New ecommerce solution - help and advice needed

[Kal]

Hello Everyone,

can anyone advise please; I have a templated site with a company but I'm getting increasingly frustrated by their behaviour and may need to look for an alternative solution. I've looked at ekempowershop but does anyone have any experience of using them or suggest any one else? Also what effect would a change over have?

Thanks very much,

Kal

 

[mikeyred]

Hello Everyone,

can anyone advise please; I have a templated site with a company but I'm getting increasingly frustrated by their behaviour and may need to look for an alternative solution. I've looked at ekempowershop but does anyone have any experience of using them or suggest any one else? Also what effect would a change over have?

Hi, I would recommend the outfit I am with called Bluepark. I have used them for over a year now and they are very good with Rich (software engineer) at the helm to help you with your integration and any questions, they have default templates for you to customise or you can transfer in yours. If you pm me I will send you all the details as I am a newbie on this forum and cant post links.... It will be well worth a phone call to speak with them.

 

[imageonline]

Hi Kal

You could try talking to Andrew at www.puresilva.com I have moved my site there and am very happy. The switch over was all done for me and I did not loose any google rankings, sales have also shot up. It comes with a blog and forum option included, also if you have an ebay shop, you can upload all ebay stock to the website by the click of a button and have auto stock control. Lots of info on the site that might help.

 

[webhostuk]

Hello Everyone,

can anyone advise please; I have a templated site with a company but I'm getting increasingly frustrated by their behaviour and may need to look for an alternative solution. I've looked at ekempowershop but does anyone have any experience of using them or suggest any one else? Also what effect would a change over have?

Thanks very much,

Kal

Is the website template thats causing you the problem or site downtime?

 

[sanjiv]

I can create an E-Commerce website for you. Link it in with a payment gateway. Add all your products. Promote it. WIll cost you less than these pre-made ones are charging. Send me a message if you are interested.

 

[Kal]

A big thank you for your replies, I'm very grateful and will be looking at all the suggestions.

If you look at my site; kalsreturnjewellery.co.uk you will immediately see what's wrong and it's work that the company I'm with have made promise after promise over along period of time to put right. It's all come to a bit of a head because my partner has just been made redundant completely out of the blue and I have been a full time mum for the last 3 years, just keeping my business ticking over. Well now | need to get moving again asap but money is extremely tight which is why I'm looking to get another templated site.

Has anyone got experience of ekempowershop?

Thank you again,

Kal

 

[snakeeyes121]

I would recommend cs-cart.com the default templates are very good and easy to customise, it does just about everything anybody would need.

they have a demo if you want to check it out.
store front demo http://demo.cs-cart.com/
admin demo http://demo.cs-cart.com/admin.php

In the long run ekmpowershop or any other hosted site is going to work out a lot more expencive.

cs-cart licences can be bought for £140 - £150 from resellers, then you have your hosting on top which shouldnt cost more than £10 a month.

For the price I think its quite impressive.

 

[ICEY]

It depends on how many products you have! EKM is a great entry level ecommerce package - it can be easily customised and has a great range of features for its price.

However, it is very time consuming to add products and it is for that reason I moved two out of three sites away from them to Bluepark.

Bluepark has a wealth of features that you don't find with a lot of the on the shelf packages, including built in live chat, RSS feeds, integrated newsletters, wish lists, loyalty point schemes and the enterprise edition also integrates with quickbooks.

I am not knocking ekm - I had three great years with them (and continue to do so) and would whole heartedly recommend them to new start up businesses but if you want a little "more" then Bluepark definately gives that - actually it gives a lot more!

 

[sanjiv]

I think that these off the shelf hosted solutions are not the best way to go. They lack customisability and are not unique. Best thing is to get a designer and a normal web host.

 

[mikeyred]

Bluepark has a wealth of features that you don't find with a lot of the on the shelf packages, including built in live chat, RSS feeds, integrated newsletters, wish lists, loyalty point schemes and the enterprise edition also integrates with quickbooks.

I am not knocking ekm - I had three great years with them (and continue to do so) and would whole heartedly recommend them to new start up businesses but if you want a little "more" then Bluepark definitely gives that - actually it gives a lot more!

Hi Icey,

Glad to see you are singing Bluepark praises as well, have PM'ed Kal earlier in the week, as far as customising goes, if you can html you can go as far as you like, but Rich has developed so many variants in house that it is great for the beginner but as you grow in knowledge so can the site, I was a beginner, still am really but have learnt a lot through the support at Bluepark & Rich (the patience of a saint, especially with me) - all singing and all dancing, probably the most underrated setup out there at the moment - now must get back to the bluepark forum so I can wind Dave up

 

[ICEY]

all singing and all dancing, probably the most underrated setup out there at the moment

Absolutely agree with this.

It feels like I learn something new about the system every single day.

 

[vipulmalhotra]

For ecommerce websites with paypal or payment gateway you can contact gingerwebs.com for best and unique designs

 

[Kal]

Just to say a big 'thank you' for all your replies, suggestions and help. It's greatly appreciated!

Best wishes,

Kal

 

[mud-stx]

Hi Kal,

Out of the e-commerce packages out there, EKM is the best one that we have come across. We have used several and none are as good as the EKM Powershop (in my opinion).
We currently use EKM for all of our clients now (those that need it!). For the reason that they are easy to use, manage and update. You can customise them to your preference and optimise them very successfully.
That is from our prospective and from the clients prospective it is the same plus they get to see all the analytics very easily themselves and add new products just as easily.

Just had a quick look at your current one and no offence but it's quite poor!! (and that is being extremely polite :redface Do you know you have questionable links that could be frowned upon by Google?
There's loads of things I could point out that are wrong with your site, and I'm sure you are aware of a few of them yourself. If you want to do something about this then you can PM me if you want.

At the end of the day it's up to you Kal what you wish to do and I do hope you do find what it is you're looking for, I just thought i'd add my two pence worth!!

 

[Kal]

I thought I'd got to the stage in my life where I couldn't be easily shocked but this morning I have received quite a long email giving me SEO advice from a person whom I assume is the owner of the site he sent a link to, selling 'legal' drugs. I'm sorry if I offend but I really don't need to hear from you again. When I replied to your unsigned thread, I had no idea this is what you do for a living.

May be I'm too nieve but being a mother, the whole thought that someones' son or daughter could one day destroy not only their life abut also their family life by getting involved in this kind of crap just leaves me cold.

Kal

 

[Davef]

I think that these off the shelf hosted solutions are not the best way to go. They lack customisability and are not unique. Best thing is to get a designer and a normal web host.

Sorry Sanjiv but I have to disagree with this comment. For individuals and small businesses a Hosted Solution can be the best way to go.

You don't have to worry about getting hosting, installing and configuring the software, backups, support and updates etc and for those wanting to get on with building their websites without needing any technical knowledge a Hosted Solution is the best way to go.

There are many to choose from including Bluepark, Volusion, Big Commerce, LiquidShop Etc and you can change the templates, buttons, logos etc quite easily to give the website a different look from the standard templates.

All of these solutions allow data to be exported so should the unthinkable happen it should be fairly easy to be back up and running with another solution fairly quickly.

For those who are more technical and enjoy setting up their own hosting, installing the software, tinkering and looking for add-ons for features not included then solutions like Magento are a good alternative.

Why build something from scratch when there are feature rich packages out there to choose from. It makes no sense to me!

 

[Davef]

now must get back to the bluepark forum so I can wind Dave up

Blimey Mike you are turning into a bit of a stalker Can't I go anywhere now without you following me?

 

[mikeyred]

Blimey Mike you are turning into a bit of a stalker Can't I go anywhere now without you following me?

who me....... naaaaaa!..... where you off to next, tell me, go on tell me, tell me......

 

[mikeyred]

May be I'm too nieve but being a mother, the whole thought that someones' son or daughter could one day destroy not only their life abut also their family life by getting involved in this kind of crap just leaves me cold.
Kal

Hi Kal,
Sorry to hear that but unfortunately it is a sign of the times, some harvester has got your email and then the crap begins. Junk mail filters will help to a certain degree but the drug ones are very clever in getting round that by purporting to be something else, so its very difficult. You may find that the email address is an innocent that has just been cloned, another thing we can do nothing about.

Best of luck with keeping it in check.

 

[sanjiv]

Sorry Sanjiv but I have to disagree with this comment. For individuals and small businesses a Hosted Solution can be the best way to go.

You don't have to worry about getting hosting, installing and configuring the software, backups, support and updates etc and for those wanting to get on with building their websites without needing any technical knowledge a Hosted Solution is the best way to go.

There are many to choose from including Bluepark, Volusion, Big Commerce, LiquidShop Etc and you can change the templates, buttons, logos etc quite easily to give the website a different look from the standard templates.

All of these solutions allow data to be exported so should the unthinkable happen it should be fairly easy to be back up and running with another solution fairly quickly.

For those who are more technical and enjoy setting up their own hosting, installing the software, tinkering and looking for add-ons for features not included then solutions like Magento are a good alternative.

Why build something from scratch when there are feature rich packages out there to choose from. It makes no sense to me!

All very good points but if/when the company grows or if it is big already, the designed one would be better because of more customisability and options. The hosted solutions can work out more expensive in the long run too.

If you are just starting up or testing the market, then go hosted unless you have the skills yourself.