Ecommerce Website

[little blue choo]

OK I'm about to take the plunge and build a ecommerce site for my plasma art and metal work. I was wondering if any of you have one and if so who you have it hosted with, who do you use for your credit card payments, what they charge you, did you build it yourself on one of the web builder sites or did you have it built for you by a local web designer. All information appreciated. Also do any of you accept card payments at festivals and shows and if so what do you use for payments. Square or others?

Rick

[gamble]

I use opencart. It's ok but lots of stupid errors that I spend a lot of time trying to fix
The godaddy online store is ok at best but 30/month
Shopify is 30/mo and looks nice but I am too cheap to spend that much
Good thing to those is most of the work is done. No stupid errors to decode. No need to spend money on a certificate (forgot what it was called) ssl maybe?

[little blue choo]

I use opencart. It's ok but lots of stupid errors that I spend a lot of time trying to fix
The godaddy online store is ok at best but 30/month
Shopify is 30/mo and looks nice but I am too cheap to spend that much
Good thing to those is most of the work is done. No stupid errors to decode. No need to spend money on a certificate (forgot what it was called) ssl maybe?

I have looked at Go Daddy and Shopify. I am leaning towards Big Commerce or may be Volusion. I want one that offers a one stop deal and is very simple to use. Who do you use for payments? Does opencart supply that feature or do you have to use a third party like paypal?

Rick

[gamble]

I added paypal to mine.
Also maybe look into magento? I think that is another.

[Gamelord]

I have done quite a few sites, for payment processing, Paypal is probably the easiest and they will most likely already have a plugin setup with whoever you use to build your site so integration should be extra simple. Also, even if you choose another payment company for your processing you will most likely need to include a Paypal one anyways. Paypal also gives you an excellent app / card reader for your mobile device that will integrate directly with your website account so you can process payments in the field and have the info go directly into your paypal account.

One word of advice, make sure you think your business setup through when setting up your payment processor regardless of who you choose. If you put things under a personal account, be ready to get nailed with taxes that you will have to explain and may end up fighting with the IRS over. My advice, get with your tax attorney on how to set up your payment accounts and keep them separate from your personal ones.

I build all my ecommerce sites with Miva Merchant. They are probably the most difficult to get set up if you dont' know HTML coding or are unfamiliar with page design but once setup, they are super easy to use and you have complete control over all aspects of your site from product listing, sales, invoicing, account tracking, inventory etc.... It is a very powerful platform as it allows you to add or install different modules for any customizing. Downside is that it is about twice as much as other companies that have been listed and requires a lot more to get initially set up. Miva is also one of the only carts out there that is fully PSS-compatible which will save you some fees from your processor or host.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask.

[comeoutswingin]

I use BigCommerce. It works pretty good, but in certain areas like shipping it some what lacks. It is getting better. They just need to give the option of shipping one product in multiple boxes.

I have a grandfathered plan at $275 a year. It took a few years to get rolling and my sales up, but I do a respectable amount of sales on my big commerce store to make it well worth the cost of maintenance.

One thing I did see as soon as I started using Stripe for payment processing instead of just PayPal, my sales jumped dramatically. Many people believe it or not don't know what PayPal is, or have a very bad taste in their mouth about it from eBay years ago.

A big area I think bigcommerce lacks is in Google integration for google shopping. I have never been able to get that set up and going. I have mostly just said screw it.

For what Etsy costs, and is, its becoming an excellent medium to reach customers with.

[gamble]

etsy and ebay are good, but i feel every company needs a website as a minimal to establish a " who is this company" type feel
Probably why I don't want to spend 30/month when 90% of sales are from etsy or ebay

[little blue choo]

etsy and ebay are good, but i feel every company needs a website as a minimal to establish a " who is this company" type feel
Probably why I don't want to spend 30/month when 90% of sales are from etsy or ebay

gamble, I have done a lot with Ebay over the years and plan on using them for this business also, haven't tried esty yet but have been looking at it seriously. Another way to look at the $30.00 a month for a ecommerce site is, if you sell one peace a month you have paid for it. Just my 2 cents.

Rick

[beefy]

etsy and ebay are good, but i feel every company needs a website as a minimal to establish a " who is this company" type feel
Probably why I don't want to spend 30/month when 90% of sales are from etsy or ebay

Got to mirror what Little Blue Choo said.

I was at a social do and a friend wanted my advice on property investing. Anyway the one thing I noticed is she was fixated on not paying any more tax. I tried to tell her paying tax is great if you are paying it because you are making a lot more money in your hand. I also said to her if she was getting say $70K/year in her current salary, would she turn down a similar job for $100K/year because she'd have to pay more tax I think a lot of people get fixated on what they spend and not what the spending produces.

If a website could generate about $8/week ($30/mth) over what you make now, everything above that is more cash in your pocket. Not having a website could be losing you money.

Keith.

[michmetalman]

I use WIX, my son built it for me and costs around $30 a month. Paypal is the way to go for the website, and when people call me for orders I use Square.

[gamble]

etsy and ebay are good, but i feel every company needs a website as a minimal to establish a " who is this company" type feel
Probably why I don't want to spend 30/month when 90% of sales are from etsy or ebay

Got to mirror what Little Blue Choo said.

I was at a social do and a friend wanted my advice on property investing. Anyway the one thing I noticed is she was fixated on not paying any more tax. I tried to tell her paying tax is great if you are paying it because you are making a lot more money in your hand. I also said to her if she was getting say $70K/year in her current salary, would she turn down a similar job for $100K/year because she'd have to pay more tax I think a lot of people get fixated on what they spend and not what the spending produces.

If a website could generate about $8/week ($30/mth) over what you make now, everything above that is more cash in your pocket. Not having a website could be losing you money.

Keith.

I agree but when the revenue doesn't come from the website it makes me think that it's a waste of money.

[Gamelord]

Building the website is fairly easy, getting people to visit and purchase is where the work comes in play. SEO = search engine optimization is what will make or break a website. Be careful on that though because there are tons of companies that will promise you the world but never deliver anything. Simple things like selecting the correct titles for your pages and alt tags for your images and simplifying code for easy spider crawling will do wonders for your listing. Stay away from flash type gimmicks, go for direct -in your face- type pages and make sure your customers can easily navigate your pages and easily check out when they are ready to buy. Those things will help tremendously with conversions. Submission to the search engines is also very important when your site is done. Watch out for duplicate or non-important information. Stay away from old school gimmics that will actually hurth your listings insead of help them.

A good website wil make you lots of money, a poor one will be a waste of time.

[Doc Hollywood]

I use godaddy, just launched my site this month. I built the site on their website builder app, it was very easy. $30/ month. Their online store looks to be very very good, but it's like $200 a month I believe. For an Internet dummy like myself, it really was easy. Built my site in like 2 hours, if it generates any business I'll consider stepping up to a store type format.
Feel free to check it out...

Funmetalart.com

[Sampson Jones]

I used Volusion and shut mine down . I spent a month getting everything perfect ,did it myself . I was getting a lot of traffic .......from China ,India all the places that like to steal ideas ...make it cheaper and sell it in Hobby Lobby .i was real happy with how smooth the e commerce site worked ,but at a cost of around 50.00 per month ,The sales weren't there to justify it . I tried it six months ,maybe I should have stuck it out . It's a ton of work

[gamble]

^^exactly why it's so hard to make it in todays world. It's so easy for people to copy and machines are getting so cheap that anyone can copy it. It's a race to the bottom
Is there a way to block traffic from outside the US?

[aopenshaw]

I would recommend starting with something like Etsy. You wont sell much there but it will force you to think about your products and how to market them from pricing to photography. After getting a few products on there it will help you in setting up your own store. I built a Wordpress site on Godaddy and use their Woocommerce plugin. I tried out Volusion, Shopify, and Big Commerce also but decided to build my own. Its a lot of work!