Best ecommerce for small start up

nino1

I am looking at the likes of shopify and magento to set up an ecommerce site.
The plan is to start small and build up.
Shopify seems a bit expensive for me as cash flow is a problem to begin.
I would be happy to pay more after year one.

Any recommendations for cheaper alternatives?
Magento?

If the business takes off as planned is it a major difficulty to change over to a better platform when finances allow?

Thanks

StupidLikeAFox

If you subscribe for a year with shopify you get a 10% discount. Only 25e a month, which includes hosting and SSL cert and performance wise it's top notch, 24/7 support. For 300 quid a year it's pretty good value

crkcvnirl

nino1 wrote: »

I am looking at the likes of shopify and magento to set up an ecommerce site.
The plan is to start small and build up.
Shopify seems a bit expensive for me as cash flow is a problem to begin.
I would be happy to pay more after year one.

Any recommendations for cheaper alternatives?
Magento?

If the business takes off as planned is it a major difficulty to change over to a better platform when finances allow?

Thanks

You'll need a web domain, hosting, an ssl cert and the estore software.

Depending on how tech savvy you are you could get a smart looking, full functional store with full stock control, invoicing, Sales/VAT reporting and payments gateway up and running for the €300 price point p/a.

With any store you opt for there will be work involved in setting up stock and bundled items.

There's a number of good stores available for free.

Feel free to PM me for pointers.

Regards

CeilingFly

Think of the Internet as a huge 50 story shopping centre.

The ground floor is taken up by Amazon.
First floor is the likes of Asos, Ocado and the likes.

Second floor to fifth floor are all major retailers with huge budgets.

6th to 10th floor are all good online stores with warehouses and professional pick and pack systems.


Then 11th to 20th are the individual stores with strong websites, good seo and a lot of experience (i'm in this section). This is a profitable area.

Then you have the higher floors and starting out you are on floor 50.

You have to create your journey to the lower floors and it can take a lot longer than you expect and its an awful lot harder than you can imagine. Online products have to be perfect. They have to be up to date. Obsolete product will have to be sold at a loss. "Free" shipping is demanded by many and has to be built in to your price.

But if you have the product and service and price point, you can get to the 20th floor and that's when you start making a decent profit but its hard work and you have to keep up with changes in technology and consumer behaviour.

Axwell

Do you have the skills to be able to setup and get Magento (or any other platform) up and running on your own?

Are you familiar with domain registrations, hosting, ssl certificates, themes for Magento, setting up all the products, CSV file imports, setting up categories, adding images, photo editing etc...

If no to any or most of those and assuming you dont want to pay someone to do it for you (which would cost a lot more than 300) then you are looking at using something like Shopify where a lot of the work is taken out of it and you can just focus on adding your products and categories and get up and running - that's worth the 300 for the first year to get you going.

As for in year 2 or 3 and moving to a better platform - you would be able to export customer lists, products and categories etc but you aren't going to just import that into another platform and hey presto it all works, there's still a lot of setup and customisation the same as there would be doing it day one so you shouldn't consider it like upgrading but more rebuilding a more robust and capable platform for what you need if that arises.

nino1

Thanks for the advise.

I have started a 21 day trial with shopify.

I am finding it extremely user friendly and is suitable for all my needs,
except one!

I need a small level of customisation with drop down menus such as in the picture i have attached here from another site.

Is it possible to get plug-ins or add-ons from shopify to add something similar to my shopify site?

Trojan

I think Shopify is a great place to start. After a few months you’ll have learned a lot about running a website and be in a better position to invest in a bespoke website if that's what you want to do. Here's a flow-chart infographic to help with figuring out which CMS.

For the prescription options, you're looking for a product options plugin, like this or this.

nino1

Trojan wrote: »

I think Shopify is a great place to start. After a few months you’ll have learned a lot about running a website and be in a better position to invest in a bespoke website if that's what you want to do. Here's a flow-chart infographic to help with figuring out which CMS.

For the prescription options, you're looking for a product options plugin, like this or this.

Are there any advantages to having an app with a monthly fee rather than getting a developer to set up same options for one off fee?

Axwell

nino1 wrote: »

Are there any advantages to having an app with a monthly fee rather than getting a developer to set up same options for one off fee?

Cheaper outlay at the start, ongoing support and maintenance included. But theres equally disadvantages too.

protelos

Shopify is your only man for this and should be for every first dip on Ecomm, the only exception being if you have a steady brick and mortar already. 

Magento is a mess, I would advice anyone even thinking of Magento to only think about it if you are doing 20 million in revenue and need very heavy customization. M1 is dying soon and M2 is going very far up stream after its recent acquisition by Adobe, plus you need to have a developer on hand to trouble shoot issues. Don't take my word for it, check out this excellent blog post below. 

https://www.ecommercefuel.com/shopify-vs-magento/

I will say this, Big Commerce has been a very impressive alternative and is a bit more open than Shopify. 

This app is pretty good, might do the trick: https://apps.shopify.com/product-options

sysprogrammer

I'd like to recommend Blacknight's solution , which I use myself.
Hosting €50 , and domain name .ie is €24

They have Wordpress available for free and I then installed the SalesZone plugin (which also installs WooCommerce and all the bits you need).

then it is the same as shopify , you upload your images , set your price and write a decent item description.

very quick and very easy to setup , for less than €100 , and as it is running on wordpress , there are a host of plugins to help with SEO.

hth, sysprog

StupidLikeAFox

Do you get SSL included with that also?

Axwell

Sysprog can confirm but I would imagine no as what he has mentioned above is not really a 'Blacknight Solution' as in some off the shelf package - unless something has changed recently. You can buy an ssl certificate separately (as with any host).

He is using them for hosting and the domain (but it could be any of a number of companies). The majority of hosting providers will have a wordpress autoinstaller which is the second part and then installing the SalesZone theme (its actually a theme as oppose to a plugin). But again here you could install any theme compatible with WooCommerce (which is pretty much the majority of them).

It is another option though as he outlined which is cheap to get up and running - basically setting up a WooCommerce store vs Shopify or Magento etc.

sysprogrammer

LikeAFox , yes SSL is €2.99 a month (2 euro 99 cent) which is great value.

<snip>

Axwell

Sys - hosting companies talk isnt allowed on boards going back years so have had to remove some of your post. Its why I was pointing out previously anything you mentioned is also available through plenty of other companies..

sysprogrammer

ah right , no problem Axwell. Having worked for a few of them I can well imagine the amount of mod'ing required.

It is fairly easy to setup an E-Commerce shop in about a day.
if I can help set anyone up them pm me (hope that's okay).

SysProg

scamalert

i see mention of some pretty expensive hosting solutions. Where money would be better spend on advertising etc.


almost every hosting company nowadays offers ssl certs e-commerce via wordpress and the likes, i did my own site for under 20e for first year thats including several domains to host domain name and ton of extra features, plus live support set up ssl. E-commerce is a bit tricky but if you hit developer forums or as above here people are willing to build site for little to none to get their portfolios.


one example is fiverr.com plenty of designers programmers willing to take up works, and youll get advice for invoicing etc, since if you start small its overkill to spend cash before getting sales up. keep simple spread sheet with names surnames addresses etc, which can basically be exported at later date to any database. if you need all in one solution and cant be bothered with doing some manual work then yeah stick to developed platforms.

Thou dont want to sound rude as im in IT so some stuff is simpler for me then other people might find.