Shoptistic? Awebapart? EKMpowershop?

[darrenwis]

Hi all,

I don't want to cause a steer here, as I know that some of the owners of these companies are fully paid members and have helped me in the past. So please if you feel uneasy at replying to this post don't feel you need to.

I have a sports business which is currently in the research stage and I am soon to start looking for companies to host and build the website. I haven't got too much finance backing to build my own website and this is why I'd be looking for an alternative solution.

So, what do you guys think of these 3 compananies, i've heard many good things about each of them, i'd want to have the ability to change the website and personalise it where possible. Also any CRM tools would also be a key advantage.

Look forward to your responses,

Darren

[Comspec]

I have had dealings with Paul at awebapart and I find that he goes the extra yard to ensure you have what you need. He explains things concisely and directly, and leaves you to choose the portions which suit you.

I gave Pauls details to a couple of friends lately (www.ellemoda.co.uk (http://www.ellemoda.co.uk)) and they have been singing his praises, even gave me a present for recommending him.

The others I have little knowledge of.

[Steve Cool]

Paul (Awebapart) is currently working his magic for me at this very moment. All looks well so far. I know nothing of e-commerce but Paul has understood my efforts at describing what i want and produced exactly what i am looking for.

10/10 so far

Cheers

Steve

[darrenwis]

Paul (Awebapart) is currently working his magic for me at this very moment. All looks well so far. I know nothing of e-commerce but Paul has understood my efforts at describing what i want and produced exactly what i am looking for.

10/10 so far

Cheers

Steve

Hi Steve,

What about the back office? Does it let you see stats of visitors? Income? Outcome? etc? How easy is it to update?

Darren

[Page]

EKMpowershop is a different thing altogether. A do it yourself job.

Unless you are skint with a near zero budget I would not look at it.

As an extra I had someone ring me up the other day from them to sell me the concept. I know it was only a telephone sales person but they did not really know anything about it so left me more negative about it rather than positive. If thati s how they see sales then ...

I think part of your spec should be to think about and document the relationship that you want with the person producing the site both initially - during production - ongoing. What are you wanting them to do. You may not fully know now but get as much as you can down and add to it. I think this will help you with your decision making.

For example if you knew a lot about ecommerce already - already had designers that worked for the company etc. then it would be different from if you really wanted your hand holding and being taught about it at the same time and being given ongoing help and support.

There are various people not just the ones you mentioned who contibute freely to this forum. It is part of their marketing (and maybe interest) and why not. The answers they have given my posts I have always felt to be truthful. So maybe read some of their posts - you can do a forum search to help - and see where they are coming from and see if you think there might be a good fit.

Then also try ringing them and see if the conversational chemistry is there. These things can matter.

They will all have picked up work from other forum members so hopefully have kept them all happy or we may have heard about it.

Good luck.

[Amaury Architectural]

Although I have had no direct dealing with awebapart, I keep hearing glowing reports so probably worth checking that one out. Ekmpowershop is ok but be prepared to shell out £79.95 before you get up and running, they have a reasonable £19.95 a month fee but then they sting you with a £50 set up charge!!!
As for 'Shoptistic' - No idea on that one.

[boho]

Darren as Page advised there are others on the forum who also offer a similar service to those suggested above, the provider I am with for a start www.internetretailer.biz (http://www.internetretailer.biz), which like Paul at awebapart offer a thorough hand-holding level of service using a hosted shop system.

Personally I wouldn't touch ekm with a 10ft bargepole having witnessed a friends experience with them, as Page said they don't seem to truly understand or embrace the concept of online retail it's more about getting people in and signed up to their service - possibly why so many walk away after a short period of time.

With Internet Retailer although you can't personalise the shop design through the CMS you can integrate your own shop design at anytime, which is what I did with mine starting off originally with the original shop template supplied, which enabled my to test out both my shop concept and the service prior to integrating my own design layout which I designed and supplied for integration.

I think the suggestion to speak to the providers in question and find a fit in terms of personal chemistry is a very valid point, you need to be sure your shop can grow with you and not cost you the earth and having someone you can call or email at anytime for advice and help is invaluable.

[darrenwis]

Thanks for the advice boho, check out the shoptistic website would you please?

It seems a good service but obviously im not going to commit to it now before i fully research the company.

Let me know what you think of the company if you get a chance.

Thanks,

Darren

[awebapart.com]

Hi Steve,

What about the back office? Does it let you see stats of visitors? Income? Outcome? etc? How easy is it to update?

Darren
I have tried to keep away from this thread, since it sounds like you want real people's feedback rather than supplier sales talk! However with this particular question, Steve isn't in a position to answer this yet since we're only at the early prototyping stage with his new ecommerce site, we haven't handed over admin access yet, nor has the site gone live yet.

So to answer your question, the site is designed for novices to update (if you can understand how to post to forums like this, you should be able to update your site with our sitebuilder). The online shop part of the site is based on our custom version of osCommerce, which because of the sheer size and power of the system, it is not the easiest of systems to use at first, but it is a powerful and flexible one. To get an idea of default osCommerce's admin system there is a live demo at www.opensourcecms.com (http://www.opensourcecms.com) - our system is similar (but with a few improvements like up to 10 product images, product attribute level stock control, discount codes). I have commented on osCommerce's admin system (http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=37456) in the past and how in its current state I only think it is practical for up to several hundred products - but osCommerce v3 (which is currently in alpha) is addressing this issue.

As for ecommerce visitor stats (http://www.awebapart.com/home/faq/Web_stats), we do provide these, and I have added a more detailed answer on the faq part of the site.

Thanks for everybody's kind words on this thread. It is also nice to get considered when startup businesses are narrowing down their potential ecommerce supplier list. As for the list, I do agree that ekm is the odd one out since it is very much an automated DIY operation. Like boho, I think that www.internetretailer.biz (http://www.internetretailer.biz) (Quickshop on this forum) should have been on that original list too (especially since they have some experience with sports supplies clients).

[boho]

Hi Darren
As you may have seen from my other post elsewhere I checked out Shoptistic, my impressions was that it seemed more aimed at the American market, and I can't put my finger on it but it didn't grab me.

I found their own site hard work I think and it just put me off. I tried the demo shop and it seemed overly complex, for me I want to spend my time solely on my business and not learning how to do allsorts of things - whilst I'd like to think I'm fairly technologically competent, it's not exactly the part of the business I enjoy and having a complex and cluttered admin system would just frustrate me.

I was also not at all struck on their template design, again it was a cluttered layout - which suits the US market, they like their sites busy and overpowering, but as they say 'it's not my bag', clean, clear, easily navigable websites I find to be much better on the customer conversion rate, rather than scare them away with too much to see. Less is often more on online sites.

As Paul said, my provider Internet Retailer have got experience in the sports retail field themselves, and host a number of sports theme sites ranging from snowboarding to martial arts & fightwear, plus they're keen sports fanatics themselves, lol, being a girl it's not really my field of expertise, I'll stick to watching the footie for the nice-looking blokes in shorts I think rather than the finer points of the game - though I do understand the offside rule ;)

[boho]

Also - sorry brain suddenly engaged and thought of something else :)

In terms of CRM you have full back office functionality with the Internet Retailer service, so you can see all orders, search for customers, send newsletters and offers to your customers, offer discount codes etc.

They are very adaptable as a provider and so will always considered requests from their customers regarding new features and capabilities - I've happily tailored mine over the last 2 years, so there's relatively little now I can't do that I want to do, and of those last remaining features they are all due to come on board during the next iteration of the software which is due for release shortly - and all amendments and improvements come as part of the package not an additional fee.

A particularly useful feature of the service, if you're still at that research stage is that they will help you find suppliers/dropshippers for your business, trade shows to attend, in fact so far it's been a case of 'no reasonable request refused'. Certainly something you wouldn't get with Ekm.

Their background is one of being online retailers themselves in a number of markets prior to setting up Internet Retailer, so the level of understanding of the business of online retail, the pitfalls, the what to do and not do etc goes above and beyond the majority of similar services or service resellers who know the tech stuff but haven't actually been there.

If you need any info, help, advice etc, feel free to PM me for a chat - I've been where you are, though not the same market, so I can happily give you independent unbiased advice and pointers.

[BuyCleverStuff]

Hi Darren as a user of EKM Powershop I can tell you that the shop has a number of limitations, however for the money we noticed an increase in business when going from our own Internet site.

He’s a list of problem with EKM powershop, you’ll know the benefits from the sales pitch and the info on EKM Powershop site:

EKM can be slow at times.

A lot of the pages on EKM shops get classed a supplements due to copied content i.e meta titles, descriptions, keywords need to be unique.

EKM has duplicated entry points onto the sites, for example only the www.domainname (http://www.domainname/) should be the access point, however both http://domainname (http://domainname/) and www.ekmpowersho (http://www.ekmpowersho/) are accessible this is inhibiting true indexing of the site as search engines see the duplicated content.

EKM needs H2 header codes to be added to keywords within the product sub title (we’ve don’t this manually).

Styles need to be CSS based and not as they are with each element having a FONT, ALIGN, ETC declaration, plus it’s full of tables.

Some pages on the site get indexed by search engine as EKM haven’t excluded them from the robots file, for example our checkout page (http://www.buycleverstuff.co.uk/index.asp?function=CHECKOUT (http://www.buycleverstuff.co.uk/index.asp?function=CHECKOUT)) is indexed together with other irrelevant pages served up by EKM.

No hard coded URL’s so if you removed a product or page from EKM, at the moment you see a EKM error page.

EKM need a URL re-write to make the links into friendly ones, i.e. from. … .asp?function=DISPLAYPRODUCT&productid=56 to …/kitchentvfreeview.html

All design changes are live, no test area on the site, however you can use the demo site and I’ve been told they are looking into this as a option.

Home page title is the company name and your not able to put keywords in, however we just changed our company name to include keywords, this does however mean that whenever a customer gets a automatic email the company name is also followed by the keywords.


Support is good, Matthew is the guy I speak to most, and they have taken on board my list of issues and said they will add them to the development list. You do however have to remember that you’ll need to do design the site from either the templates or enter custom HTML, which is easy and the EKM tags are very flexible if you know the right way to use them. Take a look at the EKM samples and our site http://www.buycleverstuff.co.uk (http://www.buycleverstuff.co.uk/), which is a template that has been modified.

The order interface is easy enough, and orders get emailed to you, even has a bulk order exported that we use to import orders at the end of a day. Your do get what you pay for, we looked at other options, oscommerce cubecart, etc, but for a off-the-self option and for the price EKM is acceptable, but it won’t last long as your business grows.

Hope that helps.

Jon

[boho]

Spot on post Jon, and I think it's exactly the reason that the Ekm user drop out rate is quite high, all of the points you raise are elements that are quite crucial when picking any hosted solution, and it's why I dismissed Ekm after demoing their product, their templates were limited and didn't fit the feel I wanted and I could see that I would rapidly outgrow the capability and need to move provider - something which is painstaking in itself.

You've been lucky on the support front, I don't think that is always true of Ekm, I know of users who've experienced significant problems with integration of critical elements such as the PSP and Ekm passed them around like the proverbial hot potato.

You really do need to ask the question of yourself 'where do you see your business going' and in what timeframes? 6months, 12 months, couple of years? If you don't see your business growing fast then most options are suitable, but if you hope to be the next big thing, have a good USP or are in a niche part of the market then choose something flexible, adaptable and that will grow with you and not cost you a fortune to do it.

[darrenwis]

Boho,

Thanks for your great advice so far, and yours jon and everyone elses. I am looking for a professional looking wesbite with the ability to improve and change as business becomes better and also when the market changes.

I quite like the look and feel of this website great-save dot com (not sure if your allowed to post URLS? Do you think 'internet retailer' could get my site looking anything like this?

Hope you don't mind me asking, but have you moved full time in your business now? I think i would be P/T to start and then move FT once successful.

Darren

[BuyCleverStuff]

Spot on post Jon, and I think it's exactly the reason that the Ekm user drop out rate is quite high, all of the points you raise are elements that are quite crucial when picking any hosted solution, and it's why I dismissed Ekm after demoing their product, their templates were limited and didn't fit the feel I wanted and I could see that I would rapidly outgrow the capability and need to move provider - something which is painstaking in itself.

You've been lucky on the support front, I don't think that is always true of Ekm, I know of users who've experienced significant problems with integration of critical elements such as the PSP and Ekm passed them around like the proverbial hot potato.

You really do need to ask the question of yourself 'where do you see your business going' and in what timeframes? 6months, 12 months, couple of years? If you don't see your business growing fast then most options are suitable, but if you hope to be the next big thing, have a good USP or are in a niche part of the market then choose something flexible, adaptable and that will grow with you and not cost you a fortune to do it.

We are at the point now with EKM that we feel we need to change shop provider because of the SEO problems, not because of the design limitations, but it can be hard to get a nice fluid design. However look at some sites, done on EKM and you'll see they can look nice, check out the our customers site page. Some of the SEO problems are really only going to affect the most aggressive markets, but still if you’ve not best (or close too) than what’s the point having an ecomm site?

The problem for us is that http://www.buycleverstuff.co.uk (http://www.buycleverstuff.co.uk/) was just going to just be a catalogue for kitchen and bathroom shops to browse, so the monthly cost was worthwhile, I didn't intend the site to become a shop, but within a few months the business needs changes and we didn't change from EKM.

Still for a small cost with EKM you can get a site running in days.

Jon

[BuyCleverStuff]

Boho,

Thanks for your great advice so far, and yours jon and everyone elses. I am looking for a professional looking wesbite with the ability to improve and change as business becomes better and also when the market changes.

I quite like the look and feel of this website great-save dot com (not sure if your allowed to post URLS? Do you think 'internet retailer' could get my site looking anything like this?

Hope you don't mind me asking, but have you moved full time in your business now? I think i would be P/T to start and then move FT once successful.

Darren

Nice looking site, done in CactuShop. I can tell you EKM would be hard to do that with, you need a designer and many don't like EKM.

[darrenwis]

Nice looking site, done in CactuShop. I can tell you EKM would be hard to do that with, you need a designer and many don't like EKM.

Oh ok, how much do you think that kind of site would cost? Or is that like asking how long a piece of string is?

[BuyCleverStuff]

Oh ok, how much do you think that kind of site would cost? Or is that like asking how long a piece of string is?

First you need to know the package to use, it's limitations, then see what a designer can do, I’d say for a site like that you'd been talking as least £1,000 for the design then integration costs on top. But ask the company who you go with for the shop if they can help/design it all and you can work on the business, not get bogged down with the site and dealing with two people.

[boho]

Darren

Multiple answers to that question :)

As a standard their template design is very clear, and looks like this http://www.handbagshop.tv/, http://www.teedoff.co.uk/ (as an example of layout), which is nice and clean and worked really well getting up the search engines when I set out.

If you are able to design your own site (or provide a design), then you can have any site design you like integrated like mine for £299.95 - which I designed in Dreamweaver.

If you want entirely bespoke, then they do that to, though it would cost more, examples are http://www.primrose-aromatherapy.co.uk/, http://www.pokervillage.co.uk/ starts from £799.95

It's does make it quite nicely morphic (if that's a real word?)

I'm sure they'd be happy to help in whatever capacity suits you best.

I do still work, and going part-time is a sensible move, having an income to start the early growth stages before stepping into the breach. The nice thing about online retail is the hours are quite flexible, so it fits around a job particularly in the early days without too much of a problem - even better still with a webmail account as you can keep on top of customer requests.

I am a freelance consultant as well as running my business, so it's more just that I'm not at the all eggs in one basket stage yet - although I love my consulting work, so it's not that I think I will ever 100% give that up anyway.

[awebapart.com]

Oh ok, how much do you think that kind of site would cost? Or is that like asking how long a piece of string is?
If it helps, here are the websites of the people/companies that used the cactushop system to create the great save site:

simonlilly.co.uk
great-save.com/page.asp?id=about
matrixebusiness.com/news.asp

So you could ask them for a quote.

This type of solution, a semi-bespoke custom made solution (http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=278560#post278560), is different to a hosted managed solution. Upfront costs will be higher, risk will be higher (it is worth having a solicitor draw up a client-supplier contract first), it is a more daunting/complex proposition, but there are other advantages too (more control over design, more ownership, freedom to change hosts, etc). As well as the upfront costs, there are also ongoing hosting costs to consider, you will need a hosting plan that supports the minimum requirements of the catushop system:

cactushop.com/main/systemrequirements.asp

[darrenwis]

Hi Boho

Thanks for the post. It answers my question very well and i have been contacting internet retailer with a few queries. I look forward to completing the research stage of my business and pressing on with the exciting stuff!

Darren

[boho]

Excellent, I'm really glad to be of help, and I'm sure you'll find Internet Retailer as friendly and helpful as I have. If you need any help or advice give me a shout and I'll do my very best to help. Look forward to welcoming you as a fellow shopkeeper in the virtual world :)

[lewey]

Have just come across this thread now.

I'm also a current user of EKM, with http://www.worldofnz.co.uk

Jon's post on the limitations of Ekm is a good summary of its flaws. But then when you are trying to start on a budget you can't have everything. I have also mostly dealt with Mathew there, who has been helpful.

I went with them, as at the time (end of 2003) that I was looking, they were offering the most flexibility for the price. No contract - when most others were asking for a minimum 1 year then - and paying monthly was important. Gave me the chance to test the waters on a minimum budget.

It will also depend on how much design type work you are willing / able to do. I knew nothing in the begining, and liked with Ekm that I could start purely with a template, and then as I have learn't more html have been able to customise more of it. And changing templates etc is all quite easy. Plus it can be completely custom designed if you're able - this on the website part. Another downside is the actual shopping cart is standard and I'd love to be able to customise parts of that a bit more.

Some of the SEO limitations are frustrating, as they just don't make sense, like the shop name versus the main page title and use of keywords that Jon mentioned. I've had to do a similar compromise.

They have suited us very well to get to where we are from scratch, its just the same aspects Jon has posted that let them down. I do now feel that the SEO limitations are becomming an issue in preventing my site from being a bit better in the rankings.

An important thing I would suggest will be your ability to easy change from whoever you choose in the future. This may not be your intention - and a benefit of most of these hosted packages is that they do keep doing upgrades - but gives you the option to change if required. With the rate of change in things internet, you could have a bunch of new requirements down the track.

[boho]

My host has no contract, and is pay monthly, with 2 weeks free at the start. Ekm also charge extra for certain things that my host doesn't.

I agree the ability to pay as you go without being tied into something is important.

[BuyCleverStuff]

Have just come across this thread now.

I'm also a current user of EKM, with http://www.worldofnz.co.uk

Jon's post on the limitations of Ekm is a good summary of its flaws. But then when you are trying to start on a budget you can't have everything. I have also mostly dealt with Mathew there, who has been helpful.

I went with them, as at the time (end of 2003) that I was looking, they were offering the most flexibility for the price. No contract - when most others were asking for a minimum 1 year then - and paying monthly was important. Gave me the chance to test the waters on a minimum budget.

It will also depend on how much design type work you are willing / able to do. I knew nothing in the begining, and liked with Ekm that I could start purely with a template, and then as I have learn't more html have been able to customise more of it. And changing templates etc is all quite easy. Plus it can be completely custom designed if you're able - this on the website part. Another downside is the actual shopping cart is standard and I'd love to be able to customise parts of that a bit more.

Some of the SEO limitations are frustrating, as they just don't make sense, like the shop name versus the main page title and use of keywords that Jon mentioned. I've had to do a similar compromise.

They have suited us very well to get to where we are from scratch, its just the same aspects Jon has posted that let them down. I do now feel that the SEO limitations are becomming an issue in preventing my site from being a bit better in the rankings.

An important thing I would suggest will be your ability to easy change from whoever you choose in the future. This may not be your intention - and a benefit of most of these hosted packages is that they do keep doing upgrades - but gives you the option to change if required. With the rate of change in things internet, you could have a bunch of new requirements down the track.

Hi lewey.

Sorry i know i may have been a little harsh, but i was giving a warts and all look at EKM. I've had alook at your code and i can see a few thinks in your code than you can do with EKM, take a look at my souce on www.buycleverstuff.co.uk (http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/www.buycleverstuff.co.uk) in the <!-- 001 body --> section, you'll see i've entered some H1'2 and H2's into the code served up from EKM.

Jon

[BuyCleverStuff]

My host has no contract, and is pay monthly, with 2 weeks free at the start. Ekm also charge extra for certain things that my host doesn't.

I agree the ability to pay as you go without being tied into something is important.

Who is your host again??

[emerchant]

You usually see easywebstore (http://www.easywebstore.co.uk) mentioned with this bunch, I am a big fan.