Ecommerce platform dilema, which out of these 4 options.

[junipaire2009]

I'm so useless at decided on things and have got a dilema now for my new ecommerce store, money does play a factor but that said I want a platform that will not be a huge learning curve and take me ages to get going.

Option 1: Shopify

I like its simple interface when I had a trial but yeah there are certain restriction, still it has a lot of other store owners using it and looks to be clean and modern looking templates and cool site themselves shopify.com.

I've seen a really nice template to for $140 and could start on the $26 a month package until I got going and then add some more products.

Option 2: Magento

I had a site built 2 years ago for a modern gadget store in Magento but I never got it going due to the high competition in this field, I did more market research and found it would be hard to make an impact in this market and better to rethink and find a better niche. Anyway I could have this site converted to my new design, don't know how easy that would be, I wouldn't change too much though as it was a nice deisng as it was.


downside of this would be, Magento is a struggle to add products I found before and quite complicated, that said I did learn quite a lot and got a book on it all.


Option 3

This option would be Opencart, I again have seen a great theme on themeforest I love but heard opencart isn't mobile friendly and the site wouldn't work on mobiles, so when the future is mobiles it may soon become dated having an opencart site.


Option 4

This is to have a developer do me a site from my PSD design in the newish platform Lemonstandapp.com, I've heard good things about it on how easy it is to customize for and could be good for SEO


If anyone here could offer any advice in making up my mind on this as I keep changing my mind on all of them as they yeah would all be good choices, I'm mainly thinking Shopify though as it would enable me to get up and running much quicker.

 

[Josh_Farmer]

I'm so useless at decided on things and have got a dilema now for my new ecommerce store, money does play a factor but that said I want a platform that will not be a huge learning curve and take me ages to get going.

Option 1: Shopify

I like its simple interface when I had a trial but yeah there are certain restriction, still it has a lot of other store owners using it and looks to be clean and modern looking templates and cool site themselves shopify.com.

I've seen a really nice template to for $140 and could start on the $26 a month package until I got going and then add some more products.

Option 2: Magento

I had a site built 2 years ago for a modern gadget store in Magento but I never got it going due to the high competition in this field, I did more market research and found it would be hard to make an impact in this market and better to rethink and find a better niche. Anyway I could have this site converted to my new design, don't know how easy that would be, I wouldn't change too much though as it was a nice deisng as it was.


downside of this would be, Magento is a struggle to add products I found before and quite complicated, that said I did learn quite a lot and got a book on it all.


Option 3

This option would be Opencart, I again have seen a great theme on themeforest I love but heard opencart isn't mobile friendly and the site wouldn't work on mobiles, so when the future is mobiles it may soon become dated having an opencart site.


Option 4

This is to have a developer do me a site from my PSD design in the newish platform Lemonstandapp.com, I've heard good things about it on how easy it is to customize for and could be good for SEO


If anyone here could offer any advice in making up my mind on this as I keep changing my mind on all of them as they yeah would all be good choices, I'm mainly thinking Shopify though as it would enable me to get up and running much quicker.

Also don't forget prestashop as i find that really really good software.

I'd avoid pay monthy options and go down the route of getting a site developed?

 

[darren atkinson]

Why don't you start out with shopify then and just see how you get on.

If you can make a success of the business on the shopify platform but eventually find that you want more control than you get you could always get a Magento (or other platform) developed alongside the shopify store and switch over when it was ready.

In your position that is what I would do.

I started my ecommerce site on shopify however I didn't stay with it for long because I needed some functionality that just wasn't an option with shopify at the time. I think it has come on leaps and bounds over the past few years and if I wanted to quickly launch something again then I'd definitely consider it.

 

[junipaire2009]

Darren

I think you actually maybe right with this, yeah i could always opt to move over to another one in the future if it all starts making a profit, maybe lemonstand by then will be more advanced and have more apps and things. Shopify is hosted which lots of people tell you if it all goes wrong and they go bust you are left stranded without a site and yes this is true but Shopify have now been going a while and do seem to be here to stay for a while. Out of the hosted cart it was this one I liked the best. I've also asked some advice from a guy i know who develops websites and see what advice he can give but yeah I think it would be good to get up and running as soon as possible as i did hear it can be upto 18 months before a ecommerce store can be turning over a profit.

 

[darren atkinson]

i did hear it can be upto 18 months before a ecommerce store can be turning over a profit.

It entirely depends on what you are selling and what kind of stock you need to hold.

My eCommerce site was instantly profitable as I didn't need to hold stock in advance of making sales and I built the site myself.

As things grew with it I built the site up accordingly such as moving to a better platform and getting a 'professional' design made for it.

Three years down the line I'm still progressing things so it is a never ending beast, however my best advice would be just to get up and trading ASAP.

When I first started out I didn't even offer for sale what is my biggest selling items now as I thought it would be too much hassle, however I listened to my customers and adapted and have a really good business now.

If you try and get everything perfect upfront you will never do it, just launch and then carry on improving things as you can.

 

[Curious]

As above - get it up and running. I just went for it with an Opencart site (which you can get a css template for to make it mobile 'friendly' quite cheaply, something I keep meaning to do).

We've been going about 7 month now and I'm just starting to seriously look at having a professionally designed site written.

I've come to realise that there is functionality that I would like from the new site that I just wouldn't have thought of from the off because it just didn't occur to me.

As Darren says, trying to get everything perfect from the off will just cause delay after delay and you won't get going. Providing the cart is safe, secure looks okay and people can order just get it going! Every day will provide insight into features that will help you down the road.

 

[junipaire2009]

I'm just reading now which even complicates my choice a little more but reading some indepth reviews at a zippycart.com. it is saying Core Commerce as a really good platform and rates it better than Shopify which falls short on the SEO optimization for individual pages and the cost of a commission fee for each transaction and bandwidth abilities . Reading through customers reviews on core commerce too and they are saying its great.

What platform is it you use Darren. You say you moved from Shopify a while back.

 

[dx3webs]

Might as well plan for success and build on Magento.. this platform is going to be around for a long time to come. Its robust, extendible and there are a stack of devs around at reasonable prices.

 

[David_F]

Also worth considering EKM Powershop. Easier for non-devs to set up than Shopify.

 

[kulture]

Everyone has their own preferred solution and you will get recommendations for each and every one of your options. None are bad.

It would help if you said what kind of thing you are planning to sell, what your target market is, and how many products.

Then consider what you want from a web site and what key functions and features you will need. Then look into each of the above 4 options and see how they match your needs and what other pro and con they have.

It may be that a clear favourite arises.

My personal preference is Magento. I would also tend to avoid a combined service like shopify, but that is just my preference.

 

[junipaire2009]

Not giving up on Shopify just yet but I'm warming very much to Opencart as I like a theme I've seen a lot and can vision it. I'd maybe get a little customisation on it done but heard I can have it hosted for £40-£50 a year and the theme is only $30 so should keep my costs down till I get get going and hopefully will be fairly easy to pick up to adding products and working with SEO.

 

[Greg Black]

Being a marketing person and not a coder (though I have commissioned many websites on all sorts of platforms) these days I almost always go for hosted software solutions where I can.

Hosted solutions have come of age and its not just basic carts that are available.

Hosted solutions have a number of benefits, you always have the latest version, so no troublesome upgrades, plus you don't have to worry about security, particularly important with ecommerce.

If I was in your situation I would go for Magento Go, it is on a platform you already kinda know, plus if you ever get to the stage where you outgrow the hosted solution it would be a much simpler process to migrate to a self hosted magento solution.

Another great hosted cart is Big Commerce from Interspire, they have been building great software for years.

 

[kulture]

Why not do a google search on the keywords that best match your proposed products. See what the competition is using. You have to do better SEO than your competition, and your web site should look as good or better, to your target customers.

 

[liongroup]

Why not do a google search on the keywords that best match your proposed products. See what the competition is using.

This is actually a good point. Many of us don't like to think about competition like this but it's a worthwhile exercise if you don't know the market for software.

 

[darren atkinson]

What platform is it you use Darren. You say you moved from Shopify a while back.

I use a platform called ProductCart.

I went for it primarily because it was coded in ASP which is a language I had a lot of experience with.

The cart software by itself is actually very strong in my opinion with a very good feature set, and the code base behind it is well maintained.

I have been able to customise it to meet my exact requirements which was exactly what I was looking for.

The are probably better options out there for others however for me it is a pretty good solution.

That's the thing you will learn, and others have said already here, what works for one person might not work for another.

I still maintain that you should make a decision and just get up and running, having a product line that sells, has enough margin to make a living and that you can compete with people on can easily be discovered or not on a wide variety of platforms.

Try not to make the mistake of spend a ton of time and possibly money upfront only to discover that you don't actually have anything that sells well.

 

[junipaire2009]

Why not do a google search on the keywords that best match your proposed products. See what the competition is using. You have to do better SEO than your competition, and your web site should look as good or better, to your target customers.

Yeah but how do you know what the competition is using, it doesn't state what cart ecommerce sites use very often does it, I've seen a view at the bottom of sites but most I couldn't see.

 

[Cart2Cart]

I would certainly recommend to chose Shopify, if the required features are simplicity, functionality support and security.
OpenCart is the second option here. During the last year, it improved its functionality greatly. There also a number of extensions to optimize OpenCart store for mobiles. So you will be always on the top.
Magento is one of the best carts, but it require time, skills, efforts.

 

[Ali-v-8]

Opencart has my vote - and yes you can buy responsive themes that work on all platforms. Dont worry - when you choose a theme it will be clearly marked as "Responsive".
SEO - Its easy and very effective, so long as you know how to optimise you can get great positions within a matter of weeks.

Hosting - dont scrimp on hosting - thats a bad mistake - also make sure you add an SSL - We use VPS servers for our open cart clients cheap and fast.

 

[justbought.it]

Option 1: Shopify

I like its simple interface when I had a trial but yeah there are certain restriction, still it has a lot of other store owners using it and looks to be clean and modern looking templates and cool site themselves shopify.com.

I've seen a really nice template to for $140 and could start on the $26 a month package until I got going and then add some more products.

If you just want to get up and running then I'd recommend Shopify hand down.

I hope that helps.

Glen.

 

[Holopainen]

Hello,

I would suggest you to go with Shopify. It is user-friendly, reasonably-priced and has all the necessary features. OpenCart is also a good solution since it offers loads of features and requires very few if any technical skills to manage it. Here is a nice post that compares these two http://www.shopping-cart-migration....7539-true-ecommerce-magic-shopify-or-opencart
As to Magento in my opinion it is too complicated and buggy.
Developing a custom solution is rather expensive.

 

[Paul Norman]

Personally, I have little experience of any of these, apart from Magento.

I have been involved in sizeable e-commerce projects for many years, and would encourage a robust review of your requirements , and review that against each product. Do not look simply at functionality, but capacity under the load you expect your site to experience. Some of these products would, for example, struggle under loads of many 1000's of concurrent users.

 

[JamieM]

Option 1: Shopify

I like its simple interface when I had a trial but yeah there are certain restriction, still it has a lot of other store owners using it and looks to be clean and modern looking templates and cool site themselves shopify.com.

I've seen a really nice template to for $140 and could start on the $26 a month package until I got going and then add some more products.

+2% transaction fee!! That is pretty poor.

 

[wayzgoose]

Two that haven't been mentioned - we have one site using freewebstore (over 3,000 products) excellent support and mobile versions about to appear. Our 2nd site is using Zen Cart. A real old version but little point in updating now. That site has just over 3,500 products. Both do the job intended without problems.

I wouldn't get too hung up about the look on a particular platform - it really doesn't matter that much. It's the performance that counts.

 

[WolfStores]

Hi There,

Another vote for Prestashop
Prestashop is easier to manage than Magento and it is an equally powerful and professional ecommerce platform. It is open source so you never have to pay for a license. And you will not have the hassle of starting with a simplistic solution to then have to move on to something better.
Free templates are available (to minimize your initial investment) and as your business grows you could purchase a premium template and other add-ons to further enhance your online shop.

Cheers,

Tim

 

[antropy]

Interesting question.

Option 1 - here's how Shopify compares to OpenCart:
http://www.antropy.co.uk/blog/shopify-vs-opencart/

Option 2 - here's how Magento compares to OpenCart:
http://www.antropy.co.uk/blog/opencart-vs-magento/

Option 3
Yes, OpenCart is rather good.

Option 4
LemonStand looks interesting and according to their website you can customise it with features as well as just themes, you can actually write PHP extensions for it using their API. Without trying it, I'm not sure how good this would be.

 

[CAEDAN]

I am in a similar position - the more you look- the more confusing it gets.

I have been warned off shopify as it is a free store, and much like free website providers does not offer an SEO benefits to the site. They have large free logo that advertise that fact and you cannot remove them. Payments go off your site to theirs - this has made some customers very wary.

Open cart looks fantastic and has a agood reputation. I did intall it but had issues whereby I couldn't access it and just had blank screens. I tried for 6 weeks to get support through direct and their forum - but nothing at all. I had a one sentence reply from Opencart Support telling me to go the cpanel and delete all files and intall a different cart. So I am looking at Prestashop now.

 

[antropy]

I tried for 6 weeks to get support through direct and their forum - but nothing at all.

We support OpenCart sites in case you decide to go back to it. What one did you decide to use instead?

 

[WolfStores]

So I am looking at Prestashop now.

Stick to Prestashop. It is the right choice

If you need any help with it feel free to give me a shout.

Cheers

Tim

 

[serendipitybusiness]

Putting my vote in for woo commerce as always, as you can adapt and build as you grow whilst also harnessing the power of wordpress and plugins available. Its free, templates can be free or paid, I would go with paid and plugins are mainly paid. However you won't need a specialist like you will with magento to add a lot of what you want. You may need someone to help you adapt a template, add some feature sets etc but if you are serious about pulling in as many conversion improvements as you can this one is a great place to start.

I have developed on a few now, my collegues have now moved over to it as well and not one person regrets it.

 

[CAEDAN]

We support OpenCart sites in case you decide to go back to it. What one did you decide to use instead?

Thanks for the offer Paul, I have already removed it. I liked it alot, and really wanted to stick with it - but I then thought that it may be representative of the support if the shop went down at some point in the future. 6 WEEKS and no joy with a busy store wouldn't be aceptable.

Stick to Prestashop. It is the right choice

If you need any help with it feel free to give me a shout.

Cheers

Tim

Thanks Tim, expect a call when I get stuck! lol!

 

[magento-advisory-board-uk]

A good example of this, is the number of mobile usability modules available.

Whichever platform you chose, you HAVE to be able to process mobile device users these days... including tablets, minitablets, large smartphones and standard smartphones.

If you dont, your competitors who do, will get the customer, and the bad news is, that customer probably wont come back to you again.

 

[DavidBerryACMA]

Hi

Sorry to out a spanner in the works but I think everyone is jumping the gun here. Every post of about making tiny product comparisons. First and foremost what do you want your shopping cart to do. I assume you are not already selling on-line otherwise you will already have a favourite shoppingcart. To answer your questions, I would encourage you to think about how you are going to attract traffic and how you are going to convert traffic into leads into orders. All the software you mention allows customers to put items in a basket and pay. That's the easy part of running an ecommerce business and takes a couple of hours to develop. However, there are millions of ecommerce sites out there. How are you going to make sure your's attracts sales?