would be especially for a startup business looking at getting just a few products online.

... but what if I could show 'n' tell you about an easy way... an inexpensive way... a quick way to get an online shop established for an absolute fraction of the cost of having your own managed online shop? Would you be interested? Would you at least mildly curious?

Just before I get to the meat of the sandwich it's true story time!...

Up until about 2 weeks ago I had no problem with establishing an online shop by using free and professional online shopping cart scripts. To be fair, from a clients point of view it is a long drawn out and a relatively expensive process. But I did come across another online shopping cart solution that did a little more than murmur my curiosity!

I looked into the online shop solution further and decided to give it a try. After a few hours of splashing around and learning the curve, the online shop was setup, established and ready to accept products! i was super impressed on how easy ans intuitive the whole setup process was!

Yes I am a professional web designer and ecommerce guy but still the shop was just so straight forward and easy to get established. The shop was easy to setup, easy to establish and the guides were well written and easy to understand.

The self managed online shop was a fraction of the cost of establishing a self hosted shopping cart system!

Click here to try Shopify free for 3 days, no credit card required!