Site Review: Create an Ecommerce Store in 15 Minutes with Vendr

For the average blogger or website owner, adding a store to an existing website is rarely easy. Either you can spend hours, along with plenty of money, on integrating a robust set of e-commerce tools, or you can use a simple system that typically directs buyers away from your website. Neither is a truly good option, whether you’re looking at things from a technical perspective or you’re worrying more about marketing.

Vendr, a new set of e-commerce tools from Boxador, is aiming to become the alternative. It offers a store that will work with an existing website, without requiring a knowledge of HTML or CSS. But does it deliver?

A store in only 15 minutes?

Vendr promises that, using its tools, you can have a store added to your existing website in less than fifteen minutes. It seems like that fifteen minutes starts when you enter your name and password to create a new account. Once I’d actually logged in and started setting up a store, it actually only took me about eight minutes to set up a store and add the widget to a website.

The interface is incredibly easy to follow. With a new store, you add a few design elements, like a background and a logo. The basic design is very clean, which is important because the actual format of the store itself is limited to one layout. However, your background options are fairly extensive. Vendr lets you browse through images from Flickr’s Creative Commons pool to find an attractive image that matches the feel of your website.

Features and options

Adding products is an equally simple process. You fill out a basic form about your product, answering questions about price, tax, and shipping. Then you add an image (or a few). Depending on your product, you can add options for a buyer to select from. If you use an upgraded account, you can also offer coupons, track inventory, and allow buyers to download a file after purchase.

The basic store options are simple to figure out. You can configure different payment accounts, from the particularly common PayPal to a merchant account, if you use one. You can create default shipping rates and even collect taxes on a region-by-region basis. And, if needs be, you can create custom pages within your store for information like privacy policies.

Once your store and products are fully configured, you can add it to a blog or another website with a code snippet that must be added into the HTML of your website. Interestingly, that code doesn’t actually add a page to your website. Instead, you’ll see a red tab in the top right corner that says “Store.” Click on that and you’ll see your store hovering over your existing website. Visitors can also visit your store directly on Vendr’s website; you’re automatically assigned “yourstore.vendr.com” during the account set-up process.

How much does it cost?

To use Vendr to operate a store on your website, you have to chose between four different plans, ranging in price between free and $29.95 per month. The different plans offer you the ability to manage more products, as well as additional features at each level. While the free plan offers you the ability to manage 5 products along with setting up store buttons and widgets, the most expensive plan lets you handle 250 products with features like an affiliate program manager, inventory tracking, and digital download support.

The pricing doesn’t seem too out of line with other e-commerce tools on a similar level. E-Junkie, a popular shopping cart and affiliate management tool, starts at $5 per month for managing 10 products.

The verdict

The cost of using Vendr, along with the way the tools are set up, makes it clear that this is a good option for someone relatively new to selling products online. If you’ve got a product that sells very well, or you need to do something unusual with your storefront, Vendr may be a less useful fit. The design options for a store through the site are limited, and if you want to keep visitors on your site while still allowing them to shop, that red button in the corner had better fit your design plans. You can make some changes — there are five different label options beyond “Store” and you can move it to the left side of the page — but your options are limited.

The biggest benefit of Vendr, in the end, is that you can get a store up and operational in a matter of minutes. If you need a shopping cart fast, you can have it ready to go with Vendr far faster than if you’re using other e-commerce tools.

Vendr: http://www.vendr.com/