Should you be selling your products online? Maybe a customer called to ask if they could buy something from your website, or a competitor launched an online store and you’re imagining all the business you’ll lose to them. Maybe you’re just tired of only being able to sell when someone is there to man the store.

For most businesses, the answer is yes, you should consider online sales. It’s a great way of expanding your footprint and finding new customers. But getting to that point requires understanding what e-commerce involves, what it can realistically do for your business, and what your options are before you commit to a platform like Woocomerce, Shopify, or some other method.

What Exactly is E-Commerce?

E-commerce is the buying and selling of goods or services over the internet. This sounds straightforward, but it covers an enormous range of business models and setups.

A local apothecary might sell its handmade products on an online store and ship products to customers across the country. A residential trash service company might take deposits or payments through their website to set up service, and a restaurant might sell delivery or gift cards online. Gyms sell memberships and class packages without anyone ever picking up a phone, and a life coach sells digital downloads, courses, or guides directly from their business site.

All of these are considered e-commerce. The common thread is that money changes hands online and doesn’t require an in-person interaction.

What separates a true e-commerce website from a standard business website is infrastructure. An e-commerce site needs a lot of things: a product catalog, a shopping cart, a checkout process, a payment platform, inventory management, and usually some form of order fulfillment or delivery tracking. It’s a lot more complex than an informational site, and it’s good to know what you’re getting into if you decide to go this route. We’ve written about what that complexity can looks like in practice in What Happens After “Add to Cart”? It’s a great piece to read if you want to expand on the big picture of what happens under the hood of an online store.

What Can It Do for Your Business?

The most obvious benefit of selling online is reach. A physical store or service area has geographic limitations. Customers have to be able to get to your brick-and-mortar location or you have to get to them. An online store doesn’t have these same limits. Even businesses that have primarily served a local market often find that an online presence can extend revenue in ways they didn’t anticipate. A local retailer can start shipping regionally, a specialty food producer with unique items might find customers three states away, and a craftsperson who once sold only at nearby farmer’s markets may build a national following for their work.

Beyond just extended reach, e-commerce removes friction and pain points from the buying process. Customers can browse products, decide what they want, and then purchase on their own time without waiting for business hours, calling ahead, or making a trip. For impulse purchases, planned purchases, and everything in between, reducing the steps needed between “I want this” and “I’m buying this” increases sales.

E-commerce also gives you data, which is something many business owners don’t think about. You can see exactly what customers are looking at, what they’re adding to their cart, where they’re dropping off, and what’s converting them to sales for your business. This information is incredibly useful for making decisions about your products, your prices, and your marketing.

For service businesses, online payment and booking capabilities can streamline operations significantly. Fewer phone calls, fewer back-and-forth emails, and less time spent on administrative tasks free up you and your employees to perform the actual services you provide.

What Are Your Options?

There’s more than one way to set up an e-commerce shop, and which to choose depends on your business, your budget, and your long-term goals.

Hosted platforms like Shopify are popular because they handle a lot of the technical infrastructure as part of the deal. You pay them a monthly fee, choose a theme, add your products, and you’re selling relatively quickly. The tradeoff is that you rent the platform instead of owning it, your customization options are severely limited, and costs can add up as your store grows and you need to add apps and features. Scaling on a platform like Shopify can get very expensive.

Marketplace platforms like Etsy or Amazon get you in front of an existing audience quickly, which can be especially appealing for new sellers. The downside is that you’re building your store on someone else’s platform, you’re subject to their rules and fees, and you must compete directly with other sellers of the same types of products in the same exact marketplace. This can be very difficult and these platforms don’t always play fair. Finally, you don’t own the customer relationship in the same way you would with your own store. When’s the last time you checked to see what exact store is selling you an item on Amazon? It’s hard to create loyalty when your customers only see Amazon as the seller.

WooCommerce on WordPress is the preferred approach to e-commerce at Wild Iris Marketing, and we have good reasons for that. WooCommerce is a plugin that turns a WordPress website into a fully functional e-commerce store. It gives you complete ownership and control of your store, extensive flexibility to build exactly what your business needs both in terms of functionality and design, and a platform that can scale as your business grows. Because it runs on WordPress, it integrates naturally with most existing websites, SEO strategies, content, and broader digital marketing strategies. It certainly requires more setup and expertise than a hosted platform, but the long-term advantages in ownership, flexibility, and cost are pretty significant. If you’re currently on Shopify and considering a move because you’re tired of its limitations, check out this detailed guide on what migration actually involves.

There are other options too. Squarespace and Wix have added e-commerce capabilities, and platforms like BigCommerce serve larger operations. But for most small and mid-sized businesses, the choice typically comes down to Shopify for simplicity and speed, or WooCommerce for ownership and flexibility. We feel the latter is the best choice for businesses that plan to grow beyond a very small operation.

What Kind of Upkeep Does E-commerce Require?

One thing you need to know is that e-commerce is not a passive investment. A store that isn’t maintained, updated, and marketed will not sell products.

Product descriptions need to be accurate and compelling. Photos need to be professional. The checkout process needs to work smoothly on every device, from mobile to desktop. Payment systems need to be secure and current, and inventory needs to stay up-to-date and accurate. Finally, the store needs to be discoverable online, which means SEO, content, paid advertising and social media working along with the store itself.

It’s also good to know that even products that seem simple to sell online can require more complexity behind the scenes than you might expect. We wrote about this in The Pizza Paradox, which walks through how a seemingly straightforward product like pizza can demand incredibly sophisticated e-commerce infrastructure to successfully sell online.

Businesses that do well with e-commerce recognize that it is a sales channel that requires ongoing attention and is not just a one-time deal. But it can be a very lucrative return on your investment!