How to create an e-shop for free or for a few ducks? Beginner’s guide

Do you want to start selling online? Are you thinking about how to create your own online store? And how to have a successful e-shop? In this beginner’s guide you will find instructions on how to create an e-shop , how much it costs, whether the e-shop pays off for free or what the right price is. You will learn the advantages and disadvantages of renting an e-shop, a boxed solution and what alternatives exist. Here you will also find information on the conditions for establishing and operating an online store or where to download free business conditions for the e-shop. We will also stop at marketing, business plan, SWOT analysis and how to do business successfully online.

Doing business on the internet allows you to start with really minimal financial costs and this is a huge advantage. Many are even thinking about setting up a free e-shop. Of course it is possible and I will show you how. At the same time, you will discover the disadvantages of this solution and offer alternatives that could help you in a low-cost but successful e-shop business. After reading this guide, you will find that every business requires a certain investment and is usually a combination of money, time and effort.

In the following lines, I would like to provide you with a comprehensive and comprehensive guide on how to create an e-shop and run a successful online business. There are a number of possibilities, variants and methods, and everyone will probably find something a little different. Be inspired and I hope that this guide will help you in the decision and next steps of the e-shop business.

Affiliate disclaimer: An article may contain affiliate links. This is a form of cooperation where I can get a financial reward for a recommendation and your eventual purchase. I run my blog transparently and use this form of collaboration instead of annoying banners and ads. I write and recommend only what I have tried or according to my research and conscience I can recommend further with a calm heart. My goal remains to provide you with added value and useful information.

Free e-shop

Do you want to set up an e-shop for free? This is not entirely unrealistic either. To create an e-shop, you can use free systems that allow you to start with a minimal financial burden, on the other hand, it has many hidden problems. Free systems give you and your customers the least friendly user experience.

Setting up an e-shop on your part will not be easy and you will often test whether it works or not. It takes several days, maybe weeks, to go through the whole process of setting up and fine-tuning the e-shop, and you will make many compromises that you don’t really want.

A free e-shop will never look exactly the way you want it to. He will have problems and a lot of flies. Quite often you won’t even find out how to create, finish or set something. You’ll have to read the tutorials, watch YouTube tutorials, or even hire someone to program or set it up for you.

I enclose a picture that shows the technologies used in the field of e-commerce. Obviously, the most used is the WordPress system from WooCommerce.

The most used and most popular free systems for e-shops are in the Czech Republic:

• WordPress s pluginem WooCommerce
• Prestashop

How to create an e-shop on WooCommerce

You can also create an e-shop on the popular WordPress system with the help of the WooCommerce plugin. Both WordPress and WooComerce are free, so it’s a really low-cost solution.

Also, check out the premium templates that will create a much better looking e-shop for a few tens of dollars. You can also buy premium plugins that you pair with the WooCommerce solution and complement the functionality of your online store.

Benefits

• WordPress and WooCommerce are free
• One-click installation on most Czech hosting sites
• WooCommerce is the most widespread e-commerce solution in the world
• Hundreds to thousands of free graphic templates
• You can choose from a huge number of professional graphic templates
• You can add free or paid modules to WooCommerce
• WooCommerce is basically translated into Czech
• Good SEO (but need to spend time setting up and creating)

Disadvantages

• You may need to review some parts of WooCommerce
• When purchasing a premium template or plugin, you will need to translate it into Czech
• Robust solution with lots of settings
• Not suitable for beginners and non-technical types

How to create an e-shop at Prestashop

Prestashop is a free e-shop system that you install on hosting and then you can set up your new online store. It is relatively easy to install a number of accessories that will enable the extended functions of the e-shop. You can also install graphic templates that will change the visual of your e-shop. There are also premium templates and accessories that cost tens of dollars and will help you more professionalize the graphics or functionality of the online store.

Benefits

• Prestashop is free
• One-click installation on a number of Czech hosting sites
• More than 300,000 e-shops operate at Prestashop
• Tens to hundreds of free graphic templates
• You can choose from more than 2500 graphic premium templates
• There are more than 5000 additional modules on offer

Disadvantages

• Prestashop is in English
• You will need to translate both the template and add-ons into Czech
• Robust solution with lots of settings
• Not suitable for beginners and non-technical types

Free price

The free price reflects the e-shop solutions built on Prestashop or WordPress WooCommerce. Of course, you have to reckon with the fact that you will need a domain and hosting. In most cases (unless you have an extremely demanding premium template, plugins, thousands of products and over 5,000 daily traffic) this hosting will suffice . This is one of the cheapest and at the same time sufficiently high-quality solutions for starting an e-shop business.

E-shop rental and box solutions

E-shop rental is the most common solution that optimally combines low-cost financial solutions, e-shop professionalism with advanced functions for the customer and ease of e-shop administration for operators. The boxed e-shop solution can really be recommended to most entrepreneurs who want to start an e-shop.

There are dozens of companies that offer e-shop rental, but these are verified by the market and Czech entrepreneurs as the best:

• E-shop-rychle.cz
• Shoptet.cz
• Shopify.com

How to create an e-shop on a box system? You simply register, pay for the first month and set up the basic functions for your new online store in the administration. You insert the products you want to sell, upload pictures, write captions and determine if you have goods in stock. The functionality of the e-shop is taken care of by the box solution and you get it as part of the lease. So it’s up to you to fill the e-shop and start selling.

The pros and cons

The advantages of the box e-shop include:

• Low cost financial solution
• Quick launch of the e-shop (usually you can master the basics in a few hours)
• Standard e-shop functions activated (card payments, etc.)
• Possibility to pay for a better design
• Lots of music for little money
• Possibility of quick termination and termination of operation without additional costs

The disadvantages of e-shop rental are:

• Limited options in e-shop design
• E-shop administration usually cannot be changed
• If the system does not have a function / option, you cannot program it yourself
• You do not own an e-shop, moving under another platform is more difficult (not with one click)

price

You pay for the rental of the e-shop from approximately CZK 300 per month. Depending on the companies and functionalities that you want to have on the e-shop, you may pay extra. The price can climb up to CZK 3,500 per month, but for most Czech e-shoppers, a solution of up to CZK 500 per month is enough. This is a very nice amount to start a business and you will get a high quality e-shop platform with lots of features. All you have to do is fill the online store with products and set it up easily.

Get started quickly

The E-shop-rychle.cz platform offers one of the lowest prices on the Czech market, with how many functions and bonuses it will bring you at the same time. It is a quality e-shop rental provider that already offers many functions in the basic version of the Startup tariff.

• Unlimited number of products
• Custom domain and custom mailboxes
• Canned graphic templates
• EET support
• In line with GDPR
• Modern payment methods and connections with carriers
• SEO support
• Connection to goods comparators

If I should personally choose one system for beginning entrepreneurs, where to create an e-shop, then I would choose E-shop-rychle.cz . In my opinion, this is the best price / performance / quality ratio.

TRY eshop-rychle.cz

Shoptet

Shoptet is a major player in the Czech market in the field of providing boxed e-shop rental solutions. Its platform is very high quality, safe and intuitive even for beginners and non-technical types. However, it must be added that the price is one of the higher. This is more of a premium option for renting an online store.

Shoptet has a huge price jump if you have more than 100 products on the e-shop.

Shopify

The Shopify e-shop solution is more suitable for more advanced e-shoppers, ideally those who want to target customers outside the Czech Republic and Slovakia. If you are going to run an online store for customers from the USA, Europe, or other continents, then Shopify is a very good platform that will offer good functionality without having to invest too much money.