E-commerce

Hey everyone

I have a client who is thinking about selling their stock online and is looking into an e commerce site. They already have a pretty decent site but it's not got a great deal of content and no facility for selling. Their budget is also limited so i suggested having a shop as a kind of add on to their existing site rather than building a whole new store from scratch. Does anyone have recommendations for good e commerce platforms? I'm also not a web designer so i'm looking for something that is easily customisable and easy for the client to manage.

Thanks in advance!
 
One of the easiest options would have to be Woo-Commerce, it integrates directly with Word Press and has an absolute ton of content and plugins available. It's free but they reserve some functionality for paid plugins, but you can really do a lot for very little, depending on your clients requirements. What is their site built with at the moment? Got a link?
If they're looking at having an e-commerce website then it's really best to get someone that knows what they're doing. There are a lot of security requirements that need to be taken care of when dealing with sites like this. I wouldn't recommend stumbling into this kind of thing without knowing what you're doing. There are other options available of course, but it depends on what level of e-commerce they want, presumably with a small budget they won't need a whole lot. How many products are they looking to sell, roughly?
 
Hey Sean

Thanks i'll check out Woo Commerce. I understand the security concerns and am the first to admit i'm not a web designer so if they choose to go with a full e-commerce site i will definitely pass it on to someone who knows what they're doing! I'm just looking into pre made options as they are saying money is an issue so i think this may be all they're willing to pay for. I have a very basic coding knowledge so if i can find the right platform i may be able to adapt it for them. The client is a family run chocolate company, their product range is fairly small. I think they'll be selling about 30 products and don't want anything too complicated.
 
Thanks Sean, i was considering Shopify, that is a helpful read. Also mentions Squarespace and i didn't realise they now offer e commerce so i'll look into that too.
 
I wouldn't use Shopify. Tried it before and hated it. WooCommerce is an awesome option :)
 
I wouldn't use it either, but a budget is a budget and some people just don't have the funds for their own e-commerce site.
Saying that, I think in a lot of instances people just don't understand the differences between something like Shopify and a proper Woo Commerce site, I think a lot of it comes down to how much value they believe that an e-commerce site can bring them. For small businesses it's quite a risk and a lot aren't willing to take it because the business is supporting their family and lifestyle. They need to though, because otherwise their business is not going to grow. If they're worried about making a £5/6/700 investment on something this important, perhaps they need to re-evaluate their priorities, adopt a more successful and lucrative business model or really gauge whether there is enough demand for their product/service to make their business a viable option.
I hope the project goes well Florio, whatever they decide :)
 
I know nothing of WooCommerce but in terms of a user-friendly back end I've found Shopify to be far superior to Volusion for the non tech savvy client. Also, I would recommend avoiding OSCommerce.
 
Sean Lee-Amies said:
There are a lot of security requirements that need to be taken care of when dealing with sites like this. I wouldn't recommend stumbling into this kind of thing without knowing what you're doing. There are other options available of course, but it depends on what level of e-commerce they want, presumably with a small budget they won't need a whole lot. How many products are they looking to sell, roughly?
Does Woo-Commerce offer security? I'm looking for something that's not too much of a headache to set up :)
Thanks
 
iDesign said:
Does Woo-Commerce offer security? I'm looking for something that's not too much of a headache to set up :)
Depends on what you're looking for security wise? Normally all in the WP install.
 
Tony Hardy said:
Depends on what you're looking for security wise? Normally all in the WP install.
Woo-Commerce comes with a little bit of security built in, but there are a number of other plug-ins available that you should really be installing to make everything as secure as it needs to be, you will also have to purchase and set up an SSL Certificate for an e-commerce site. All of which we can discuss in greater detail over e-mail or phone if you want :)
 
Although, don't install tons of plugins. Effects site speed and you can do a lot of plugin type stuff without them.
 
If they have an existing site that's not WordPress and they only have a few products then a PayPal checkout can be implemented with little/no coding knowledge which could be a good place to start if they don't want to invest a lot of time/money.
A little more advanced 'FoxyCart' will integrate into existing websites and allows you to do a lot more but it does cost about £9 a month.
I've heard good things about WooCommerce and I'm thinking about using it myself on an upcoming project that I'm working on with Tony, so if you're going down the WordPress route, it's definitely worth looking at.
 
I've got a new client who I was going to steer down the Shopify route but now I'm having second thoughts.
Advantages of WooCommerce: No subscription + all the benefits of WP
Advantages of Shopify: No SSL subscription, can integrate into any website, no hosting required
Can you (easily) integrate Woo into any WP theme or do you need to use on of theirs?
 
Hi Wac,
WooCommerce is compatible with all WP themes by default. How easy it is to integrate it depends entirely on how robust the theme is and how capable you are, of course.
Just on the subject of Shopify SSL subscriptions, they literally cost about £50 a year for a single site certificate, it's not a huge cost, and in regards to not needing any hosting, you'll still need to pay for hosting if you want an e-commerce website they don't give it to you for free or anything!
 
wac said:
Can you (easily) integrate Woo into any WP theme or do you need to use on of theirs?

It goes into a lot of themes really easily. What you want to read is this link. However, if you're simply choosing a theme and skinning it that way, for the sake of ease, I'd choose one of the already compatible themes. There are loads of them on Themeforest too, not just the Woo site!

I hated my Shopify experience. Hated every single second of it.
There's something to be said for putting your code together from scratch (with the help of the odd plugin - Woo for example - don't try and build an e-comm solution from scratch, unless you're a maniac!)
 
If their budget is low then go to Shopify or you can build the e-commerce website with WIX. They both have ultimate feature with low cost budgets.
 
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