E commerce set up?

[timi23111]

Hi, I have a domain name and am just in the process of researching a couple of UK based web hosting sites (thanks to advice from this very forum). We are setting up a small business and retailing a basic product so we are looking at an ecommerce shop site design. We need to know if it is worth using sites like Prestashop or Bigcartel, and also we will need to have the facility to take card payments as well as Paypal and would like to understand how easy this is to set up? Thanks.

 

[dougiehunt]

Hi, I have a domain name and am just in the process of researching a couple of UK based web hosting sites (thanks to advice from this very forum). We are setting up a small business and retailing a basic product so we are looking at an ecommerce shop site design. We need to know if it is worth using sites like Prestashop or Bigcartel, and also we will need to have the facility to take card payments as well as Paypal and would like to understand how easy this is to set up? Thanks.

I would suggest building your site using WordPress CMS with WooCommerce connected with PayPal. A purely simple set-up that will help you get up and running.

What is the product?

I would suggest your main efforts should be put in to digital marketing. I can offer you an e-commerce site with digital marketing from £95 per month. That's everything you need and more for a small fixed monthly fee.

Google us: 'Twenty First Digital Marketing'

 

[DarrenMcCabe]

We have just been experimenting a little with PrestaShop.

It is tricky to get to grips with and work out how to customise and modify options although it is entirely do-able.

I would say we are of "medium level" website editing experience, so not novices but not experts either.

I would say if you consider yourself below this level then, find someone to get you up and running and manage the website for you as it's going to be hard going.

Also take the following in to account:

• Web Hosting Cost - TsoHost do excellent hosting for £14/year
• Setup Cost - Your time is money too
• Domain name registration fee - yearly
• Payment processing fee's - Paypal and card processors all charge this
• Updates and modifications
• SSL Certificates - No one wants to shop where it's not secure
• Marketing/SEO/Promotion

Dougy's offer may not be the cheapest or most cost effective (I genuinely dont know) but when you take in to account all of the above it doesnt seem a million miles out

 

[dougiehunt]

Dougy's offer may not be the cheapest or most cost effective (I genuinely dont know) but when you take in to account all of the above it doesnt seem a million miles out

Hi Darren, I know you aren't criticising our service but I do want to back up our price with what we do for our long term clients.

When you take into account volume of work that we do, the fact that it is all managed for the customer, the quality of the work we produce plus the results we get for our customers - through leads and sales - then this is actually a really good deal.

Not many companies that will:

- build you a site
- web hosting and domain registration included
- create all the static content
- provide regular targeted blog posts
- target SEO niches
- provide on- and off-page SEO
- provide a digital marketing strategy
- provide email marketing
- managed your social media presence
- site monitoring
- analytics analysis
- start-up business advice and support
- unlimited non-major web development changes
- 1-to-1 account management
- long term commitment to growing clients businesses

Yes, £95 per month may not be the cheapest option but it is the option that offers the best value in terms of ROI, growth and long term support.

We aren't expensive but we aren't cheap. Cheap doesn't provide a return on investment. We are the most cost effective however - not sure many agencies will provide you with that level of service for under a £100 a month. Not when agencies charge £20-£50 per hour.

Our business model is long term growth for our clients through a fix monthly fee for managed digital marketing services.

 

[faradaykeynes]

go for prestashop or opencart . Zencart is good too.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

download a complete e-commerce shop with all psp already intergrated and simple start with free 30 day trial from www.sellerdeck.co.uk youi buy the software and it's your to keep and massive forum of other users for free advice

 

[AmazingGiftBoxes]

What is wrong with people, op asked a simple question and everyone is trying to sell their services!!!

STOP SPAMMING!!!

Jerry

 

[UseYourWeb]

Hi, I'm a web developer with many years experience and I'm not going to jump in here with a sales pitch but I will say that the above quotes, the one for £95 a month, the other for £300 (i think) and my quote of (£900) , that is pretty much the minimum it would take to get a decent result, and without getting a return on investment, there's not a whole lot of reasons to do it to begin with.

So now you have 3 quotes, one at £300, one at £95 a month and mine at £900

Which one is the best? is it the cheapest one? .... probably not.
The most expensive one?... possibly.
The £95 a month one???

Basically although your good with wordpress, there's a whole load of different things, technologies, search engine algorithm updates, etc etc. If you dont keep up with these, your competitors will.

A company that is offering what they are for £95 a month, it has to be said, is going to be interested in keeping your site making money, as if its not making money, your not making money so then no more £95 a month for the site developer so it's in their interests that your site does well.

I'd certainly take their offer seriously tbh, then you can free your time up to concentrate on other aspects of the business

 

[UWOTM8]

OpenCart is my favourite. The backoffice takes a little getting used to as the amount of options and details is pretty intense, but a brilliant piece of completely free software IMO. Very clean and easy to use, very easy to personalise and edit the source code.

SEO is a changing world nowadays, Google et al. use some very smart algorithms and anyone promising you they can get you to the top of Google is very hard pressed to deliver on this.

The best way I've seen my sites climb Google searches is traffic, pure and simple. If you get the traffic you tend to find your website climb for related searches. The problem here is obviously to get traffic you need visibility, a bit of a catch 22, which means you're relying on gaining traffic from social media, eBay, advertising and word of mouth. Your coding also needs to be top notch, to W3 standards, which most paid and open source eCommerce packages are.

 

[MRLogodesign]

Depending on the product you are selling you may need a completely bespoke solution.

 

[zigojacko]

Hi, I have a domain name and am just in the process of researching a couple of UK based web hosting sites (thanks to advice from this very forum). We are setting up a small business and retailing a basic product so we are looking at an ecommerce shop site design. We need to know if it is worth using sites like Prestashop or Bigcartel, and also we will need to have the facility to take card payments as well as Paypal and would like to understand how easy this is to set up? Thanks.

Completely depends upon your store and requirements and your experience/knowledge of working with open source software, FTP etc.

Prestashop isn't the most user friendly platform on the market. The core is also very buggy, any problems encountered will require a level of understanding in theme set up and basic markup/styling code as it is open source.

BigCartel is a hosted solution so it will be maintained, looked after and most configuration will easily be manageable from the back office.

If a lot of this is a mine field for you, you'd be better off with a hosted solution such as BigCartel or Shopify. If you know how to install platforms via FTP/SSH and are familiar enough with setting up databases and configuring platforms then an open source solution would be far better (in a very basic nutshell - OpenCart for simple, easy to use and relatively basic stores, Magento for complex, larger stores).

 

[AmazingGiftBoxes]

Also you need to look at prices of plugins, extensions and themes. Prestashops plugins and themes are very expensive, I am not sure about BigCartel but like previous post says have a look at opencart, go to their website and have a look at the demo, specifically admin part. Also opencart has a forum with lots of people willing to help if you get stuck.

Jerry

 

[Jeff FV]

Just for some context:

Our website is hosted by Vidahost, circa £40pa (there are other good hosts out there, but they were the third host I used, switched to them about 3 or 4 yrs ago - superb service, highly recommend them)

Built using Prestashop, themed by ourselves (o/h the designer, said "I want this here, that there etc., and coded by me) The basic shop works well, theme-ing it can be a bit of a pain. We sell design led products, so the look/branding of the site is v.important - if it wasn't I'd consider getting an off the shelf theme.

We sell circa 500+ products and turn in the 10s of thousands of pounds through our website.

Make sure the site is clean, functional and simple. I think you are probably better off spending more money on product photography - this rarely gets mentioned, but good great photos make the difference between sales and no sales.

Been selling online for over 5 years now. Happy to share my experience. If its a single item you are selling, you could consider just adding a PayPal "Buy it Now" button to a basic Wordpress site - up and running for less than £50 to test the water and learn what works and what doesn't.

J

 

[UseYourWeb]

Just for some context:
Make sure the site is clean, functional and simple. I think you are probably better off spending more money on product photography - this rarely gets mentioned, but good great photos make the difference between sales and no sales.
J

If your not doing it already, I'd look into froogle (google shopping integration) and amazon integration aswell. Worked with a Duvet retailer who went from small online turnover to over a million a year on the back of te google shopping results

 

[MyBusinessStory.co.uk]

i have always liked to use custom built shops rather than magento etc, although i have recently looked at wordpress and that looks good, go for custom built if you can afford it.

regarding card payments, if you want your own payment gateway then you need to get a merchant number from your bank and then a company like Worldpay or securehosting.com to process it using that merchant number (your bank will have this facility also if you want to use them)

I would suggest starting with paypal first and then worry about a proper gateway later down the line