Ecommerce Development

Darr2cool78 · 28 Oct 2015 at 11:20

Hey guys,

Been freelancing on websites for 2 years now and made a few successful wordpress / bootstrap websites for happy clients. So far none of my sites have required an ecommerce side but now I have a client interested in that very thing. In my main line of work I have plenty of experience with back-end Stripe integration so happy enough that I understand that side of things even if it's a different payment engine in the end.

My questions are: for a small business...

What is the best platform to use for such a website? Had looked at Wordpress > Woocommerce, any thoughts?

Any thoughts on the most lucrative payment platform for a small business operating out of Ireland?

Cheers

Craig321 · 28 Oct 2015 at 12:08

I'd go for WooCommerce if they simply want to sell a few products. It has PayPal and all sorts of gateways built in (along with add-ons for the more 'complex' gateways), so it's all there and set up for you.

If they want something more than plain ecommerce then you'd have to weigh up writing something from scratch (expensive) or maybe adapt WooCommerce to what they want.

iKettles · 28 Oct 2015 at 13:41

If you have experience with backend I would choose Magento. The community edition takes a bit more time to setup but its infinitely more powerful than WooCommerce, integration with a huge amount of payment providers and has a flexible API for extensions. It can't really be compared.

You could also take a look at CouchCommerce (now known as NewStore). No first hand experience with it but they have quite a nice JS SDK for mobile webapps. Not sure how well it's taken off though as haven't had a look at it in a while. The repository with the SDK/sample apps IIRC is called Sofa.io

Most of my clients pick WorldPay however I'm sure they take a nice chunk!

Darr2cool78 · 30 Oct 2015 at 16:36

Awesome guys thanks for the feedback. I will keep looking into WooCommerce and also Magento defo seems worth a look.

Cheers

AdrianIscariot · 11 Nov 2015 at 20:23

You could also check out dedicated ecommerce platforms such as Shopify and Bigcommerce. While they do cost a monthly fee (which varies depending on the feature set but would likely be around $30 initially) they are pretty powerful. If your client will be running the site after you've developed it they have an added bonus of being incredibly easy to use with massive support networks behind them.

Both have a 14-day free trial, I had a play with them for a university module and honestly was amazed at how quickly and easily you can get going. The analytics they provide (particuarly Bigcommerce) are top-notch too.