Thinking about Shopify for 1-5 product website

[HobbyMounts]

I'm thinking about about creating a Shopify site to compliment our existing website and to promote a new product we have designed/developed.

It will be one main product and a couple of upgrades/spares, etc. 5 products in total.

I'm wondering whether something simple like Shopify would work?

Are there are cons?
How does the payment system work for sales?

 

[ScrewdriverSteve]

Hi HobbyMounts,

I have used both Shopify and my own selfbuilt website using software like oscommerce.

I may be missguided in my thinking but I prefer shopify because it takes a lot of hassel out of maintaining the site. They host the site and maintain the software for a monthly fee. I don't have to worry about downtime or losing data which is nice.

I use paypal, all payments 100% go through paypal and end up in my account. Shopify then bill monthly for their service, which is a fixed fee plus a small percentage of fees.

 

[HobbyMounts]

Is it an expensive way of doing business?

Monthly fees, percentages of sales? PayPal fees, etc.

Can you break it down for me at all.

Thanks

 

[ScrewdriverSteve]

Sure I pay

Shopify
£20 a month basic charge
2% transaction fee

Paypal
Standard Tranaction fee 3.4% + £0.20 GBP

As this was an experimental bussiness I was happy to pay these rates just to get the thing up and running fast.

Your not commited to paypal, so you could do something there to get the rates down. Also the shopify rate drops to zero if you move up to their higher monthly rate plan. This would depend on volume of sales as to wether it is worth switching up, I think the top rate plan is £120.

 

[HobbyMounts]

Yeh, those rates are quite high I guess.

As well as PayPal as a payment option could I also use SagePay as my payment gateway?

 

[Tech4Homes]

Why don't you create a sub-store from your main store (Opencart Multi Store) then you can easily sell your product on the new store and/or the original store. All you need to then do is choose another theme and you're away....

 

[adamo]

If OpenCart is working well for you (and it's free!), why use Shopify which will charge a monthly fee and percentage of sales? I'd say just stick with OpenCart and open a new store if needed.

 

[HobbyMounts]

I guess that would make sense.

The only reason I started looking at Shopify was because the theme looked better suited to selling only a few products, ie, the layout, etc.

If I could find a theme in opencart that looked as good for a small number of products then I would consider that.

Any suggestions?

 

[dmsims]

I guess that would make sense.

The only reason I started looking at Shopify was because the theme looked better suited to selling only a few products, ie, the layout, etc.

If I could find a theme in opencart that looked as good for a small number of products then I would consider that.

Any suggestions?

You could use the Featured module and put all 5 products in that ?