Ecommerce Site

leadersway

Hi all. Could I kindly ask for help please. I have been asked by a family member to help set up and develop an ecommerce website for their business. It's a unique frozen pet food product. A single product with three different flavours only. So far I've been quoted 1500 plus vat for it. However from speaking to another person I am told it could bet set up for less. I also want to spend some money on a social media marketing campaign. Budget is 2500 in total. I'm not very technically minded and would like to have someone to follow up with if any problem's arise. What advice could anyone offer. I'd like to get set up asap and see how the product sells and in time spend more on it maybe. Thanks for reading this.

RangeR

leadersway wrote: »

Hi all. Could I kindly ask for help please. I have been asked by a family member to help set up and develop an ecommerce website for their business. It's a unique frozen pet food product. A single product with three different flavours only. So far I've been quoted 1500 plus vat for it. However from speaking to another person I am told it could bet set up for less. I also want to spend some money on a social media marketing campaign. Budget is 2500 in total. I'm not very technically minded and would like to have someone to follow up with if any problem's arise. What advice could anyone offer. I'd like to get set up asap and see how the product sells and in time spend more on it maybe. Thanks for reading this.

Shopify. Very low cost. Low monthly fee. Check it out. Simple to use.

Disclaimer: I make ecommerce sites for a living

Shopify provides a good starting platform, but you are running on their service within the parameters they allow, and if you want specific customisations you may be out of luck. There is a good extension marketplace for adding features, but for real control you need to host your own site on a platform like WooCommerce, Magento, Prestashop, etc. That allows you to install off-the-shelf extensions or get them developed by a developer if what you need doesn't exist.

I've worked on a couple of Shopify sites for clients - one of them a multinational with a sizeable turnover, and they always ended up trying to fit the shopify system rather than the system adapting to how they wanted to work. I used to dread the calls when they would ask "Can we do X?" and I would have to say "no", or "sort of". I've done a lot of ecommerce sites, and there's nearly always a special requirement of some sort.

In terms of doing it yourself, it can be great fun or it can be a massive pain in the rear. If budget is the main constraint, and you feel you have the design and technical aptitude, I would encourage you to go for it. The only thing I can guarantee you is that it will take longer than you expect to finish

Make sure to ask some mates you trust to give you an honest opinion before you go live.

Also, the family member might qualify for a LEO online trading voucher where they get half the site paid for. Worth asking if they qualify, as it would bring the €1550 down to €750.

leadersway

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Disclaimer: I make ecommerce sites for a living

Shopify provides a good starting platform, but you are running on their service within the parameters they allow, and if you want specific customisations you may be out of luck. There is a good extension marketplace for adding features, but for real control you need to host your own site on a platform like WooCommerce, Magento, Prestashop, etc. That allows you to install off-the-shelf extensions or get them developed by a developer if what you need doesn't exist.

I've worked on a couple of Shopify sites for clients - one of them a multinational with a sizeable turnover, and they always ended up trying to fit the shopify system rather than the system adapting to how they wanted to work. I used to dread the calls when they would ask "Can we do X?" and I would have to say "no", or "sort of". I've done a lot of ecommerce sites, and there's nearly always a special requirement of some sort.

In terms of doing it yourself, it can be great fun or it can be a massive pain in the rear. If budget is the main constraint, and you feel you have the design and technical aptitude, I would encourage you to go for it. The only thing I can guarantee you is that it will take longer than you expect to finish

Make sure to ask some mates you trust to give you an honest opinion before you go live.

Also, the family member might qualify for a LEO online trading voucher where they get half the site paid for. Worth asking if they qualify, as it would bring the €1550 down to €750.

Thanks a million for the advice. My father does qualify for the grant mentioned. Ive had a look at shopify. I am a little sceptable about using it to begin with. With this in mind however if I was to go to an expert or someone with experience of shopify or a similiear platform what should i expect to pay to get set up and be taught the basics. Thanks again.

fritzelly

Stick with a self hosted platform
If you want the best one then it would be Magento - a behemoth of a platform but not for the faint hearted
If you're looking for something that is easy to manage (i.e. more user friendly for the average guy) then go with Prestashop

Both have a massive catalog of addons

Best thing with doing it this way is it can be set up very quickly with a very small outlay but allows a multitude of variations to adapt the site to the way you want it to run.

I would really recommend against hosted platforms like Shopify - read too many horror stories and on top of that becomes very expensive as a ongoing system

If you are doing this yourself then you could probably throw something together in a week (I've done it) and keep tinkering with it - but make sure you have a contract in place even tho it's for family. Far too easy to start doing little jobs as a favour...

StupidLikeAFox

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Shopify provides a good starting platform, but you are running on their service within the parameters they allow, and if you want specific customisations you may be out of luck. There is a good extension marketplace for adding features, but for real control you need to host your own site on a platform like WooCommerce, Magento, Prestashop, etc. That allows you to install off-the-shelf extensions or get them developed by a developer if what you need doesn't exist..

Just to offer an alternative view to this, I think it's worth noting that full control also means full responsibilty. Shopify are experts and have professional teams designing their product, for the small trader they are likely to have as much functionality as you'll ever need. They do have professional agencies for custom work also.

Their extension database is very good, and the extensions are likely to work together which isn't always true with open source. Their site performance is excellent and would require a fairly decent hosting package to match it. Also they take care of all the hosting and technical crap so you don't have to worry about php/mysql upgrades etc, and how they will behave with your software and extensions. Their security/SSL certs etc is another less thing to worry about. If your self hosted website goes down you are dependent on your developer to respond, which he will charge you for, or else try figure it out yourself, which is stressful. Shopify will have a support team in place and redundancy built in so downtime is almost 100%

I recently moved from self hosted/open source to Shopify and I'm sorry I didn't do it sooner. This freedom you speak about is massively overrated.

I made our website myself from a paid template. There is an agency called milk bottle labs who specialise in shopify setups - I attended a shopify meetup they organised and they came across as very professional but I haven't used them personally or can't speak to how much they charge

RangeR

^^ What he said. I've been around the block with bespoke php/mysql AND off the shelf packages and hosted. Hands down, having someone else look after the server maintenance alone is worth it.

For the price, what have you got to lose by giving Shopify a chance. If it's not for you [and it will be], then go the self hosted route. It will be over kill. It will keep you up nights. It will be expensive [don't go for €40 a year hosting. Dedicated server or forget about it].

fritzelly

RangeR wrote: »

For the price, what have you got to lose by giving Shopify a chance. If it's not for you [and it will be], then go the self hosted route. It will be over kill. It will keep you up nights. It will be expensive [don't go for €40 a year hosting. Dedicated server or forget about it].

How can Magento be more expensive than Shopify which is $30 a month? Plenty of dedicated hosting for Magento which is considerably cheaper (not counting the extra payment commission that Shopify charges)
Won't keep you up at nights - geez - once set up it's just leave it alone - update your stock, add new products etc but the hard work is done. Even if you go the VPS route you can get decent hosting for less than 10 euro a month with good specs (needs some basic optimization for Magento - but there's plugins for that as well)

Add in that this is only for frozen pet food - how many products? If we are talking <100 products then Prestashop is probably the way to go, if less than 50 then definitely the way to go

Graham

fritzelly wrote: »

How can Magento be more expensive than Shopify which is $30 a month?

Magento is a much cheaper solution if you choose completely crap budget level hosting and don't value the couple of hundred hours it would take an inexperienced person to setup.

I am no particular cheerleader for Shopify but it is far and away one of the easiest and cheapest ways to test the waters. The same can probably be said for any one of a dozen similar hosted solutions.

fritzelly

Graham wrote: »

Magento is a much cheaper solution if you choose completely crap budget level hosting and don't value the couple of hundred hours it would take an inexperienced person to setup.

I am no particular cheerleader for Shopify but it is far and away one of the easiest and cheapest ways to test the waters. The same can probably be said for any one of a dozen similar hosted solutions.

Don't disagree with you that it can be hard to set up for someone not technically minded - but it is designed to be a be all for everyone - but can be worth it just for the customization

Prestashop is like an idiots guide to setting up an online shop and doesn't require massive resources to run (like Magento can be if not set up correctly)

Graham

fritzelly wrote: »

Don't disagree with you that it can be hard to set up for someone not technically minded - but it is designed to be a be all for everyone - but can be worth it just for the customization

Prestashop is like an idiots guide to setting up an online shop and doesn't require massive resources to run (like Magento can be if not set up correctly)

Out of curiosity, what additional benefit is the OP going to get out of a self-hosted product that's relevant to a company that appears to be dipping a toe in e-commerce?

fritzelly

Graham wrote: »

Out of curiosity, what additional benefit is the OP going to get out of a self-hosted product that's relevant to a company that appears to be dipping a toe in e-commerce?

Hmmm, I would say they don't know what they want or even the volume of business. Why pay loadsa money every month for a website that makes 5 Euro month. Start small, work out what you want, measure your traffic then look at hosted solutions of necessary. Why waste your budget on setting something up if there is no call for it. Something like prestashop could cost you 60 for a year to test the water and be a quick website setup or Shopify 360 dollars, new business and every Euro counts

Graham

fritzelly wrote: »

Why pay loadsa money every month for a website that makes 5 Euro month.

Precisely. That's why I'd recommend starting off with a hosted solution you can set up yourself. Most of them even offer a free trial.

Quick, easy, cheap with the smallest learning curve.

It sounds like the OP and their family member aren't particularly technical, a hosted solution removes 90% of the technical knowledge necessary for an extra couple of euro a month.

If the budget is €2500, I'd be looking at €30/month for a hosted solution with the remaining €2xxx spent on marketing.

Run that for a year and the business will have a much much better understanding of their requirements and tested the market.

StupidLikeAFox

fritzelly wrote: »

Hmmm, I would say they don't know what they want or even the volume of business. Why pay loadsa money every month for a website that makes 5 Euro month. Start small, work out what you want, measure your traffic then look at hosted solutions of necessary. Why waste your budget on setting something up if there is no call for it. Something like prestashop could cost you 60 for a year to test the water and be a quick website setup or Shopify 360 dollars, new business and every Euro counts

There is that old saying about knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. Ask a complete newbie to research a hosting package, learn basic stuff about setting up a database, a file system, install an SSL cert etc - time spent on this alone would wipe out any saving. All done in literally seconds with Shopify. You also need to keep your software updated, including plug ins, php, mysql, and prestashop itself. Not something you have to know or care about with a hosted solution and well worth the investment.

OP, check out bigcommerce or volusion also, they are similar business models. Regardless of what route you take, I would recommend anybody in ecommerce to sign up to Shopify's newsletter though, they produce a lot of good general ecommerce content

protelos

Great thread BTW! I work in E-commerce and you can't look past Shopify for this business case. Magento (I could talk all day about it) is not a runner here. 

OP, I would say a few things that have been touched on above in many cases. Spend the $$$ on a good Theme, ThemeForeast is a good place to start.  for $80 or so, take note of what the design looks like. 
With all these great CMS's and SAAS options, development is getting reduced and putting some time in design can give you a kick-ass product. 
I would agree, that you should spend the extra cash on a separate hosting option, Bluehost is great for $60 a year. Start with a vision of at least doing some decent level of traffic on the site! 

One word of advice, you have an E-Comm site, you need to spend at least 5k a year on online marketing. FB ads, Google Ads, social engagement, email campaigning etc...
You have the car, but its needs petrol to run!

leadersway

Thanks everyone for your advice and help on this. Its been very informative. The up to date situation is that I have 2 or 3 options at the moment.  The idea of going it alone appears to be fading.

I am slowly edging towards the idea of going to someone who will set up the website for me for a few hundred euro, train me how to use it and then spend a little of my budget on a video and some social media advertising including the setting up of a fb add and provide me with some pointers for a marketing strategy. I might also build a few follow up sessions into the price for this option.  The alternative is paying 1500 plus Vat for more and 250 per year for a more customised site. The cost of option 2 would be similar but I hope to factor in some advertising into this. Any final words of advice? thanks a million for your comments thus far.

 

Graham

leadersway wrote: »

Any final words of advice? thanks a million for your comments thus far.

See actual real-life working commercial e-commerce sites from anyone you're thinking of engaging. Talk to their customers and ask them about the results they've achieved.

Same goes for the social media marketing.

There's far too many pocket-money 'professionals' operating at the lower end of the market.

protelos

One last point, if you are going with outside help, please leverage a designer or marketer ahead of a developer. As I said before Shopify will do a lot of the heavy lifting on the processing etc, but you need to have a quality, well set up a site that drives engagement and sales. A developer is not a UX'er or Digital Marketer. The link below is my shining light of a really really well-constructed site that is about as useful as a chocolate teapot.
https://www.mbl.bz/

leadersway

This shopify idea is gaining traction. If I went with them for a year and I decided to leave then would I have any problems in terms of contracts. The suggestion to start small and gauge traffic and sales makes sense. I could use more money for digital marketing then. Thanks again. Info I am getting here is brilliant

protelos

You pay by the month for shopify so no issues there.

_Brian

Self host rather than shoplift, run the store on Opencart.

It will be easy and quick to learn how you go. We use Stripe and PayPal as payment gateways.

leadersway

_Brian wrote: »

Self host rather than shoplift, run the store on Opencart.

It will be easy and quick to learn how you go. We use Stripe and PayPal as payment gateways.

What do you mean by this. Also why do shopify charge while others don't ie Wix. Com .thanks

RangeR

leadersway wrote: »

What do you mean by this. Also why do shopify charge while others don't ie Wix. Com .thanks

Shopify vs Wix

You get what you pay for.

B.A._Baracus

I'm a designer / developer too and I would recommend woo commerce as a cheap option to start with.

Can even watch tutorials if one is tech savy enough.

Graham

B.A._Baracus wrote: »

I'm a designer / developer too and I would recommend woo commerce as a cheap option to start with.

The OP isn't a designer/developer.

fritzelly

Stay away from Woocommerce and stick to a platform dedicated to a shopping site not a plugin for a blogging platform

Graham

fritzelly wrote: »

Stay away from Woocommerce and stick to a platform dedicated to a shopping site not a plugin for a blogging platform

42% of all e-commerce sites disagree with you.

It's not appropriate for the OP if he's going it alone but otherwise it's at least as good a solution as any of the other self-hosted solutions proposed.

leadersway

Getting confused now lol.
Am going online now for a you tube shopify tutorial. Mite look at opencart too. Thanks.

Graham wrote: »

42% of all e-commerce sites disagree with you.

It's not appropriate for the OP if he's going it alone but otherwise it's at least as good a solution as any of the other self-hosted solutions proposed.

hairyslug

I started as a complete novice with shopify and with a few paid and free add-ons, it looks well. It's a good idea just starting out as you don't have to throw to much money at it at the beginning. It's free for the 1st month. I would say, use a bogey email address to set up a dummy account first to practice on, gives you an extra 30 days to get the hang of it.

tacofries

What do people think of Ecwid?

2 things that are putting me of Shopify is the difficulty of making AB landing pages and also the apoarent unfriendly nature of having a .com, .ie and .Co.uk version of the same site.

B.A._Baracus

Graham wrote: »

The OP isn't a designer/developer.

Let's be honest here watching some YouTube videos, buying a theme, installing woocommerce is not the hardest thing in the world to do. It ain't coding.

Am not saying the op should then jump out of his chair and proclaim to be a web designer and build websites for clients. But for their own website? Doing it themselves on the cheap? It is not a bad option and the positive is there is no on-going fees. They can add to it as they go along.

fritzelly wrote: »

Stay away from Woocommerce and stick to a platform dedicated to a shopping site not a plugin for a blogging platform

You are sadly misinformed Woocommerce is a powerful free platform and wordpress has moved well well past being a blogging platform.

Perhaps your experience with it was experiencing it out of the box on a bad looking wp theme.