Recommended e commerce provider

[ben9090]

Hi
I run an ebay business and have been trading for around a year solely on ebay. We turnover around 3-4k per month with an average transaction of about £20-£50. I only sell 4 or 5 products.
Due to going on holiday for 3 weeks in summer and losing our modest discounts, then having a very strong September I spent well over £600+ last month on ebay and PayPal.
For this sort of trading level what shopping cart builder software would people recommend. I'd like to retain a presence on PayPal so need integration on stock but I'm hoping I can offer the prospect cheaper via my own website.
I was always put off by the cost for a simple business but £600 on ebay is getting too much!!
Thanks all

 

[LMDServicesUK]

Hi
I run an ebay business and have been trading for around a year solely on ebay. We turnover around 3-4k per month with an average transaction of about £20-£50. I only sell 4 or 5 products.
Due to going on holiday for 3 weeks in summer and losing our modest discounts, then having a very strong September I spent well over £600+ last month on ebay and PayPal.
For this sort of trading level what shopping cart builder software would people recommend. I'd like to retain a presence on PayPal so need integration on stock but I'm hoping I can offer the prospect cheaper via my own website.
I was always put off by the cost for a simple business but £600 on ebay is getting too much!!
Thanks all

Hi Ben


I guess it all depends on your appetite for doing the website build / how much time can you put in ? There are a lot of very good ecomm shopping carts around now as other members will advise you, but if you can stand the additional investment then I would look at someone who can demonstrate what they have done for other businesses thus demonstrating their skills and build quality.

It will make your site look professional and appealing if it has been designed around your business and what you want it to look like..

I can happily provide you a quality payment gateway and Merchant account, but I leave others to advise you as to who has the best shopping cart s/w !

Good luck and if you want some indicative pricing please PM me.

Mark

 

[OSWS]

Hi
I run an ebay business and have been trading for around a year solely on ebay. We turnover around 3-4k per month with an average transaction of about £20-£50. I only sell 4 or 5 products.
Due to going on holiday for 3 weeks in summer and losing our modest discounts, then having a very strong September I spent well over £600+ last month on ebay and PayPal.
For this sort of trading level what shopping cart builder software would people recommend. I'd like to retain a presence on PayPal so need integration on stock but I'm hoping I can offer the prospect cheaper via my own website.
I was always put off by the cost for a simple business but £600 on ebay is getting too much!!
Thanks all

I would echo LMDServicesUK's comments. Are you looking at hosted eCommerce (pre-built stores) or self-managed (e.g. Magento, Opencart type) ? For hosted eCommerce you are looking at around £20-£25/month (plus design modification, if not doing this yourself.). For open-source, cost really depends on developer quotes if not setting up the system yourself.

 

[antropy]

Keep selling on eBay but set up your own website in parallel.

The latest OpenCart can sync stock and automatically list on ebay so is definitely worth a look:
http://www.antropy.co.uk/blog/latest-opencart-1-5-6-connects-to-ebay-amazon-and-play/

 

[jamesosix]

yeah you may feel you are paying a lot in fees, but ebay does generally have the big amounts of traffic and exposure, that you ordinarily wouldn't get on your own site unless you market the backside of it and PPC campaigns etc.

 

[dineshkumartec]

Hi
I run an ebay business and have been trading for around a year solely on ebay. We turnover around 3-4k per month with an average transaction of about £20-£50. I only sell 4 or 5 products.
Due to going on holiday for 3 weeks in summer and losing our modest discounts, then having a very strong September I spent well over £600+ last month on ebay and PayPal.
For this sort of trading level what shopping cart builder software would people recommend. I'd like to retain a presence on PayPal so need integration on stock but I'm hoping I can offer the prospect cheaper via my own website.
I was always put off by the cost for a simple business but £600 on ebay is getting too much!!
Thanks all

set up your own website in parallel. I recommend our friend concern, they are doing E - Shopping Portal depends upon your needs at reasonable cost.

Features Include,

Product Catalogue Management, Customer Management, Order Management, Payment Transaction Management and Security Management.

If you want to see the product, Free Demo: sales(at)smtechnologies(dot)co(dot)in

I think so, it is useful for you.

 

[webhostuk]

Why not built your own store site ... you can try Magento ,prestashop , Zencard and try selling on your own site.

 

[serpyre]

What you can do is use a tool such as Magento CE and use M2EPro to auto sync between eBay, best of both worlds, just be careful of the implementation time with Magento. Most will quote weeks and take it to months, a store can be running in hours to days with core functionality. The simple approach is take 5% of your revenue as your IT budget.

 

[finleydesign]

We have done a number of transfers from Ebay to full ecommerce with our clients gaining significant results and less outgoings, you can PM me if you want to chat in more detail on costs etc

We also include a system which allows you to auto post to ebay if you wanted to retain some form of presence with them

 

[adamo]

I'd just like to repeat what others have said about OpenCart - great platform, and as it's open-source, you only need to pay for web hosting. eBay syncing is a bonus too if you need it.

 

[Josh_Geneva_Digital]

Hi Ben,

You have A LOT of choices when it comes to your next step.

You can go to the bottom end of Ecommerce and join something like Shopify or Bigcommerce. Really cheap but limited functionality, limited design options. Also if you're cheap with your business prospects may feel you'll be cheap with them?

Or

You can use an agency, like ourselves and there are thousands of us. My advice to you would be that building an Ecommerce store will not make you sales. If you have a £15,000 budget for example, use £10k to build a beautiful site that's future proof (Responsive design etc.) then use your remaining £5k for marketing to drive some more clients to the site.

If you need anymore advice or want to have a look at one of our Demo stores, we can even give you access to the CMS to have a look around. Just let me know.

 

[North Wales Inks]

I use cubecart for my Ecommerce shop and find it one of the better software on the market

 

[cornish hosting]

I would recommend Joomla or open cart both very good and will sync with Ebay.

 

[Paul Norman]

You do indeed have many choices. And it is important that you make those choices in a way that suits you.

A decent e-commerce provider will want to sit down and discuss your needs with you before they even want to quote you a price.

You can ask them whether they will be simply building a site, or advising and supporting your business in addition. That will cost more, and may not be something you need.

For us, at Soleheaven, as online is 80% of our business, we invest heavily, and constantly, in ecommerce. We invest in the website, in the software behind the site, and in a big range of online marketing endeavours.

I also own the company that built the website, hence I am not able to make an objective recommendation here (although obviously I am happy with our site), but I do counsel against under investing in what could be your most important route to market

 

[praveenchandra]

Today, Many of them are approaching the online source to start a new business or continues the old business with latest updates. So, Knowing the benefits and approaching methods about online sources for a business is an important key to get the successful results.

Powerful and easy to use all-in-one shopping cart software is the ideal eCommerce solution for you if you are a small to medium sized business who wants to be in control of their online business. With that, Create complete websites and online stores for your own use or for others using the best and most flexible store builder. Here, I mentioned some of the points which are taken care before the purchasing a shopping cart business software.
(1) Technical ability : It must equipped with great amount of technical benefits helps fulfill the needs with cost effective manner and less time taken process
(2) Ease of use : It will also save the time and concentrates more on business.
(3) Regular Updates: Regular updates about the software will makes the user well aware with the latest facilities.

 

[kistenjones]

Nowadays BigCommerce is very powerful online shopping cart for eCommerce business. It would be helpful to implement your store with his features. payment processor, advice and assistance everything amazing.

 

[AdamSharpe]

We've had very good feedback about the following ecommerce platforms - Magento,
Shopify, Cube Cart, WordPress, Presta Shop, OS Commerce, Zen Cart, Lemon
Stand, HikaShop, Open Cart, Uber cart, Tomato Cart, Virtuemart and X Cart - and I'm sure there are many more...
However like many have said before, it really does depend on what you require and whether you wish to build something a little more bespoke vs an off the shelf platform.
You may also wish to consider which of these options is easiest to integrate your chosen Payment Gateway, as this can be a large undertaking if the work needs to be completed from scratch. Many Payment Gateways will have purpose developed modules on offer for ease of integration and there is a huge open source community out there with further Payment Gateway knowledge to share.
Happy researching and if you require any assistance with Merchant Accounts or Payment Processing, please bear us in mind.

Cardstream Payment Gateway
0845 00 99 575

 

[antropy]

We've had very good feedback about the following ecommerce platforms - Magento, Shopify, Cube Cart, WordPress, Presta Shop, OS Commerce, Zen Cart, LemonStand, HikaShop, Open Cart, Ubercart, Tomato Cart, Virtuemart and X Cart - and I'm sure there are many more...

Thanks for narrowing it down

 

[AdamSharpe]

Haha...sorry! Just giving you some choice...almost as bad as going to the supermarket!

Cardstream Payment Gateway

 

[Estelle Page]

BT - cheap, easy and eBay integration

 

[Sports Trophy Co]

Recent adjustments by Google have highlighted eBay shops and increased traffic accordingly. You could set up an e-commerce shop and then be in competition with eBay for orders from organic searches.