Teaching Tuesday: Most Economical Way Of Selling Products Online

Ana Rodriguez submitted this question to our survey:

What is the most economical way of selling products online? This means not having a shopping cart and instead using Paypal or money orders? Is cost of Paypal worth it?

Does this shut out people who are not members of Paypal or don’t want to use it? My business is a fundraiser and I am currently setting up a website and figuring out the logistics of this.

PS I am doing fundraisers for churches and I am trying to set something up on website where churches can be assurred that all outside orders are being credited to their account. It’s either that or put the order-taking in their hands? These are custom orders.

My response: I see many websites that are most likely trying to save money by not having a shopping cart or online payment system in place. Unfortunately, I think what they are doing is leaving money on the table.

When people are shopping online are in the buying phase of online shopping, they are wanting to make a purchase — and they want to do it now. Requiring people to fill out a form and wait for an invoice, then send a money order takes too long and most buyers will have found an automated system somewhere else.

Using Paypal’s buttons is a step up and makes the process much easier from the perspective of the customer. However, if you have inventory, then managing the inventory and orders is going to quickly become a hassle without a shopping cart, such as the Shop Kit Plus.

So, in my opinion, it’s more economical financially and in terms of time, to use a shopping cart with Paypal, at least.

Now, Paypal is one of the leading payment gateways online. Most people who have been online for very long are familiar with it. From that perspective it is definitely worth having and worth the fees.

On the other hand, there are some people who would prefer not to use Paypal. For them, I recommend you have a second payment processor, such as Authorize.net with an internet merchant account (if you process more than $1,000 in sales per month), or a solution like Propay if you want to process the cards manually. (You can do this with Paypal, and you can allow people to pay through Paypal without signing up for an account. But those who don’t like Paypal are still not going to trust this option.)

In your situation, I would recommend setting up a site (hosting account and domain name) for each church and using a shopping cart and a Paypal account that is in the church’s name. I would also require each church to be in charge of maintaining their own sites — unless you want to offer maintenance for a fee.

Do you need answers? Submit your question to our Product Seller’s survey!