You don’t have any money or you have other pressing expenses but want to have an online store? This post will show you how to create a free online store in Nigeria.
A lot of people love free things while others are not carried away by free things because they believe hidden charges will follow it.
Under normal circumstances, to create an online store using some other platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce, BigCommerce and others will involve spending some money.
For instance, you want to create an online store using WooCommerce, you will need to buy a domain name, hosting and an eCommerce theme. Those are just basic spending.
If you are not technically conversant with all these, you will need to pay someone to create the store for you. This means you will spend more money.
For those who already know to create an online store but looking for a free option, we will be showing you a platform where you can create a free online store in Nigeria.
How to Create a Free Online Store in Nigeria with Selar.co
The platform we will be talking about to create a free online store in Nigeria is Selar.co.
Although there are other ones you can use to create a free online store in Nigeria but (Selar.co) beats them all when it comes to selling features and CRM.
Selar.co Overview
Selar.co is a platform that enables businesses to create online stores to sell their products.
Selar.co was founded in 2016 by Douglas Kendyson and ever since its inception the platform has grown with over 15,000 users.
On Selar.co, you can sell: ebooks, read online only ebooks, services, physical products, digital products, subscriptions, tickets and pre-order products.
You can create an online store effortlessly and fast on Selar.co, no need to buy a domain or hosting plan.
There are some features on Selar.co I found very remarkable which is not available in some popular eCommerce platforms except you pay as an add-on.
Let talk about some of the features of Selar.co
Abandoned Cart Recovery
I have tested some eCommerce platforms used to create an online store. This feature doesn’t come free in some.
The abandoned cart recovery is automated follow-up emails sent to people(customers) who have added products to their cart and leave without completing the purchase.
These emails remind them of their order so they can complete check out.
Below is a sample of the email customers will receive when they didn’t complete a purchase.
As a merchant or a seller, you will receive an email too of any incomplete order by customers.
The abandoned cart recovery email is sent after one hour if the buyer didn’t complete the purchase.
Payment Gateway Enabled, Support International Payments
When you use other online store builders, you will need to create a payment gateway account (Paystack, Flutterwave, Stripe, 2Checkout, and Paypal) before you can receive payments from customers.
Some of these payment processors may reject your application, and other alternatives may not be available.
On selar.co, there is no need to create an account with any payment gateways, it is all done for you.
All you need to do is to upload your product and set the price, Selar.co will receive the payment on your behalf and send it to your bank account.
Selar currently supports up to eight different currencies which are NGN, USD, GBP, GHS, KES, ZAR, TZS, UGX.
When a customer visits from the United States, and you fix your product price at N5000 for instance, the visitor will see the price in USD, automatically converted by Selar.co at the best rate.
You can also set the price on your product page for other currencies manually.
Facebook Pixel Integration
Facebook pixel is an analytics tool that allows you to measure customer actions and measure the effectiveness of your advertising by understanding the actions people take on your website.
It is like a tracker that shows you what actions visitors are taking on your site.
It won’t reveal the personal details of visitors but you will know how they are interacting with your site content and pages.
Selar.co makes it easy for you to integrate the Facebook pixel on your online store.
All you need to do is to go to your events manager and copy your pixel id and paste it into the Selar.co Facebook pixel integration field and save.
Third-Party Integrations
Although Selar.co has CRM that enables merchants to email customers directly from their dashboard, they still made it possible to automatically add the email address of buyers to Mailchimp.
You can decide to use Mailchimp to keep up with your customers.
There is Karta integration, merchants can automatically add the email address of buyers to a Kartra list and run automation on that list.
Super awesome is also WordPress Learndash integration.
If you don’t know what is Learndash, it is is a popular and easy to use powerful learning management system (LMS) plugin used to create and sell courses, track user progress, deliver certificates, award points, badges, and so much more.
Selar.co allows content creators to automatically give buyers access to a WordPress Learndash course on their websites.
Affiliates
This is one fantastic feature that will help any store owner increase sales without spending so much on advertising.
On Selar.co, you can create your affiliate system where anyone can get their own unique affiliate link to promote your products.
Setting up this is so easy. All you need to do is choose the percentage commission for your affiliate on each merchant/product.
Then enter the email address of anyone you want to add as an affiliate. Selar.co will send them an email automatically with their affiliate link.
After this, you just need to sit down and relax. The payment part will be handled by Selar.
When an affiliate makes a sale, Selar.co will split the payment; they will pay you for product sales and also pay the affiliate his own commission.
All affiliates have their own dashboard where they can monitor how much sales they have made. So it is 100% transparency!
More Features
- An analytic dashboard that gives you an insight into activities of your store such as page views, traffic sources, coupon usage, abandoned transaction metrics, and many more.
- Generate coupons and offer discounts to customers as incentives to make purchases from your store.
I don’t want to make this post so lengthy, just go check the online store builder yourself. It absolutely one of the best websites you can use to create a free online store in Nigeria.
Question You Might Ask
Are all the features found on Selar completely free?
Selar has subscription plans with a Starter plan that is free forever. The other plans are Pro and Turbo.
Features of Starter Plan
- 40 Products
- Sell Ebooks
- Sell services
- Sell Physical products
- Sell Read online-only Ebooks
- Sell Digital products
- Sell Subscriptions
- Sell Tickets
- Pre-order products
- CRM
- Coupons – Limited
- Automated Abandoned Cart Emails
- Cross-selling
- Sell with Affiliates – Limited
- Mailchimp Integration
- Facebook pixel
- Multi-currency store – eight currencies
Pro Plan Features
- Everything in the Starter Plan
- Courses – 3 – 6GB
- Unlimited products
- Paypal + Stripe for verified merchants
- Priority support
- Pay what you want product
- Zapier
- Sell with Affiliates – Unlimited
- Coupons – Unlimited
- WordPress Learndash Integration
- Kartra Integration
Turbo Plan Feature
- Everything in Starter and Pro Plan
- Courses – 8 – 40GB
Presently, the price of the Pro plan is N8000 (USD15) monthly and Turbo plan is N15000 (USD30) monthly.
If you want to pay yearly, it is N80,000 (USD150) for the Pro Plan and N150,000 (USD300) for Turbo Plan.
You can start with the free plan and when you start to make more money, you can upgrade.
Have your quest on how to create a free online free in Nigeria been satisfied?
If you have any questions, leave a comment below. If you have challenges while creating your store with selar, you can send us a message and we will assist you.
You can share this post with friends who might be interested in starting a free online store in Nigeria.
