Shopify vs website

[Gmehat]

so I'm setting up an online shop to sell t shirts
I will be advertising through Facebook.

Which do you think is better

Getting own website or using shoplify?

 

[boring-friday]

I actually really like shopify only problem is they can stick their fees up whenever so I'd go with your own website.

Wordpress+woocommerce simple

 

[GeoMal]

Have a read about a drop shipping t-shirt business at http://uxtees.co.uk/blogs/news/17298593-how-i-built-an-online-ux-t-shirt-business-in-24-hours. Not sure if there is an equivalent of Printful in the UK?

 

[Gmehat]

I know about many drop shipping t shirt businesses I was thinking of doing it my self but I wasn't too sure weather or not it's the right way to go about it?

I thought customers would rather have next day delivery rather than 2-4 week delivery?

 

[Gmehat]

The t shirts I'm doing are 3D t shirts so the designs tends to be all over. I haven't heard of this printful? What is it

 

[Bradley Holmes]

If you are pretty confident in your computer skills, you can make your own online shop using something like prestashop or wordpress + woocommerce. While this would be harder than using shopify you are more in control of the final product.

 

[webhostuk]

You own website is always better if you are having long term business plans.

 

[Dan_HiHosting]

Yes, we're obviously biased against Shopify as a solution, but the main criticisms of it stand up.

If you make your own site on a popular platform such as WordPress, or get your host/designer to make it for you, and get your own hosting, then you're in full control.

Your design and hosting aren't permanently tied together, so you if you need to reduce cost in the future, or upgrade performance that's no problem and you'll have plenty of choice.

Likewise you can also start by building the site yourself, and then get a professional to take what you've made and take it to the next level in a couple of years for example, once the business has taken off.

To do that with Shopify you'd have to start again, so it doesn't scale in the same way. The ongoing costs for what you get are also really quite high.

WordPress + WooCommerce would suit an image/detail heavy online shop for selling t-shirts very well I think.

I'm guessing by 3D t-shirts you mean dye sublimation printing like this:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cody-Lundin-Compression-Captain-Avengers/dp/B013YPHNRU

I don't know of any dropship/all in one t-shirt printing options that do this.

I'd recommend some good quality UK eCommerce hosting. You can get WordPress installed for you, and add WooCommerce. You can then also get an SSL certificate installed for you for SEO benefit and to improve visitor confidence.

Some hosts will provide a management option so you can have it all set up for you with some dummy pages to build the site yourself, or you can have the base website made for you as well.

I imagine Printerest and Instagram would be good channels to drive traffic as well, depending on your target market and audience.

I hope that helps.

If you have any questions feel free to get in touch.

All the best,

Dan

 

[Annie Starks]

I'm for Wordpress+WooCommerce. Easy to manage and install, and a lot of different themes you can buy and customize for your needs. I've done it myself for clients and got positive feedbacks.

 

[RichardfromOquile]

Why not your own website which is integrated with Shopify?
This means you can have your own site and only use Shopify once someone clicks "buy". This means you don't have to deal with the banks and charges yourself as this is done by Shopify. It also means you are not tied to them and, as you grow, can choose to do it all in house or with a different provider.

 

[justinaldridge]

You can run shopify on your own domain, you don't have to run it using a shopify domain. At the end of the day the value is in the domain and not the website. You can change the website at any point.

We have clients that use it and it's really very good. Very easy to set up and run.

I would happily recommend it to someone who wants to do it it themselves. You do get good support too.

 

[Gmehat]

What are you reccomending here?

I've decided to stick to eBay for now as I don't have the funds to make a website as I would want it professionally done. I've got a whole new product range in on my eBay which hasn't really been tested. I haven't sold many items at all to be hon est so it's a big risk. I'm hoping it will pick up once January is out the way and I've made my eBay store more user friendly. :/

 

[nona24]

I do my sites manually on C# ASP and I strongly recommend create your own platform because you have a full control on it, sure it's require a lot of money and time but it's long term game with success. But before create a new site test it with Shopify and Adwords

 

[Annie Starks]

I do my sites manually on C# ASP and I strongly recommend create your own platform

I guess he doesn't have dev skills for that... read all the thread carefully before give advice

 

[DD-Matthew]

As mentioned above you plan to turn this into a long term business then I would recommend your own website, you can always get a basic website and build from the ground up.

- Matthew

 

[Costa Del Digital]

Shopify is good for testing the water, could potentially cause brand damage in some circumstances, depends on your vision. Have a look at teespring.com I haven't looked into the deal properly but have heard seemingly honest reports of people making £300,000 per year. I didn't believe this so looked into it a tiny bit more to find teespring is worth $56m, leading me to believe that those using it must be generating pretty good cash! In fact, those making 300k are actually using eBay as a research tool to identify current trends and then make their own similar modifications and make the sales. So potentially if you make a new t-shirt and sell loads, you may never know it but some big player out there could copy you and cash in big with the right social media marketing.

Give me a shout if you want an e-commerce website very cheap, mobile and table friendly, fully SEO optimised and even multilingual if you want to target more of your best selling regions or novelty's based on demographics. I can facilitate your making decent money with e-commerce solutions!

Good luck!!

Costa Del Digital .com

 

[Annie Starks]

By the way, I've remembered about your issue while surfing the web for quality themes. Just in case you will decide to make a separate website to sell T-shirts, look through these ones - http://www.templatemonster.com/category/t-shirts-shopify-themes/ I don't know about inside features, but I like design.

 

[Gmehat]

Well it went all pretty bad for me I decided to get a website built on eBay, which I got done via frootition. Paid £1300 and I haven't been making any money on it since. What a waste of money

I've now swapped to selling ex stock (branded items) I've listed on eBay but it's only been up for a few days. I've had good success on local Facebook selling sites with these adidas trainers I have until I got banned as they think I'm selling fake goods. I'm in a pretty deep mess

 

[Alex July]

I would personally recommend Shopify. With woo commerce + wordpress you would have to get technical support if something were to go wrong and that downtime could be far more detrimental to you reputation, unless of course your support level agreement is high priority but this usually comes at a cost. Factor having to keep wordpress up to date and suddenly the subscription charge for shopify starts to look more attractive.
Full disclosure I am a developer by trade, whereas a magento store is the defacto go to when you have grown and are seeing significant load it isn't something that has to be done from the outset.

 

[Gmehat]

So would you say shopify would be better than trying to build my own website from scratch? I don't really want to pay out a grand at once like before again... For one I can't really afford it either lol

 

[Alex July]

Depends on your skill level, I think a lot of the templates available for Shopify are of exemplary quality and would be very hard for even the most seasoned of professional developers to replicate at the price they are offered. They will get you 90% there, and allows you to spend your time / budget on marketing and getting people onto the site, which is the ultimate end goal. They are already optimised for conversions (ie. the most efficient flow from casual browsing to a sale and thus a happy customer), you wont have to sit there considering the finer details about responsive grids, mobile readiness or any cross browser testing and the impact not having this all perfect will have had on the traffic you have worked to achieve.
Don't get me wrong, I think wordpress ecomms sites do have their place, but I think the time in this particular instance may be best spent on traffic generation for your store, and its loyal customer base. When it grows and you have some more money to put towards a truly bespoke solution, which I'm sure you are aware to be done properly is not an insignificant amount of money and cutting corners generally leads to disappointment it will give you the benefit of having an established revenue stream to fund that development.

 

[TLMartin]

I'd say get your own package, but with a managed service

I have dealt with a number of people using only amazon and ebay who get charged huge fees for listings and sales percentages. I have done them opencart shop systems, but as it's my server I look after all the technical aspects for them. Help them get set up as part of the package, customise it.

Once its up and running its pretty stable, the risk is minimised as they don't have to look after the hosting element, I do that.... so that could be a comparable system

 

[Gmehat]

How much would you be looking at that sort of thing? Money is tight at the moment lol

 

[TLMartin]

I've messaged you with a conversation outlining the information you requested

 

[Idosell Shop]

Why not your own website which is integrated with Shopify?
This means you can have your own site and only use Shopify once someone clicks "buy". This means you don't have to deal with the banks and charges yourself as this is done by Shopify. It also means you are not tied to them and, as you grow, can choose to do it all in the house or with a different provider.

All-in-one works better- you always got a better offer by the bundle. Stand-alone is perfect in case you have the budget to be burned, resources to be utilized. Having neither the first nor second - I would go for Saas. The main scope of business is selling not software development.