Ecommerce help - the landscape has changed quite a bit!

[hardwareguy]

We're a bricks and mortar shop in the South of England. We last had a website built in 2010 which was obviously a different beast from what's available now. However it did have the advantage that the website 'talked' to our till software so stock levels were tied to our stock holding in the shop.

We're now looking at moving to a new EPOS provider, I'm looking at RBA and CSY.

I am SO confused about what to do about our website. I know both RBA and CSY will cook us up a basic website for about £2K (I think they just re-theme a pre-existing template and charge me £2K for doing that and setting it all up). They then charge between £50-£80 per month after that for hosting depending on whether a payment gateway (i.e. not just PayPal) is included.

However I'm aware there are other options. I see BluePark gets good reviews, and there's also Spree Commerce etc.

But whatever we go with has to cope with lots of products and must allow these products to be automatically added to the platform - I can't manually add thousands of products to a platform...

Constructive advice very very welcome...! Sorry if I've missed off any obvious details.

 

[DigitalSuperMarket.com]

Hi, it would really be best to understand more about your business, operations and ambitions to be able to give a proper answer.

But for the sake of brevity for the forum, a solution like Shopify or BigCommerce would be best. There are features for a bulk product upload, and the set-up cost is only small and includes everything like hosting and website security.

 

[Darren_Ssc]

I don't know much about the options you mention but the alternative of hiring your own developer can work out more costly with ongoing problems. Unless you get lucky and find the right person, of course.

 

[Paul Norman]

What you are asking for, though, is fairly standard functionality - we certainly used to have that when we had both a physical and an online store.

I would suspect the hosting costs you have been quoted are not outrageous, though.

 

[Mr D]

How are you adding your products currently?

Perhaps you are after something that ties in with your current method? If so, what method are you using?
Or is your EPOS tying in?

 

[antropy]

We're now looking at moving to a new EPOS provider, I'm looking at RBA and CSY.

But whatever we go with has to cope with lots of products and must allow these products to be automatically added to the platform - I can't manually add thousands of products to a platform...

Have you had a look at OpenCart.com? It has plenty of EPOS modules in the market place and probably our most common type of project is rebuilding sites from other platforms in to it and transferring all products across. It may well work with RBA or CSY, or even have better ones. Feel free to email us for any more specifics.

Paul.

 

[Pish_Pash]

I've just migrated to Bigcommerce....I can recommend it....it's very fast (page load times are exceptionally good) & clean. Adding products is simple (the OP didn't state how he/she does it at the moment)

Re your stock 'sync' needs - they have a a nice lightweight API ...which I took advantage of to sync my local stock in a (MS Access) database with BigCommerce - it wasn't that hard to do.

 

[ORDERED WEB]

First up, are you using any sort of PIM system for your product, management?

Either way, you are going to want a "man in the middle" bit of software to manage stock levels between an offline and online store and/or your accounting systems.

Often for stock levels that is a feed out of your accounting system, that updates your PIM system, that updates your web system / marketplaces.

The key here is getting "One source of the truth" that is the one place that holds the correct real-time information for products and stock levels

Feel free to reach out to us for a discussion.

 

[NEF]

I've just migrated to Bigcommerce....I can recommend it....it's very fast (page load times are exceptionally good) & clean. Adding products is simple (the OP didn't state how he/she does it at the moment)

Re your stock 'sync' needs - they have a a nice lightweight API ...which I took advantage of to sync my local stock in a (MS Access) database with BigCommerce - it wasn't that hard to do.

How does Bigcommerce compare to the likes of Opencart ??

 

[japancool]

I use Bigcommerce. Love it.

There are only 2 downsides (for me) - the selling thresholds are quite low before you start moving to the higher priced plans, and you only get the product filter functionality on their third tier of pricing.

However, compared to Shopify's 3% fee for each transaction, it's still far superior.

 

[Pish_Pash]

How does Bigcommerce compare to the likes of Opencart ??

I used Opencart when I first started (2013) & ran with it for 2yrs...it was ok, but when it breaks...you'd better be a codehead...their support forum had an overall feel of "be away with you, you non-technical pleb....we're all php eggheads here"

In Bigcommerce you can nuzzle in the bosom of warm & friendly support staff who know their product inside out...that's worth it's weight in gold to a small operation like mine