Wordpress? or Custom Build

woodenwonder

I've done a good bit of research on the type of website I need to develop. I have 2,500 products. I've been convinced by two people of different things. My gut instinct is telling me to go with word press but there's a doubting voice there too.
I expect to turnover €100,000 in year 1 and eventually build to €300,000. It's a seasonal business and my current website is just not up to scratch and I am losing sales on it.
It's a very competitive market and we make small margins roughly 10% so not huge profits to be made but I'm really going to try increase sales/margin is wordpress good enough for this?
The custom build for me gives a lack of flexibility in the future and the maintenance is a lot more expensive. And I also feel that I'm held to ransom by the person who developed the side. Whereas with wordpress I can move from one person to the next if the relationship doesn't work out.

Thanks in advance. Need to make decision this week. I know everyone has their own opinion but it's nice to hear from someone who is not trying to sell me something.

Goodshape

My gut reaction is, have you considered Shopify or a similar hosted solution? https://www.shopify.com/

It sounds like you want to sell products, not build, run, or manage a website. Even a WordPress site will require a large amount of customisation and could be difficult to maintain in the future.

Graham

Why restrict yourself to a WordPress/custom build choice?

Magento / OSCommerce / OpenCommerce are all dedicated e-commerce platforms with an active network of developers should you ever need to move. Hosted platforms are worth a look (e.g. Shopify) but they MAY get expensive, you'd need to do the maths before heading in that direction.

If by 'custom build' you're talking about someone creating an e-commerce platform for you from scratch, forget it unless you have some incredibly specific/bizarre requirements.

woodenwonder

I'm not stuck on wordpress at all, I was just using it as an example between that an custom. which one of ecommerce platforms do you think is best?
I believe magento is too expensive to run?
I want to manage the website myself so I get a thorough understanding of how it works and when I have a better understanding I will be able to try run it better to increase profitability. With my original site all I did was put the products up and expected them to sell. without actively managing the site I now know that is not going to work, as with all things you have to work for your €'s
Thanks for the tips.

Graham

woodenwonder wrote: »

which one of ecommerce platforms do you think is best?

Without understanding your requirements there's no way anyone can tell you which one is 'best'. Don't trust anyone that tells you otherwise.

woodenwonder wrote: »

I believe magento is too expensive to run?

I can't see why Magento would be any more expensive than any other self-hosted e-commerce solution.

woodenwonder wrote: »

I want to manage the website myself so I get a thorough understanding of how it works and when I have a better understanding I will be able to try run it better to increase profitability.

You can do that with any of the options, it all comes down to how much time you want to put into the tech side. If the budget allows, get at least the initial setup/configuration done professionally. If you're considering online advertising, get the ad tracking setup professionally too.

woodenwonder wrote: »

With my original site all I did was put the products up and expected them to sell. without actively managing the site I now know that is not going to work, as with all things you have to work for your €'s

I'm not sure what your expectations are for your future e-commerce system but reading between the lines it sounds like you might have some unrealistic hopes. Almost every modern e-commerce solution can be SEO friendly but after the initial setup that's it on the store side. Everything else you'll need to do to attract customers is going to be done outside of your chosen e-commerce platform.

I'll repeat that:

There is no e-commerce solution that's going to magically get you customers where your previous solution didn't.

woodenwonder

Graham wrote:

There is no e-commerce solution that's going to magically get you customers where your previous solution didn't.

Well my old platform was useless it often added items all our stock to a persons cart just as they were about to checkout! Sales decreased dramatically over the past few years and I let that happen because I didn't manage it properly!

VMotion

Most of our e-commerce clients run Magento or OpenCart. I can't see why you would consider Magento to be on expensive side. You would need quite a powerful server for that amount of products but there's nothing too complex there.

EdenStudios

The few guys I know developing in Magento are usually complaining about the complexity of both the platform and the templating engine.

I don't know your business but I'd recommend looking at something like Shopify.com.

L.Jenkins

I've looked into nopCommerce. Very easy to set up and it provides a good backend reporting system. The one thing I will say is, you require a Windows Server to run it with ease, Linux if you want to tear your hair out setting up mono based extensions for Apache.

EdenStudios

Was just thinking some more on this...

If you do decide on a custom-build because of the flexibility it offers, make sure your developer documents their stuff. You'll never have vendor lock-in if everything is documented clearly. Chances are your dev will be building this in PHP anyway. That's a pretty common programming language so nothing he builds will be truly proprietary.

If you do run with a custom build, ask your developer about integrating with a 3rd party shopping cart. I never understand why developers insist on building their own shopping cart when there are so many good, open source ones available.

For example, have a look at snipcart.com (not open source)

You could have your main site built bespoke and then plugin something like above. It's mobile friendly too as your whole site should be.