Advice re: how to create a website like 'Pre-loved'?

[technodup]

wax lyrical said:

I realise the marketing and bringing quality traffic to the website will be the main challenge - but I want a robust website up and running as soon as possible.

How will you know if it's robust if it doesn't have any traffic or transactions?

It might seem counter intuitive but you're putting the cart before the horse.

[jammy-git]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I agree, creating something in an hour is just bks.

However there is nothing wrong in creating the website on Wordpress first and then proving the venture will be a success before spending time and money on a custom web app and massive infrastructure to handle eBay like traffic.

Every week I come across people who think there idea is going take off like Facebook and within months they're going to need to handle thousands of users. It really doesn't work like that and if it does you'll have no problem engaging with freelancers to help you deal with the traffic.

Build it with Wordpress (which could easily handle hundreds of users a day if need be), stick it on cheap but fast hosting like Digital Ocean (can be scaled up). Prove your business idea works then come back and ask about building a website that can cope with thousands (Laravel, Symphony, Node or even Java app).

[Efbe]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Thats not quite what was said though.
Install wordpress(I personally wouldn't touch wordpress for this), install woocommerce addon, and you have the basic functionality of a preloved site built.

Setting it up to deal with users, bids, enquiries, blah blah blah, then getting SEO right (well probably starting with this before anything else), getting the look and feel right, perfecting formatting etc will all take weeks and weeks, but that first bit of functionality of getting a shop online will take under an hour.

The point being, what the layman thinks is the hard part of web design, is no longer the hard part. The hard part is the bits the layman doesn't even think of... or actually the hardest is probably dealing with the customer, but thats another thing.

[Oceanic]

I have been involved with several of the largest classified sites in the UK, I have also set-up and ran a few of my own and more recently was SEO Lead for a $60MM funded classifieds platform start-up.

From a start-up position you are in, where you go with the what actual platform will depend on what budget you have, if you have a few hundred $$ or there abouts I'd start with an off the shelf solution for you to get started with...https://geodesicsolutions.com/client-area/task,product/product_id,68/

I'd avoid Wordpress as it is not really intended to be used in this way and all the pluggins and themes I have used all have real issues with them that are not easily fixed. You will also find any Wordpress set-up will be quite slow on the pagespeed side of things.

Feel free to drop me a PM if you want a bit more guidance.

[Craikeybaby]

wax lyrical said:

So if I create a website using the Wordpress 'Classified engine', how do I choose the correct hosting site so that it can be scaled up easily when traffic increases?

I think you can tell I'm a bit of a novice at all of this!

But ask me about international corporate taxation and transfer pricing and I'm your man...

Try something like AWS EC2.

Is this more of a business to make money, or to develop your skills?

[jammy-git]

May I ask what plans you have for marketing?

[wax lyrical]

Still working on the marketing plan! It's a niche area so makes things even more tricky for targeted marketing.

jammy-git said:

May I ask what plans you have for marketing?

[wax lyrical]

Many thanks for the offer of guidance! It's sorely needed. I'll PM you in the morning.

Oceanic said:

I have been involved with several of the largest classified sites in the UK, I have also set-up and ran a few of my own and more recently was SEO Lead for a $60MM funded classifieds platform start-up.

From a start-up position you are in, where you go with the what actual platform will depend on what budget you have, if you have a few hundred $$ or there abouts I'd start with an off the shelf solution for you to get started with...https://geodesicsolutions.com/client-area/task,product/product_id,68/

I'd avoid Wordpress as it is not really intended to be used in this way and all the pluggins and themes I have used all have real issues with them that are not easily fixed. You will also find any Wordpress set-up will be quite slow on the pagespeed side of things.

Feel free to drop me a PM if you want a bit more guidance.

[CoolHands]

Make sure it's got a really st name like sphlock to fail massively too