Setting up an ecommerce site, complete beginner alert

Setting up an ecommerce site, complete beginner alert

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Discussion

mat13

Original Poster:

1,977 posts

180 months

Monday 14th April 2014
quotequote all
Right probably best if i start with a bit of background information. I have a reasonably successfull ebay store and am getting a bit tired of giving them and paypal a chunk of my profit. Also i have recently got my hands on a decent new product line that i really want to push and feel that a dedicated web store would be best for this.

So far ive seen two solutions that interest me, however i have never built a website before and would appreciate a bit of advice on how to go forward.

The first option im looking at is a virtual server on offer at register1, I believe the VDS pro package found here: https://www.register1.net/vds.php offers everything i need and seems to come with an ecommerce tool, would this mean i would simply have to upload a template and enter my product details and i would be away and trading? Also I believe that this solution would offer me more flexibilty in the future, such as multiple websites/stores?

The second option i have found is the pre made webstore from go daddy, it looks a lot simpler to set up, however it seems a lot more locked down and doesnt leave much room for future expansion.

Anybody got any words of wisdom? General advice or pointers towards products or services will be greatly appreciated!

rapidman

76 posts

145 months

Monday 14th April 2014
quotequote all
Use GoDaddy/Register1 for registration/hosting. For e-commerce software take a look at Shopify, Volusion or BigCommerce. Good all-in-one solutions with templates, plug-ins and room for SKU expansion. Magento Go may also be worth a look.

Edited by rapidman on Monday 14th April 17:59

mat13

Original Poster:

1,977 posts

180 months

Monday 14th April 2014
quotequote all
rapidman said:
Use GoDaddy/Register1 for registration/hosting. For e-commerce software take a look at Shopify, Volusion or BigCommerce. Good all-in-one solutions with templates, plug-ins and room for SKU expansion. Magento Go may also be worth a look.

Edited by rapidman on Monday 14th April 17:59
I just looked at shopify and they seem to offer an all in one solution, where they provide the hosting and everything, ideally i dont think i want to go down that route, i want my own hosting, is there a solution out there where i can just buy the necessary webstore/template and just upload it to my site?

cuneus

5,963 posts

241 months

Monday 14th April 2014
quotequote all
rapidman said:
Use GoDaddy/Register1 for registration/hosting.
DO NOT USE either of these

cuneus

5,963 posts

241 months

Monday 14th April 2014
quotequote all
mat13 said:
I just looked at shopify and they seem to offer an all in one solution, where they provide the hosting and everything, ideally i dont think i want to go down that route, i want my own hosting, is there a solution out there where i can just buy the necessary webstore/template and just upload it to my site?
Consider Opencart and Vidahost/Tsohost

morrisk1

630 posts

242 months

Monday 14th April 2014
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I'm setting up an ecommerce site myself right now.

Using my cloud hosting on Tsohost (already have a couple of sites there) with WordPress and Woocommerce. Theme from Themeforest.

All going very well so far.

mat13

Original Poster:

1,977 posts

180 months

Monday 14th April 2014
quotequote all
cuneus said:
DO NOT USE either of these
Any particular reason? I thought the owner of register1 was a respected PH member, thats part of the reason i looked at them.

jammy_basturd

29,775 posts

211 months

Monday 14th April 2014
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morrisk1 said:
I'm setting up an ecommerce site myself right now.

Using my cloud hosting on Tsohost (already have a couple of sites there) with WordPress and Woocommerce. Theme from Themeforest.

All going very well so far.
My advice for a beginner would be to do this. Wordpress (plus Woocommerce) and a template from ThemeForest will be much easier to set up than Magento, and easier and cheaper to expand with future developments.

VidaHost (same group as TSOHost) would be my suggestion. Their VidaCloud offering is super simple to use, offers 1 click installation of Magento or Wordpress and is only £10 a month. Register1 was bought out a few months back and is now awful. GoDaddy - you get what you pay for. Not bad, but not stellar customer service either.

cuneus

5,963 posts

241 months

Monday 14th April 2014
quotequote all
mat13 said:
cuneus said:
DO NOT USE either of these
Any particular reason? I thought the owner of register1 was a respected PH member, thats part of the reason i looked at them.
WAS being the operative word

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...

Jimmyr1983

6 posts

119 months

Monday 14th April 2014
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I have recently jump into ecommerce total novice and not having a clue, I have the opportunity to distribute electronic components via some of my industry contacts.

As a little test I thought I would setup a simple online store under my current employers name before working out if I can do it alone.

Before deciding what software to use I tried all the free ones and ending up going with Shopify.

It's really simple to use and has a great dashboard to navigate you around setting the shop up ect.

6 weeks in I have taken 5 new account customers, and about 10 web orders, not sure how much the accounts will turn into but credit card payment into have = around £1000.00

The thing with shopify is you need to buy the App's to get the shop running correctly, which start adding up. It takes a while to start moving up Google as well, I have tried an SEO app but Google has all changed and keywords just don't cut it anymore. Loads of content, blogs and twitter will start it moving up Google.

The hardest thing I have found with ecommerce is getting the customers, but it early days yet, I'm still building the store, adding products and sorting the wording out.

take a look www.nitronicsonline.co.uk

Still loads to do and sort out but I'm glad I went with shopify.


Bikerjon

2,202 posts

160 months

Tuesday 15th April 2014
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OP if you want to do all this yourself then I would just spend some time looking at shopify before you do anything else. It's true that you can do all this with your own hosting/wordpress themes which might save you a few quid, but unless you have prior experience in that area then it's perhaps not as easy as you might think.

V8mate

45,899 posts

188 months

Tuesday 15th April 2014
quotequote all
mat13 said:
Right probably best if i start with a bit of background information. I have a reasonably successfull ebay store and am getting a bit tired of giving them and paypal a chunk of my profit.
A lot of attention has been paid to the building of a site, but none to the first line of your OP.

I don't know what your eBay turnover is, but do take some time to 'do the sums' comparing your current trading approach with the costs of selling via your own site. On low (and even moderate turnovers) you'll find that the percentages and fixed fees charged by a merchant service amount to little different to PayPal. And you can consider hosting, maintenance etc of your own site as being the charge eBay makes to host your sales.

Do compare the two, leaving no costs of trading out of either model. If you're successfully finding customers on eBay, will you necessarily do any better being a lone website in a big sea of internet?

MrSparks

648 posts

119 months

Tuesday 15th April 2014
quotequote all
It is without doubt far cheaper to have your own website compared to eBay. The problem is getting customers to the site to buy things!! By the time you add in the cost of advertising, Adwords etc etc you can soon be up to, if not more than, the level of fees from eBay. Unless you are lucky in having a very niche site where people are more likely to find you in organic google searches (like my site biggrin) then it gets easier and less costly compared to eBay, but these niches still need adwords, other paid advertising etc to keep sales consistent and you still have to constantly fend off the competition. So whilst the site itself can cost peanuts, getting customers to the site and optimising the site to convert, costs a lot.

I'm not saying don't create your own site, definitely do it... but don't dismiss eBay due to fees, keep the store going and I'd highly recommend using something to centralise orders between the platforms like Linnworks or Openbay for Opencart.

FYI I use Opencart hosted with TSO Host and had previously used OpenBay to link with Ebay, it's great and I'll be going back to it shortly. Check out www.opencart.com and TSO Host has an automatic installer, makes it nice and easy!

Also check out www.ekmpowershop.com it's quite limited but has all the important features for a fixed monthly cost. I started my ecommerce venture here then progressed to Opencart.

Dave_ST220

10,288 posts

204 months

Wednesday 16th April 2014
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V8mate said:
mat13 said:
Right probably best if i start with a bit of background information. I have a reasonably successfull ebay store and am getting a bit tired of giving them and paypal a chunk of my profit.
A lot of attention has been paid to the building of a site, but none to the first line of your OP.

I don't know what your eBay turnover is, but do take some time to 'do the sums' comparing your current trading approach with the costs of selling via your own site. On low (and even moderate turnovers) you'll find that the percentages and fixed fees charged by a merchant service amount to little different to PayPal. And you can consider hosting, maintenance etc of your own site as being the charge eBay makes to host your sales.

Do compare the two, leaving no costs of trading out of either model. If you're successfully finding customers on eBay, will you necessarily do any better being a lone website in a big sea of internet?
THIS!! & forget Reg1, never understood why so many on here thought they were great. Go to Vidahost. But before you do any of that read the above. Ecom in the new land of Google is NOT easy. Been in this game for over 12 years now & it's never been harder. Google want more money & they are going to be making organic traffic harder & harder to come by. Oh, & lots of people will expect your site to accept Pay Pal, then you have to accept cards so more fees(& if on your site the fun & games of PCI compliance although with a good host like Vidahost that becomes very easy smile ) It ain't easy!!


Edited by Dave_ST220 on Wednesday 16th April 13:36

jammy_basturd

29,775 posts

211 months

Wednesday 16th April 2014
quotequote all
It depends what the OP's long term vision is.

For me, if I wanted to create a solid business then I would never rely on just one sales channel. Any online ecommerce business that wants to be sustainable and stable should have their own website, along with pushing products through a number of other sales channels, whether that is eBay, Amazon, distributors, etc.

CoolHands

18,496 posts

194 months

Tuesday 10th June 2014
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did you ever do this? I liked bigcommerce when I set something up before.