How (and Why) to Add Ecommerce to Your Hosting Business

8 min read

Every day, it seems like more of what we used to do in person or on paper we now do online. From general habits like shopping to more specific things like renewing your driver’s license and registration, we spend more time online than ever before. And the same goes for business — from greater access to information and choice to enhanced convenience, more and more consumers and companies are moving online to do more of their business every day.

Because of this, competition in the digital service space can be cutthroat. To stay competitive, many SaaS companies, digital agencies, and other online-focused businesses are expanding their service lines to offer even more to their customer base. By adding new services like web design, marketing, SEO, and ecommerce, they can offer more to their clients to increase their revenue, make their core services stickier, and strengthen the business-customer relationship.

Hosting businesses, of course, are no different. With more and more companies needing a website to do business online, competition among hosting companies is high and growing.

One trend we here at Ecwid have noted is a rising number of hosting businesses showing interest in or flat-out offering ecommerce. While some have elected to try to develop their own ecommerce services in-house, others have chose to become resellers of another company’s ecommerce platform. Either way, their goal is largely the same: to become a one-stop digital services shop for their customers.

But what’s the best way for hosting businesses to sell ecommerce? Keep reading to check out your options and see how you can start selling ecommerce services in a snap.

1. Decide how to (re)sell ecommerce

Now, unless you’ve got a lot of extra time and money on your hands, you’ll likely want to resell ecommerce features rather than build your own. Developing anything, let alone something as complex as an ecommerce platform, takes a lot of resources and manpower to both build and keep running.

Instead, the majority of hosting businesses resell ecommerce so that they can quickly add this new offering to their service suite and begin selling it to their customers. But not every hosting business is the same, nor would they benefit from a one-size-fits-all approach to reselling ecommerce.

At Ecwid, we understand this. We work with a range of hosting companies so we know that their needs can vary and change over time. That’s why we offer several different reselling options so that our partners in the hosting industry can tailor how they resell Ecwid to their specific needs, including:

White label solutions, which enable you to resell ecommerce with no mention of Ecwid — so you control the logos, branding, and the customer experience.
Co-branded solutions, which allow you to leverage Ecwid’s strong reputation to build up that of your own.

2. Pick your pricing

Along with choosing how to present and brand your new ecommerce product to your customers, as an Ecwid partner, you also get to decide how you want to price your ecommerce solution.

That’s because as a reseller, you’ll unlock significant discounts on plans that you can resell to your customers at any price you want. Pass on the savings to your customers as a way to attract more business? Keep the price up and market it as a premium product? The choice is yours!

And you can always change the price as your business needs or strategy evolves, enabling your ecommerce solution to grow alongside your business.

3. Build out your bundles

You know the old cliche, “less is more”? It’s a cute saying when it applies to things like hot sauce and chocolate; in reality, most of the time, more is more — especially from your customers’ perspective. Customers want more services, more value, and more bang for their buck.

As part of your pricing strategy, then, you’ll likely want to bundle some of your other offerings with your new ecommerce service. Sell ecommerce alongside some of your most popular services and draw in even more customers (and revenue) than you’d get by selling each service separately.

Get creative! Sell fixed bundles, or let your customers build their own bundles a la carte-style. Do what makes sense for your business, but make sure your customers can also access the services that make sense for them rather than bundling things together without rhyme or reason; don’t bundle services just for bundling’s sake.

4. Let your customers know (the easy way)

After you’ve gotten all of the nitty gritty details ironed out, you can start putting the word out to your customers that you’ve got a brand-spanking new service that they’re going to want. But that likely means writing emails, creating banners and ads, updating your website, and more — and that’s on top of all the work you’re already doing!

But when you become an Ecwid partner, you unlock access to our expansive library of readymade collateral that you can repurpose and use as you please! Graphics, tutorial videos, banners, go-to-market playbooks: everything you’ll need to draw in customers without spending an arm or a leg (or wasting precious time).

5. Start selling your new service

With everything in place, you’re ready to launch your new service! Your customers get access to cutting-edge ecommerce and you gain a new revenue stream — all without any of the hassle of running and maintaining an ecommerce platform.

We hope this has been helpful, but we want to hear from you! Has your company ever added a new software or service? Did you build it in-house or partner with an established business in that field? Let us know in the comments!

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Feb 10, 2022

About the author

Colin Thompson is a content writer at Ecwid. He writes about marketing, business development, and promotion for our Ecwid Partners. He loves cats, Chicago sports, deep dish pizza and going on hikes.