Anyone here run their own ecommerce site?

[Diddums]

I'm dabbling in this ecommerce stuff on this new internet thing they've made, and I want to start listing some stuff for sale. Nothing big, probably about 5-10 items which will likely increase over time.

I've done some googling and can't make a decision so I'm here asking for any advice.

I've seen Medusa which seems pretty decent, however a lot of people also recommend Woocommerce which runs on Wordpress.

I need something intuitive, I'm not a coder or developer so my expertise is fairly limited and I'm not keen on spending hours banging my head against walls of code trying to fix things. It also needs to be self hosted and either cheap or free.

Any ideas?

Cheers

 

[Diddums]

I know it's not what you asked, but why not just list your stuff on Amazon Marketplace, or Ebay, or Etsy? They'll take a cut of course, but you'll get all of that infastructure and exposure without having to maintain anything yourself. To put it another way, how will people find your site in the first place?

It's for stuff that my wife is 3D printing. I bought a printer recently and she's completely taken over, making little Christmas earrings and all sorts. It's never gonna be an Amazon or anything, but just a word of mouth kind of thing. I want something a bit "boutiquey" if that makes sense.

Just checked out Squarespace and it looks absolutely spot on, but I'm not sure I wanna spend £16 a month on it. If nothing cheaper / free comes up then I'll jump in and give it a go.

 

[Diddums]

I thought squarespace along with web design also had full e-commerce functionality that can be added on too.

Etsy or squarespace.
Avoid wordpress, that's a big juicy hacking target.

As above, if this was a replacement for a job I'd be all over it, but as it's just a little side hustle I'm not keen on paying £16 a month. If nothing else comes up I'll give it a shot.

 

[Diddums]

Edit: pics of wife?

 

[Diddums]

Ok, gonna give Etsy a go instead. Had a look and it doesn't look bad at all. If it takes off we can look at upgrading. Cheers all

 

[Diddums]

Deffo take the easy route as you can then spend the time on the listings, images, narrative and store front which early on will be better placed than a quality fully functioning e-commerce site. Plus likely to have a much wider customer reach.

Don't forget eBay is still pretty good for a huge customer base and SEO. For listing small offerings and prefabricated items ie examples of product to drive traffic to your brand / name / own site (which then links to etsy) even if you don't price to sell on eBay. Plus free of fees if remaining private seller.

It's still well worth building a simple non-commerce marketing focused site ie 'landing homepage covering the about us as team, vision and brand' so you can build the brand and direct traffic to the ecommerce marketplaces (ie buy direct from us on etsy etc link). This can be used to maintain your domain whilst you prove the concept before going self managed e-commerce.

Excellent advice, thank you