e-commerce solution
Discussion
jammy_basturd said:
Can you give us a bit more information about what you need?
What sort of products/services do you have? Configurable products? Many of the same products but in different sizes, colours, etc? Products made up of other products or other optional products? Any digital products?
How about customers? Only UK based? EU, international? Different customer groups (retail, trade, etc)?
Any particular features you need with the website, product videos, particular filter options, slick checkout, particular payment methods, etc?
Thanks, those are the sort of questions I needed to be asked! What sort of products/services do you have? Configurable products? Many of the same products but in different sizes, colours, etc? Products made up of other products or other optional products? Any digital products?
How about customers? Only UK based? EU, international? Different customer groups (retail, trade, etc)?
Any particular features you need with the website, product videos, particular filter options, slick checkout, particular payment methods, etc?
Product wise it's software. 2 levels, main and basic, but with a sliding scale in cost when more or bought. So first one costs X, 2 and 3 cost Y, 4 - 6 cost Z etc etc
It's global, with a main focus in the US. Just one single customer group, we sell to them, nobody else in the middle.
We have a website that hosts everything else, but in the past we've only done direct sales and whilst the new owners discuss a larger role out, one product needs something that can be setup quickly to capture user data and take payment.
jonamv8 said:
How technical are you? Do you know Wordpress for example? Can you code at all? Are you happy to give away a slice to a provider of the solution.
We need to know more
We have a website already, and we have a few javascript guys kicking around, but we don't want to include the devs in this, it's something that needs to be plug and play as we will replace it in 6 months We need to know more
jammy_basturd said:
Dejay1788 said:
Shopify is incredibly easy to set up and starts off cheaply. You can get a store up and running over a weekend.
But then you're locked in and if you're successful it starts to get expensive.veevee said:
I don't like their commission fees, but IME, all in all, it costs about the same as self-hosting an equivalent site.
What do you term as the commission fees? Is there anything beyond the prices outlined here that I should be aware of?https://www.shopify.co.uk/pricing
The transaction fees, is this what you mean as commission?
jammy_basturd said:
Yea, I've just reminded myself of their pricing structure and it's not so bad any more. Last time I looked I'm sure their payment fees were higher which made large stores expensive.
We are high cost and low volume, so the 20p per transaction isn't a worry. We currently pay 3% if we have a client paying by CC over the phonejammy_basturd said:
There's certainly no reason why you couldn't and there are a couple of extensions out there that do it ( this one seems quite comprehensive). I imagine there would be a couple of key differences, but it'll certainly get you up and running. It's not something I've had to do yet though.
Whether Magento is the next step on from Shopify...
One of the big things for me about Shopify is that if it's your core business and you become successful, the key part of your business is never an asset owned by your company. You never own the IP, the code, so any value in your company is only from your profit margin and customer database.
You're also at the mercy of Shopify - in a few years when they own a massive share of the ecommerce market and put up their prices or change their T&Cs...
I think Magento becomes the next step as soon as you want more control over exactly how key parts of the site work (searching, filtering, checkout, etc), or you need those advanced features that Magento has; multi-stores, customer groups, tax rules, etc. However from my experience I would not move to Magento until I absolutely had to, just because it's such a big beast to tame (but brilliant when you need it).
This is interesting, we are seeing Shopify or Big Commerce as a stop-gap until the VCs get to a conclusion about a group wide roll-out of Netsuite and the associated solution that they have.Whether Magento is the next step on from Shopify...
One of the big things for me about Shopify is that if it's your core business and you become successful, the key part of your business is never an asset owned by your company. You never own the IP, the code, so any value in your company is only from your profit margin and customer database.
You're also at the mercy of Shopify - in a few years when they own a massive share of the ecommerce market and put up their prices or change their T&Cs...
I think Magento becomes the next step as soon as you want more control over exactly how key parts of the site work (searching, filtering, checkout, etc), or you need those advanced features that Magento has; multi-stores, customer groups, tax rules, etc. However from my experience I would not move to Magento until I absolutely had to, just because it's such a big beast to tame (but brilliant when you need it).
I'm not worried about the IP of the 'site', as that will be removed in 6-10 months, I'm just looking for something quick and we decent enough reporting that it doesn't cause the accounts teams any issues. We tend to work with POs and contracts, rather than credit cards and other forms of more consumer based purchasing.
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