In March of 2015, Anthony Zambai built a working GoDaddy Online store in just three hours. Together with a lot of work, his new business “Bullet Bouquets” replaced his income as a full time engineer in just a few days.
To read the story of how Bullet Bouquets became a successful full time business venture in just three days, see our full article here.
Does GoDaddy Online Store Work?
According to user Anthony Zambai, GoDaddy Online Store is fast, easy to use and can create a beautiful, professional and functional online store with all the pieces in place to sell products and accept multiple forms of payment. In an interview, Zambai described how he decided to use GoDaddy Online Store:
Here’s an image from one page of Zambai’s GoDaddy Online Store.
“When I bought my domains,” said Zambai, “I remembered glancing at a video that played automatically on GoDaddy that said hey, build an online store, build a business quickly and easily. It didn’t have any outlandish claims like hey, you can build a fully functioning credit card accepting website in three hours or five hours. It didn’t say anything crazy like that, but after I bought my domains I was talking with a buddy later that night and realized one of the major projects in building this business, one of the major bad ones that was really going to bite me was hey, I’ve got to build a website. So I remembered that little ad I’d seen when I was buying my domains and I went back to find the ad. I watched it and it said with a GoDaddy Online Store you can build a business quickly and simply, and I thought, man, it really does look pretty simple. So I signed up. It was one month for free and then $30 a month after that, and you just fill in the blanks. If you can create a Facebook page then you can make an online store that accepts credit card payments and has several products and tells about your company.”
The ad Zambai watched is below:
Also see: How This Man Built a Business with Reddit in 3 Days and Quit His Job
GoDaddy Online Store: Fast, Easy and Professional
Zambai was able to create his online store in just three hours. The thing that impressed him the most about it was how professional the store looked. He credits his store’s polished appearance for a lot of the quick early success of his business.
“My website like you see it right now wasn’t really that different on the day the store opened,” Zambai said. “It was a solid looking website and maybe that’s one of the big reasons people were blown away with my story. It was, yeah, this guy built a business in three days and that’s cool, but it looks professional. It doesn’t look like something that he just slapped together. So that was it in a nutshell. GoDaddy Online Store. It’s really solid and I’ve recommended it easily hundreds of times now throughout the AMAs that I’ve done and people that have asked me about it. I can’t recommend it enough. It’s an amazing product.”
Below is a screen grab from Zambai’s GoDaddy Online Store:
GoDaddy Online Store is Self Contained
One often-heard complaint with many online store solutions is that there’s no one-size-fits-all option. There are usually several components and modules to buy and configure, and getting all the pieces to work well with one another can be a bit of a bear. But Zambai says with GoDaddy Online Store, there’s no need to add in a lot of third-party components.
“They have their own modules,” he says. “They have a customer review module, there’s a coupon code module and there are some separate little social media add ons. There’s not a whole lot of complexity to it. It’s really nicely self-contained.”
Also see: How Does a Small Business Owner Know When to Quit Their Day Job?
Easy to Set Up and Edit
Another screen grab from the Bullet Bouquets GoDaddy Online Store. Note the embedded video at bottom.
Setting up and editing a GoDaddy Online Store is very simple. Users pick one of several different themes, add text, titles and graphics and even add video easily. Users can also add Google Analytics tools, customer review modules and control automatic shipping charge calculations. GoDaddy Online Store can be set up to accept PayPal or credit card payments or both, sell almost unlimited products and product variations, accept coupon codes and add on Facebook stores and mobile stores.
“It really is so simple,” says Zambai. “If you can make a Facebook page, you can build a nice solid looking website in a hurry. You define your products. You supply photos. You have your pricing, inventory options, and if they’re giving it as a gift they can add a little message tag. You can add products easily. You’ve got to get into it pretty deep before you start finding things that it won’t do for you.”
Pricing
GoDaddy Online Store offers a one month free trial. After the free trial, a GoDaddy Online Store costs $30 a month to set up. In the past, GoDaddy offered several different pricing plans for different levels of service, but now the web hosting giant has simplified their pricing into one simple plan.
GoDaddy Online Store: The Downside
One potential downside of GoDaddy Online Store is that there are still a few things users won’t be able to control that they would with a more involved platform like a WordPress store.
“Because it’s a form website, you don’t get access to everything,” Zambai says. “You don’t get to tweak everything. So it doesn’t fit everybody, but if you’re selling something small like I am, it’s pretty darn good. I haven’t had a lot of complaints.”
Below is a video from Brian Longest that demonstrates the ease of use of GoDaddy Online Store. The video is a bit out of date and shows GoDaddy’s old pricing scheme. The price now is one month free plus $30 per month afterward.