best way to set-up a selling website (jewellery)
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Soldato
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Wordpress with some sort of e-commerce plugin?
Minimal development input and allows the customer to manage their product line themselves.
Minimal development input and allows the customer to manage their product line themselves.
You said it would "cost" £35 a year...
So she's getting a domain and development free of charge? Not bad.
Like BunnyKillBot has said, simple option is Wordpress with any one of the many ecommerce plugins available. Just need to try them out to see which one fits the customers needs.
Alternative is the same but with Joomla or going down the dedicated shop CMS like Magento Commerce which I've used with much success in the past.
Keep in mind that setting up a shop online is a LOT more work than you're average website. There's going to be training involved on both your parts by the sounds of things to setup the ability to manage stock and get familiar with the various ways of making payment online.
Don't get me wrong, a lot of the tools available make this easy for someone in the know, but it's good idea to have an understanding of everything that's involved before you take on a project like this for a paying customer.
Unless it's a favour for a friend, in which case you can take as long as you want and screw it up completely
So she's getting a domain and development free of charge? Not bad.
Like BunnyKillBot has said, simple option is Wordpress with any one of the many ecommerce plugins available. Just need to try them out to see which one fits the customers needs.
Alternative is the same but with Joomla or going down the dedicated shop CMS like Magento Commerce which I've used with much success in the past.
Keep in mind that setting up a shop online is a LOT more work than you're average website. There's going to be training involved on both your parts by the sounds of things to setup the ability to manage stock and get familiar with the various ways of making payment online.
Don't get me wrong, a lot of the tools available make this easy for someone in the know, but it's good idea to have an understanding of everything that's involved before you take on a project like this for a paying customer.
Unless it's a favour for a friend, in which case you can take as long as you want and screw it up completely
The domain is free with vidahost (I think)
its a work friend.
She said she has tried Ebay but fail's at it , so asked about a website to sell her gear.
I was hoping of just using PayPal to setup for transactions etc.
I shall look at WP then and go from their
its a work friend.
She said she has tried Ebay but fail's at it , so asked about a website to sell her gear.
I was hoping of just using PayPal to setup for transactions etc.
I shall look at WP then and go from their
I think Bes raises a stunner of a point.
If her jewellery is of the hobbyist "purchased beads arranged on wire" type, then I'm really not sure that a dedicated website is a good time/money investment, considering the efforts required to promote the site to anything close to Ebay exposure levels.
If she's that worried about eBay fees - or the cost of her time dealing with idiots - then that's something easily fixed: raise prices.
If she's not doing that because she's worried about being undercut by competitors, then maybe she should stop trying to compete on price [the race to the bottom has no winners] and focus on offering something different, or of higher quality.
Getting her own site is not going to be the panacea she may think it is. At least, not if she's serious about making it a successful business in a crowded marketplace. The explicit costs of hosting an e-commerce site are next to nothing, but the implicit costs [promotion, design, site/inventory maintenance] are sizeable.
If her jewellery is of the hobbyist "purchased beads arranged on wire" type, then I'm really not sure that a dedicated website is a good time/money investment, considering the efforts required to promote the site to anything close to Ebay exposure levels.
If she's that worried about eBay fees - or the cost of her time dealing with idiots - then that's something easily fixed: raise prices.
If she's not doing that because she's worried about being undercut by competitors, then maybe she should stop trying to compete on price [the race to the bottom has no winners] and focus on offering something different, or of higher quality.
Getting her own site is not going to be the panacea she may think it is. At least, not if she's serious about making it a successful business in a crowded marketplace. The explicit costs of hosting an e-commerce site are next to nothing, but the implicit costs [promotion, design, site/inventory maintenance] are sizeable.
Soldato
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I disagree, because the current trend in e-commerce for small businesss is to exploit naturally transmitting propagation such as word of mouth rather than lofty marketing budgets. An off the shelf CMS such as joomla or wordpress gives maximum functionality with minimal development cost that the client can manage themselves.
Investigation into how potential customers will find out about the product is a separate issue, and avoiding marketplace fees is desirable.
Soldato
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i used opencart as i have pretty much no knowledge of building websites and found it very easy, but i did read there are a few security holes in it.
the problem was, and the reason we stopped using it was that we struggled to get people to find it. yes we made some sales from dropping leaflets through peoples doors, but that was only a short term thing. getting it global without a reasonable marketing budget is very hard.
ebay do take a fair bit in fees, but you do get the advantage that millions of people use that site daily. and if she gets idiots via ebay, she will get them via her own site, only she wont have anyone to complain to and get any fees back from.
the problem was, and the reason we stopped using it was that we struggled to get people to find it. yes we made some sales from dropping leaflets through peoples doors, but that was only a short term thing. getting it global without a reasonable marketing budget is very hard.
ebay do take a fair bit in fees, but you do get the advantage that millions of people use that site daily. and if she gets idiots via ebay, she will get them via her own site, only she wont have anyone to complain to and get any fees back from.
Create a facebook business page for a start, you can put on photos of the goods and a contact email.
You could even add prices to the photos to make it easier on yourself. Add some detail about postage costs and set up a paypal account for it.
You could even add prices to the photos to make it easier on yourself. Add some detail about postage costs and set up a paypal account for it.
Soldato
- Joined
- 20 Jun 2010
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Why? in what way is it hard?
Slightly different take, I personally reckon she'd be best off with using Ebay, Twitter, Facebook AND her own website. She needs to spend time promoting her site, and she can do this through ebay (with a note with every sale) or links or whatever. Hike the price up to cover the costs on ebay and direct the punters to the cheaper prices on the site. Either build it using WP and an e-commerce site and make it include a blog she writes regularly on to keep up interest (make sure it's about new jewellery or related directly to the site). Hopefully with some SEO, a decent domain name if you can find one and that's about the best you can get these days....
I think eBay is a good starting place, about a month ago I listed 10 identical items on eBay and 5 on an independent website that has a shop, everything on eBay was sold within less than 2 weeks where the independent site has sold 3/5 in 5 weeks.
Hi,
Have you thought of trying: freewebstore.org
It's very easy to get up and running and she can register a domain name to point to the store she (or you) creates.
it's free aswell if you just want to dabble your foot in the water of eCommerce!
Have you thought of trying: freewebstore.org
It's very easy to get up and running and she can register a domain name to point to the store she (or you) creates.
it's free aswell if you just want to dabble your foot in the water of eCommerce!
I too echo the previous posters comments that ebay is the best place to start and once she starts to get decent sales then invest in a website.
Regarding how to build the website i think shopify is a good solution. It's a hosted solution though so you pay them a monthly fee to host it.
Regarding how to build the website i think shopify is a good solution. It's a hosted solution though so you pay them a monthly fee to host it.