Online sales are booming! Especially since measures to contain the coronavirus were tightened in 2020, more and more business owners are turning to online and mail-order selling as a means of mitigating the effects. According to the statistics portal statista.com, e-commerce sales in Switzerland in 2021 amounted to around CHF 15 billion. Here, too, the much-vaunted digitalization is a factor, as almost two billion people worldwide shop online.
Creating an online store is no longer a complex undertaking for beginners. Today’s web technologies make it possible for even non-technophiles to get into online selling with little effort and investment.
Hostpoint Webshop is an all-in-one solution. Built as a modular system, the online store contains numerous preprogrammed features and always runs smoothly. There is no need for a complicated installation. And since Hostpoint handles the maintenance, you don’t have to worry about the security, updates or compatibility of the individual plugins and features, which normally involve a great deal of additional effort and expense. In a nutshell, you can get into online commerce without writing a line of code or having to hire an expensive web agency. Launch your own online store today. With the various Hostpoint Webshop offers, there’s a product to suit everyone. But what matters if you want to be successful?
Andreas Cramer · Webshop customer and owner of HD Zürisee AG
“We knew we had to rely more on the website. The online store became enormously important for us, as our business card to the outside world.”
Wide range of payment methods and designs
According to a 2021 statista.com survey survey, more than 90% of the Swiss respondents said that expedient payment processing is the most important criterion when shopping online. Free shipping came in second at 78%.
Hostpoint Webshop makes available the most popular payment methods, such as credit and debit cards (Mastercard, Visa, etc.), PayPal and TWINT. These can be used via a payment provider such as Saferpay, PostFinance and Stripe.
Webshop customers can also choose from various settings for shipping methods and costs: “Fixed Price”, “Weight of the products in the basket”, “Number of products in the basket” or “Free delivery”.
Andreas Cramer · Webshop customer and owner of HD Zürisee AG
“Just right for small companies like ours that want to offer credit card payment.”
The design of the online store should be contemporary and optimized for mobile devices. This is obviously a given for the numerous design templates on offer. Apart from the usual product sales, the store offers countless content elements, such as top products, promotions, images, galleries, videos and contact forms, which can be simply dragged and dropped to the desired location. If you are interested in writing your own code and have the necessary skills, then you may wish to use an HTML element.
Win back customers with vouchers and discounts
Discounts and vouchers are a good way to boost sales in your own online store. They can also be used to steer sales a little, for example with a special discount on the winter collection in the spring. Playful competitions offering vouchers as a prize help to build customer loyalty. Vouchers can be used to offer the following types of discounts:
- Fixed amount as a discount (e.g. CHF 10)
- Percentage discount (e.g. 10%)
- Free shipping
Other settings can also be defined, e.g. to specify the voucher validity period or a minimum order value. Furthermore, the store owner can decide whether vouchers are accepted only for a limited number of orders or can be used just for certain products and categories.
Customer groups can also be created with Webshop offer L and higher. Customer-specific prices can be set for these, such as discounted prices for regular customers.
Conveniently manage orders and invoices
The Orders menu item in the administration area is the central hub for processing incoming orders. You are notified of new orders by e-mail and via a notice on the home page in the administration area of your store.
Documents such as invoices, delivery slips and invoice corrections can be created and sent here at the click of a mouse.
Success with search engine optimization
Search engines such as Google and the like play an enormously important role in product searches in online shopping. In May 2021, 79% of Swiss respondents to a statista.com survey stated that search engines are the most important tool for their product searches on the internet. For this reason, search engine optimization (also called SEO) is one of the most common and best measures for marketing your online store. Good SEO can help your store to rank higher in search results when certain keywords are entered in search engines.
Fortunately, Hostpoint Webshop already has many preprogrammed features that facilitate SEO:
- Search engine optimized URLs
- Page title
- Alternative texts (Alt tags)
- XML sitemap
- Editing the meta description
In addition, Hostpoint offers interfaces for easy integration of Google Analytics, Google Ads, Google Shopping and even Facebook Pixel. Products featured in the online store may then appear high up in the search results.
And if you want to go even further than the Webshop SEO tools allow, you can also use the wide range of analysis and optimization features provided by Hostpoint rankingCoach.
Webshop offer: something for everyone!
Complete solutions for creating your own online store are available with Hostpoint Webshop from as little as CHF 29 per month (Webshop S). The online store can be tested without obligation for 30 days and currently new customers benefit from three free months. You can also find more information about the various Webshop offers on the relevant product page.
