How can I sell products on my website?

We used to have a powerful store feature on our platform, but over the years other specialized e-commerce platforms arose on the market, who provided a much better store product. So it makes more sense for us to integrate your site with these third party tools so you get the best of both worlds.

Before deciding how to sell products, you should decide what your bigger website goals are and how online sales fits into your business plan. If selling products is primary income stream then you'll want to use a robust store platform like Shopify. But if you just want or you just want to sell a few products on the side, then you can just create a a product using the "Profile" tool, and embed a "buy now" button on the details page.

Whichever option you use, we recommend you have a SEO friendly Gutensite website that is human optimized to funnel visitors to your conversion goals. Anytime you are going to be selling products or investing in marketing, we highly recommend you engage us in an initial Digital Marketing Strategy consultation to help you plan everything and get the most ROI from your website. Good planning pays for itself immediately with better conversion rates, which equal money saved on marketing and money earned on sales.

Just Sell a Few Products with Paypal Buttons

If you just want to sell a few products on your site, the easiest thing to do is create a Paypal account, create a few products using their tools, and then get the embed code for a "buy now" button. Then on the Gutensite platform you can use the "Profile" tool to create one or more category landing pages to organize your product list, and then create Profile records for each product. On the produce detail page view the "Code View" and insert the Paypal "buy now" button. (If you want the buy button to appear on the list page, put it the top of the description so it's not truncated.)

When a visitor clicks the buy button, they will be directed to Paypal to complete the purchase, and then sent back to your site. You can configure the settings in Paypal to control the user experience.

Setup a Full Store with Shopify

If you want a robust store, as well as a robust SEO and Human optimized website, you can continue using Gutensite for your website but just create a separate store section for selling products.

Create Shopify Account and Add Products

Go to Shopify.com and create an account (pick the plan that fits your needs). Add your products to Shopify and setup the shipping and other settings that meet your need. Contact their customer service or have us help you with a custom setup project.

Customize Shopify Design

Ask us to help you customize the look of your Shopify site so that it matches your main website design. This should include your design look and feel, as well as the main links so that they can get back to your main website (depending on what your conversion goals, e.g. you may not want them to see all your main site links once they are the store because it will lower your sales if they go back to the main site). We also need to setup a subdomain on your domain that points to this store, e.g. store.mydomain.com. This customization is important so that the transition to your store is seamless for visitors and they feel like they are on the same site.

Add Links on Your Site to Store

Once your store is setup and ready for traffic, add a main level "Store" link on your website to your Shopify store domain so that visitors can get to your new store. You may also want to add promo modules (Image Button or Content), in order to promote your products on your home page or sidebars of other pages.