Magento or something else ?

Paul11 · 11 Apr 2017 at 16:21

Ecommerce site, that doenst have many products

but options on each product eg. product one. can choose colour and what size etc

and we want a live calculator , so as you choose your colour/ size the price changes

is Magento overkill or can you recommend a better platform

thank you

Dup · 11 Apr 2017 at 16:30

Paul11 said:
Ecommerce site, that doenst have many products

but options on each product eg. product one. can choose colour and what size etc

and we want a live calculator , so as you choose your colour/ size the price changes

is Magento overkill or can you recommend a better platform

thank you

Magento is far too convoluted for anything under 100 products IMO.

It depends on how you intend to take payment really. How many products are we talking?

Paul11 · 11 Apr 2017 at 16:43

payment via credit card (worldpay)

maybe 10 products (growing to 20 over a year)

but maybe 5 or 6 options on each one .. size/ quantity/ etc etc which will effect the price

Steeps · 11 Apr 2017 at 21:54

The problem with Magento is the switchover from 1.x to 2.x, completely different back end and the transition hasn't been that smooth. 2.x uses a lot more server resources (if there's no backend grunt then some ajax elements take a while to load) but 1.x is no longer supported, although there are many responsive themes available for both platforms that look similar. I wouldn't say Magento is overkill if you're going to expand. I can usually get a 1.x basic site with products and modified theme up and selling within a week using built in paypal.

Creating configurable products (colour/size) is really easy and modern themes with ajax will update the pricing/picture of the item. Each item will need to be a SKU so you're looking at 100+ products when you get to 20.

Paul11 · 12 Apr 2017 at 09:04

im just trying to find out how easy it would be to customise a live calculator , which changes prices as options are chosen . .

otherwise if anyone could recommend a different/ better system ?

Steeps · 12 Apr 2017 at 11:55

In Magento (with the responsive themes and ajax) the price is displayed for the product as soon as the options are chosen. Here is one I use for one of my photo sites: http://sprintseries.dansteeples.co.uk/2017-order-form.html

That one was done with a custom form that just adds/removes prices and alters the SKU for when I need to send out photos, quick and easy 10min job to add. Alternatively I could have added an attribute to each set of photos and had a dropdown, so when the customer uses the dropdown it selects the specific product but as I'm looking at 400 products creating nearly 5,000 combinations it would have been a bit more complicated to build.

In Magento the easiest way to set this up would be to add the attributes "colour" and "size" to the products, create a configurable product that uses those attributes, then select all the products to be included, and it's done. It will change the product image and price according to what options you select. The biggest challenge with most shopping cart systems is making sure your payment gateway can be integrated smoothly.

Paul11 · 12 Apr 2017 at 13:12

Thats perfect.. Thanks Steeps

it looks like it can be done, now just get a few quotes

mtalk · 13 Apr 2017 at 10:49

Magento is good option it just requires dedicated resources when you expect good performance.. so while moving forward with magento make sure you get some good resources for your website.