An Easy Shopify Alternative

If you've ever thought about having your own website to sell on, you've probably checked out Shopify. You may have found it a bit overwhelming once you started calculating the price, the various add-on options, and all the work involved in setting up your online store. Fortunately, there is an easier way.

Switch to a Bonanza Webstore

Bonanza has the easiest possible setup in just a few steps. Plus, you can double your exposure by having a booth at Bonanza for no additional cost! We've provided instructions for setting up your Bonanza Webstore below.

Shopify + Bonanza Booth

If you are not ready to fully convert your Shopify store into a Bonanza Webstore, you can keep your Shopify store open and still copy your listings to a free booth on Bonanza. There are many advantages:

• More visibility for your Shopify or Shopify Plus products
• Bonanza doesn't charge you anything until you make a sale
• Your product listings are transferred to Google and Bing Shopping automatically. You don't need to set-up or manage an expensive advertising campaign

Bonanza has always been a seller-centric marketplace. Although most marketplaces focus exclusively on promoting their own brand to buyers, Bonanza is a platform that allows sellers to make sales and build a brand by developing relationships with their customers.

Our importer tool enables Shopify (or Shopify Plus) sellers to offer their products on Bonanza. Using this tool, you can easily manage your inventory, orders, and shipments at Bonanza.

Bulk Product Upload using the Shopify Import tool

• Moving your Shopify listings to another platform can be a massive task, as merchants have inventory levels in hundreds of thousands. The Shopify importer tool allows you to quickly and easily copy the listing data to your Bonanza account
• Every marketplace provides some additional attributes corresponding to each category. If you include those attributes on the Shopify meta-field, it will get reflected in the Bonanza Marketplace

The difference between a booth and a Webstore

A Bonanza Webstore is a standalone website, similar to Shopify. With a Webstore, you can create your brand and control your online presence. Make your Bonanza Webstore your own by choosing a personalized URL, and one of several unique designs and other customizations.

Do I need to have a booth to open a Webstore?

Because your inventory is managed through your booth, you will need a booth in order to run a Webstore. Don’t worry - if you want to open a Webstore and haven’t set up a booth yet, we’ll create one automatically for you when you sign up.

Fees and Pricing

Whether you’re using your booth or your Webstore, it is always free to list an item. However, the sale of an item is handled differently in a booth and a Webstore.

• In your booth, any items sold are subject to final value fees (a commission percentage charged on the final price of your sale). For more information about final value fees, check out our pricing example page.
• When an item is sold from your Webstore, you keep 100% of the money made from the sale. The only fee associated with having a Webstore is a $25 monthly subscription fee. The annual plan provides sellers with the best value at $255 per year.

Item Listings

When you list an item in your booth, it is searchable on Bonanza.com. That means that any time a shopper visits Bonanza.com and searches for an item like yours, it will appear in the search results.

When you list an item on your Webstore, it is still listed on Bonanza.com, but it is also available at your custom website. This means that with a Webstore, your items are getting exposure in two places.

#protip: Still confused about where your items will be displayed? Check out this seller's Webstore, https://www.bluepennylady.com/ and their Booth, https://www.bonanza.com/booths/bluepennylady. You can see that the same products are available in both places, because they both share the same inventory.

Advertising

When you opt into Bonanza Advertising platforms from your "Selling > Advertise items" page, the traffic generated will be directed to your marketplace booth, NOT to your Webstore. Purchases made from your marketplace booth are still subject to final value fees.

Driving traffic to your Webstore is in your hands. There are a few ways to begin driving traffic to your Webstore:

• Social Media: Create social media accounts for your store on popular networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. Post frequently to quickly increase your followers. To get the highest level of engagement from your followers, be sure to include rich media such as images and video whenever possible. Read our guide to Webstore social media strategy.
• Friends and Family: Email your friends and family to tell them about your new store, and invite them to forward the email to anybody they know who might also be interested in checking it out. Some of the best customers come from friend and family referrals. Include a link to your standalone Webstore in your email signature and on business cards.
• Search Engines: To get found on search engines like Google and Bing, be sure to create informational pages on your Webstore. Bonanza will notify the search engines via your sitemap, which is created automatically and submitted for you behind the scenes. Your customers will appreciate the information, and the search engines will start to see you as an authority in your category, which means they'll rank you higher.

Orders from your Webstore will still appear in your booth under the items sold page, so you still manage and fulfill both booth and Webstore orders from the same place.

Options and Settings

The options you select for your booth settings are the options available for your Webstore. For example, if your booth offers one freebie item per purchase, your Webstore will also allow one freebie item per purchase. Similarly, the payment options available for your booth are the same options available in your Webstore. You can accept payments via PayPal and Stripe.

The Choice is Yours

In the world of ecommerce, there are countless choices online sellers have to make. It can seem like an impossible task to try and choose between an online marketplace with established shoppers and a supportive community, or a standalone website where you can control your branding and customization. With Bonanza Webstores, you don’t have to choose. Now, you can access millions of shoppers through the marketplace while also building your own brand at your standalone site.

So, what are you waiting for? Sign up for a Webstore today.