Building a businesses first ecommerce website

wildest_jjk

wildest_jjk

wildest_jjk

Soldato
Joined
6 Jun 2011
Posts
2,741
Hey guys,

I need some advice on this please. To be honest I'm not really too sure where to start. I have made a couple of basic websites from scratch but never a professional one.

First of all should I custom build it or use something like Wordpress? Any other alternatives?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks :)
 
If you've not done anything professional before I'd highly recommend starting with a good CMS (Wordpress, Joomla, Drupla)

Although Wordpress is highly recommended here (even by me) i've not found it the easiest to work with for creating ecommerce site. I'm not saying it can't be done - and in fact some shop plugins work great - but it's not as straightforward as the rest of it.

In all fairness this is probably just the nature of the beast though. Creating pages and posts isn't as easy to setup and follow as stock management and pricing tables etc.

Alternatively you might want to look at online shops that you can sign up to and sell your goods though.

The obvious one is eBay. Combined with a simple website this works great for your searchability, ease of setting up and fulfillment.

Other ones are places like Etsy or more specific places like Redbubble, which I used to setup my girlfriends shop.
 
Also make sure they are set up with an online merchant account, and familiarise yourself with the API of the provider before starting. That is a nightmare you don't want to be having days before go-live.
 
I recommend Magento, just finished a couple of websites with the platform. Well documented/supported and very easy to use. Then again the choice will obviously be influenced by the needs of your client. Google "magento vs wordpress" - several first page links highlight the feasibility of using each technology.
 
I thought the general consensus of Magento was it is excellent in a supported enterprise context but convoluted and bloated for smaller applications?
 
I would use OpenCart, easy to install and setup. Then style to suit the business.

For simplicity you could setup PayPal to accept payments, just install the payment module and be on your way.
 
I'd use drupal + cart plugins. It's really bloody popular at the moment and will lead to you being able to get additional jobs in the future. If we aren't going to be use selfish reasons, it doesn't matter, as they'll all do the job, but as always, if you needed to ask, you're probably going to struggle.
 
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