Choosing a CMS (portal) to sell online in Canada

Guest article by Cédic Fontaine

In 2016, in Canada, $8.5 billion was spent online. 57% of Canadians have bought at least once on the web in the year.

This percentage rises to 80% among 25-34 year olds. The average monthly basket was $325 last year. For a company, selling online no longer requires great financial capacity. There are now many simple and affordable solutions to do this.

Which solution should you choose for your E-commerce site?

To create a transactional site (also known as e-commerce or e-commerce), you will need to find a technical solution to do so.

The cost difference to set up a web shop or a regular site is no longer that great. It is therefore the right time to take the plunge and position yourself on this sales vector, as more and more consumers are buying online in Canada.

There are 3 possible ways to sell online.

Custom development? More in 2017…

The first option, which I don’t recommend, is to do business with a web developer who can create a custom solution for you. This can cost you a lot to develop, maintain and evolve.

Surprisingly, many agencies still offer to develop a 100% tailor-made solution to sell online, or to use a proprietary solution that they have already developed. You are then totally dependent on the developer and the slightest technical intervention costs you a lot of money.

I won’t go into more detail about the disadvantages of this option, because by reading the following paragraphs, you will understand all the advantages of not doing so.

The all-inclusive hosted solution with subscription.

The second option is to opt for a subscription-based solution (SAAS software as a service), such as Shopify or Panierdachat.

These solutions charge you a monthly fee and often little upfront fee. However, you will have to pay monthly instalments as long as you use the solution and you are at the mercy of the provider’s pricing policy.

As you want to add more products or features, the solution will cost you more and more.

These solutions are also created to meet the needs of the masses, and offer few options to customize features at will, especially with regard to SEO.

For example, at panierdachat, if you want to add a simple text module to your homepage, you will be refused because it would impact all customers using the same model.

So you’ll have to wait for some additional features. These are generally solutions that seem inexpensive to start with, but they can become more limited over time.

Open source

Finally, the last option is to use an open source solution. There are several, such as Woocommerce (linked to WordPress, the well-known blogging tool), Magento (owned by Ebay) or PrestaShop, to name a few.

I have been recommending my customers to use opensource solutions for several years.

These solutions are supported by a large community of developers and benefit from the feedback of hundreds of thousands of users. This usually makes them mature solutions with many features and extensions that meet 99% of the needs of a solid e-commerce project.

Because they are “open source”, it is also possible to customize them or develop additional functions.

The initial cost will likely be higher, compared to a hosted solution, as it will require investment to install, configure, and customize the solution on your web hosting, but then you will own and be in full control of the solution and your data.

If you’re a developer at heart, you can also choose to install it yourself and hire an e-commerce consultant to help you.

Choosing your E-commerce CMS

Be careful, even if there are several open source solutions, they are not all equal in terms of features.

WordPress and WooCommerce

Woocommerce is built on WordPress and makes it easy to sell online. This works well for a site that only features a few products, but the advanced features are limited.

In addition, WordPress is not known for its multilingual operation and the solutions offered remain only stopgaps.

Magento

Magento is a very professional solution with many functions. However, it is more difficult to get started because there are many options. This also makes it a cumbersome solution to host and requires a dedicated server, which is more expensive than shared hosting.

Prestashop

Finally, Prestashop in Canada is a mid-range solution, which allows you to start selling online at a lower cost. The solution is multilingual and allows you to start a transactional site quickly. The solution’s business model is based on the purchase of additional modules.

The fact remains that in terms of Web Referencing, Prestashop is the Swiss Army knife of SEO

Ready to sell?

What I haven’t mentioned is that the success of an e-commerce also goes through the non-technical part: strategy, marketing, logistics, website SEO…

While the idea may seem interesting, it is therefore advisable to think carefully before embarking on such an adventure. On all platforms, we hear that Quebec is lagging behind in the field of e-commerce, and that all small businesses should start today.

Let’s put a caveat to it, which could be called a real online sales strategy!