Ecommerce help

[Lcd83]

Hi

I have recently purchased a retail store, and would like to get the business online asap. My main issue for the time being is costing, as well as ease of use. I have no coding skills so after a lot of research it ha come to a choice between Shopify or Woocommerce and Wordpress.

There are hundreds of products to add which will need to be taken into account but i would imagine most of the early online sales to come through Ebay and Facebook so i am happy to start small with the website and grow it as required.

i would obviously need SSL and payment gateways as part of any package which is all included with Shopify for around $30 a month. I keep hearing Woocommerce works out cheaper but from what i can see, after the initial cost of an SSL certificate and sorting the payment options (Paypal and credit cards as a minimum) i would need a host capable of hosting a Wordpress site with the potential to have anywhere up to a thousand products. and i cant see anything that would work out cheaper than Shopify.

Aside from Woocommerce being a bit more flexible, i feel Shopify is the better option for my needs but before i jump in i wondered if anyone had a bit more insight into this or could clarify some of the costing issues i mention.

Many thanks

 

[ryedale]

Hosting shouldn't be more than £12 a month and many companies now offer Let's Encrypt allowing you to have a free SSL.

We personally prefer OpenCart to Shopify or WooComerce but others may argue differently

 

[fisicx]

My main issue for the time being is costing, as well as ease of use.

The main costs will be marketing not the website build. A new ecommerce store can require thousands in advertising while it finds it's feet.

What ever platform you chooses it's better to get some help as it's too easy to focus on the bits that you think are important not the bits that make you money.

 

[ryedale]

It's a good point that Fiscix makes. We actually turn down some new E-Commerce ventures now because they can only just afford the site and have no marketing budget left or acceptance of the amount of marketing investment a new E-Commerce site needs to get a foothold.

 

[Ava Williams]

For businesses with a few items to sell, Wordpress and WooCommerce is a nice combination. However, if you have many items to showcase, Shopify is the best option. Moreover, it's never as simple as buying an SSL certificate ...

 

[Dan_HiHosting]

Hi there,

Welcome to the forums.

As a web host we're obviously biased, but generally do think that WordPress + WooCommerce or OpenCart or other open source self hosted solution is the better choice.

With Shopify you'll end up paying a lot more in the long run, and you can't take your site anywhere or easily take it to the next level.

If you self host using an open source platform, your website and hosting are independent.
You own your website, which is under your full control.

You can build it yourself to start or to try ideas out, and bring in a developer at a later date that can take what you've built and take it to the next level.

You'll also pay a lot less for the same quality hosting, and can have higher performance hosting too - easily upgrading to a cloud VPS or similar.

If you bring in a developer from the start the initial cost will be higher.
If you don't the the initial cost will likely be less than Shopify, but you can expect to have to do more work yourself.

Having said that WooCommerce with a good premium theme from Theme Forest, and help from a community like UKBF can go a long way.

The benefit of a premium theme is they can come with great support direct from the developers.

Shopify take a cut from the use of the bundled payment gateways I believe, so if your business takes off it can work out a fair bit more expensive.

Convenience comes at a cost.

PayPal and Braintree and the like can be good options when starting out.

As for the platform, WordPress + WooCommerce is ideal for websites with a smaller number of bespoke products - such as jewellery or fashion items, with a lot of images.

OpenCart and the like are better for traditional online shops with lots of products and categories.

Think hand made products vs an electronics store.

Having said that, OpenCart does have issues and WordPress + WooCommerce is likely more user friendly, and easier to get a solid and stable result with.

I hope that helps a little.

Best of luck,

Dan

 

[ryedale]

What are OpenCart's issues out of interest?

 

[Dan_HiHosting]

https://github.com/opencart/opencart/issues

https://forum.opencart.com/viewtopic.php?f=181&t=159554

https://github.com/opencart/opencart/issues/4102

Last I checked the source still has SSL implementation issues out of the box.

Issues raised in the previous release still haven't been fixed in the latest release.

Compared to WordPress its documentation, updates and management is pretty amateur.

We were strong advocates of OpenCart. It's modern and lightweight, and preferable over PrestaShop and Magento (if you don't need Magento's features) because of that.
However WordPress and WooCommerce have really come along.
It used to seem like an odd choice for an eCommerce platform - but the documentation, support, plugins and development is much stronger.
It works out of the box without modification.
It's stable and well supported.

It's a shame about OpenCart really.

 

[Iain_Henderson]

I'm using WordPress with woo and just under 1000 products (not all visible) being synced with eBay and Amazon and doing ok!

As others have said it's the marketing cost which will need the budget more than the site - something I'm only just beginning to appreciate..

 

[ryedale]

https://github.com/opencart/opencart/issues

https://forum.opencart.com/viewtopic.php?f=181&t=159554

https://github.com/opencart/opencart/issues/4102

Last I checked the source still has SSL implementation issues out of the box.

Issues raised in the previous release still haven't been fixed in the latest release.

Compared to WordPress its documentation, updates and management is pretty amateur.

We were strong advocates of OpenCart. It's modern and lightweight, and preferable over PrestaShop and Magento (if you don't need Magento's features) because of that.
However WordPress and WooCommerce have really come along.
It used to seem like an odd choice for an eCommerce platform - but the documentation, support, plugins and development is much stronger.
It works out of the box without modification.
It's stable and well supported.

It's a shame about OpenCart really.

SSL works perfectly as far as we can see, used every version of 2 since release over many sites, it's one of the easiest parts of setting a new store up .

I think you could pull a few threads out of Google about any system

e.g
https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/known-conflicts/
http://www.itworld.com/article/2953...affecting-sites-without-ssl-certificates.html

They all have good points and weaknesses - I actually quite like Woo-Commerce to be fair.

I just think it's a bit inaccurate to say it's a shame about OpenCart' or it has issues when it's actually very stable. If it wasn't, then the likes of us and @antropy wouldn't be using it for client sites.

There's also plenty of guides available

https://isenselabs.com/books/allbooks

Hope this helps

 

[Lcd83]

Thank you all for the reply. Marketing is being dealt with to an extent. For now we just need a website up to accompany the retail store.

From what i can tell, Opencart is not really an option as it doesn't look like something i can just jump into. The main issue currently is costing. Upfront and monthly.

Is Wordpress and Woocommerce something someone with no knowledge in this area could get to grips with easily? i have also heard mixed things with regards to time spent maintaining it. I will be running a store full time so if this will require lots of maintenance too then may not be the best option. (not including product uploads etc)

 

[fisicx]

It depends on how much time you have and how much you enjoy researching. Wordpress and Woo can be installed and set up in minutes.

You could have your first products online soon after.

Everything after that needs you to spend time on the extensive documentation getting all the nuances just right. Shopify would be no different.

Or you get someone in to do it all for you.

Maintenance isn't difficult, it's really just a matter of keeping everything updated. And that will take you a few minutes each week.

 

[Cathey]

I would suggest you choose from one of the mainstream options as you are doing. This keeps your options open in the future. The more mainstream the webstore, the more chance you have of being able to link other tools to it as you grow.

You are mentioning selling on eBay as well as through your own website and the time may very well come (in the medium term future) when you start looking for a tool to automate your listings and inventory across ebay and your webstore. It will be much easier to do this if you have chosen one of woocommerce/ prestashop /opencart/ shopify/ magento.

 

[antropy]

Compared to WordPress its documentation, updates and management is pretty amateur.

I can tell you're a sysadmin and not a developer

WordPress is an incredibly amateur platform that's hacked together by designers who dabble with a bit of code but aren't really full time developers with Computer Science degrees. It's also incredibly vulnerable to being compromised.

OpenCart does have some minor issues in the latest release but they're easily fixable and certainly not deal breakers. If you want to say that unless a piece of software is 100% bug free it shouldn't be used then you might as well shut down your computer now and do something else.

To answer the OP's post, it all depends on your budget but if you want to get something online quickly and cheaply, Shopify isn't a bad option.

When you're ready to take it to the next level and customise it with automation for your business then something like OpenCart allows a good developer to do almost anything.

 

[wayzgoose]

OpenCart does have some minor issues in the latest release but they're easily fixable and certainly not deal breakers.

Anywhere documentation you could point us to about these issues? Having just downloaded the latest version and site now up and running, it would be interesting to know what the bugs affect.

 

[UrbanRetail]

+ for OpenCart. We use it religiously for all our sites, unless a specific site calls for something else.

As for not being able to 'just jump in' as you put, it's probably one of the most user friendly out-of-the-box ecommerce solutions around.

If you haven't already, check out the opencart demo here. You might change your mind.

Wayzgoose - I'm not aware of any documentation for bugs, but bugs found by users can be found here.

 

[Lcd83]

I'm using WordPress with woo and just under 1000 products (not all visible) being synced with eBay and Amazon and doing ok!

As others have said it's the marketing cost which will need the budget more than the site - something I'm only just beginning to appreciate..

Who do you use as a host? if you dont mind me asking

The hosts recommended by Wordpress would cost more than Shopify

 

[Lcd83]

My concern with open cart is coding. I was hoping to find an option that did not require either me being able to code or paying someone else to do it for me. That will hopefully come in the future but the site inst going to warrant or be able to justify that to start with

 

[UrbanRetail]

What coding is it specifically that concerns you? Installation? Design? Additional features?

 

[Iain_Henderson]

Hi, my developers host on their own server and charge £15 per month - I've been told they do it as a favour and make nothing from it (which I'm inclined to believe!)

 

[Alan]

i feel Shopify is the better option for my needs

Most likely correct.

Don't forget this forum has a large volume of hosting companies and WordPress dev/designers vying for your business ( and a few OpenCart / PrestaShop ers too)

Feel free to use the top link in my sig to book a free session where I won't sell you hosting or Wordpress but just help you rationalise your decision making process.

 

[Lcd83]

What coding is it specifically that concerns you? Installation? Design? Additional features?

To be honest, all of it. it is something i know nothing about and just looking at Open Cart makes it seem very daunting. i am all for trying something but don't know if this is something i would grasp that quickly

 

[fisicx]

Hi, my developers host on their own server and charge £15 per month - I've been told they do it as a favour and make nothing from it (which I'm inclined to believe!)

Find a different developer. You can get decent hosting for a lot less than that.

 

[ryedale]

To be honest, all of it. it is something i know nothing about and just looking at Open Cart makes it seem very daunting. i am all for trying something but don't know if this is something i would grasp that quickly

I think Shopify will be best for you to be honest especially if you are on a tight time schedule. It's going to be the shortest route to getting a site up and running and it sounds like you have enough on your plate to think about running the store.

 

[MarekBober]

I would go for hosted with fix support cost- since you are new to e-commerce you will need it and usually it is not free or you have to dig trough forums.

 

[antropy]

Anywhere documentation you could point us to about these issues? Having just downloaded the latest version and site now up and running, it would be interesting to know what the bugs affect.

Mostly the OpenCart forums but I have seen some issues with viewing/editing orders if you've changed the site from HTTP to HTTPS. They're pretty easy to fix though.

 

[GraemeL]

To be honest, all of it. it is something i know nothing about and just looking at Open Cart makes it seem very daunting. i am all for trying something but don't know if this is something i would grasp that quickly

I am a technical idiot relative to most on this forum. Opencart (which I use) is not that difficult.

G

 

[Dan_HiHosting]

Glad you get on well with it Graeme

It's definitely a better fit for your website and a traditional, large eCommerce store.

And it's definitely a lot easier to use than some options such as Magento, which is also incredibly heavy weight.

If Magento is a tank then OpenCart is a kit car. Lightweight and customisable.

Just as an update @Lcd83 decided to go with WordPress with us.

Thanks for choosing us @Lcd83, just let us know if you need any more help.

Best of luck,

Dan