Saturday tip: your first online shop in minutes?

An online shop you can set up in minutes? Either internet trading really is for dummies these days or that is a boast too far. 

If true, and we intend to establish just that, this could be a brave and uncomplicated new word for the digitally inept. It's free too. We'll be letting you know what we think in a day or two once we've tried it out. 

According to a review of the Tictail business in The Economist, prospective traders need only follow a few simple steps, link the new shop window to a PayPal account and begin setting prices.

No need for Peri, PHP and MySQL databases. Tictail is as simple and clean as Tumblr, says 26-year-old founder Carl Waldekranz who previously worked in marketing at Spotify. Retailers want to worry about products not the technicalities of search engine optimisation, he says.

The Swedish firm now has 10,000 users, mainly in Sweden followed by the US. Three quarters of them have recommended the service to friends. The Economist points out that other sites let users set up easy-to-set-up online shops such as Etsy (think Ebay or Amazon for knitters, sewers and all manner of craftsmen and cottage industries). 

But Tictail, which received an additional €1.2 million funding a few months ago, is a little more user friendly offering a feed of advice, suggesting Twitter to promote products and prompting good customer service practice such as follow-up emails. 

Tags: Tictail, Waldekranz, Ebay, Etsy, Amazon, e-commerce, etail, independent shops, retailers, online shopping