When clients contract to you to build their website, they expect you to know exactly what their needs are. Sometimes that can be difficult to ascertain, especially if the client isn’t even sure himself. Most won’t know the first thing about website creation and even less about all the components that go into making a successful one. This is why, when dealing with inexperienced clients, it’s imperative to make the website as user-friendly as possible. It doesn’t matter if you build them the most amazing website to ever grace the Internet, it won’t do them much good unless they learn to and are able to manage it themselves.
One of the features your clients are most likely to ask for in the creation of their website is an ecommerce platform. Perhaps they’re a writer looking to sell ebooks they’ve penned or a designer wanting to sell some of their original creations. Having the ability to do so through their personal website is very attractive. You don’t want the process to be overwhelming because the client won’t be able to manage their sales on their own. The key to making the process an easy one is to find an all-inclusive ecommerce platform that your clients can not only manage easily themselves, but that also meets all their ecommerce needs.
When concerned with keeping costs to a minimum, free ecommerce providers are a good resource.
When comparing some of the providers of free ecommerce websites out there, the things you need to pay the most attention to (aside from user-friendliness) are bandwidth allowance, amount of image hosting space allotted and product limits. Some ecommerce providers limit these things considerably in order keep costs low to be able to provide a free service. They usually do have more attractive offerings available, but require you to pay a subscription fee to upgrade to a fully functional storefront.
