e-commerce platforms - what to use?
rantalot
Together with a few others (all non-tech), I am playing around with a
simple e-commerce concept, and I have been asked by my co-founders to
take the lead on deciding what CMS platform to build on.
I have spoken to a few people, and have had a few pros and cons for
Magento and for OpenCart.
The concept involves a subscription service, and Magento Go (hosted
offer) doesn't support subscription, even though the Magento
Commmunity does (via an Extension). I've been told that Magento is
harder to modify out of the box than OpenCart, but I'm not sure how
that will affect us initially, since my need for major mods are likely
to be low (simple concept, only a few skus initially, very few
options, simple nav, etc).
Has anyone had experience with Magento, OpenCart, Big Commerce or
others that they can share? More importantly, if anyone can share
comparative thoughts between these, that would be great.
Also, comments on pros/cons of Paypal not integrated, PayPal
integrated, or other payment and/or payment gateway solutions would be
thankfully received.
Cheers
Rob
Jonathan Clarke
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John Carpinelli
I've worked with Zen Cart, Wordpress and Amazon Payments. I strongly
recommend Wordpress as there are thousands of free plugins available
to install. Wordpress administration is quite accessible for
non-technical users. If you need custom tables and functions, it's
easy for a PHP developer to create extensions to your site.
With regard to payments, Amazon Payments was relatively simple to
install. It's basically a cut-and-paste activity to add the payment
forms to your web-site. Amazon Payments has some prominent customers
including Kickstarter. Most people have an Amazon account already
which gives them some more confidence in giving their credit card
information to your site.
Dylan Jay
On 10/02/2012, at 1:16 AM, Jonathan Clarke wrote:
> Check out http://spreecommerce.com/
>
> 100% open source and on ruby on rails.
Off topic but it's what I'd call vendor open source (and so is
magento... and wordpress) which while to the letter of the law is
technically 100% open source, I personally wouldn't say it's 100%
open. Vendor open source means the roadmap and trademarks are in the
hands of a single company which can be bought and sold and may change
if they do or don't accept your patches anytime in the future.
Silvia Pfeiffer
>
> On 10/02/2012, at 1:16 AM, Jonathan Clarke wrote:
>
>> Check out http://spreecommerce.com/
>>
>> 100% open source and on ruby on rails.
>
>
> Off topic but it's what I'd call vendor open source (and so is magento...
> and wordpress) which while to the letter of the law is technically 100% open
> source, I personally wouldn't say it's 100% open. Vendor open source means
> the roadmap and trademarks are in the hands of a single company which can be
> bought and sold and may change if they do or don't accept your patches
> anytime in the future.
You can always fork the code if you're not happy where the vendor
goes. In fact, this has happened with mysql and mariaDB.
I wouldn't be so strict about "100%".
Cheers,
Silvia.
Chaitanya
Firstly, as a disclaimer, I work at BigCommerce.
I would be looking at the following factors before making this
choioce.
1. hosted vs host-your-own really depends on your longer term plans
for this product
2. how much initial investment do you want to make to get it up and
running?
3. is it important to have something working as a prototype/proof-of-
concept quickly?
4. if the platform itself isn't going to be your core business it
makes sense to leave that someone else.
From your email it sounds like your mods requirements are quite low to
begin with. I would recommend trying out BigCommerce. We provide a
free 15 day trial and do not ask for any payment details upfront. We
have an excellent support team who will be able to work through your
requirements and help you asses if a platform like ours will serve
your needs.
Hope that wasn't too much of a plug. :)
Cheers,
Chaitanya
Dylan Jay
Thats true.
However forks can really disrupt the momentum of a project. If the
fork is very decisive such as Hudson -> Jenkins then the harm isn't
that much. However if there are many forks there is a lot of
uncertainty which can sometimes till a project. Sometimes they recover
for example Joomla is a fork of Mambo and over time Joomla seems to
have won out but there was a lot of uncertainty for a year or two
which slowed the community down. If you picked the losing fork....
And even though you can fork the code yourself, you really want to
consider that carefully. Again you don't want to be on the losing fork.
>
> Cheers,
> Silvia.
Malcolm Lambert
interested in e-commerce platforms which can be tested for free for a
limited time or number of transactions then upgraded when real
customers validate the expense of setting up a permanent e-commerce
presence. Chaitanya mention BigCommerce has a 15 day trial, do any of
the other services mentioned so far on this thread offer free for
limited time/transaction trials? Any recommendations for other e-
commerce platforms for the lean-mean boot-strapping startup?
Malcolm
Alex Levashov
ones that you referre we worked with Magento only.
I think that like others wrote it depends in your objectives and
future plans. If you are after simple shop with pretty standard
business requirements maybe a hosted solution is a good way to go. You
just need to select one that suite your specific needs.
It also depends on how are you going to build your online store - do
you have technical skills in-house or need to hire somebody.
Magento is pretty sophisticated platform, with longer learning curve
(due to that it is not not a cheap platform in terms of development as
well), but lots of functionality out-of-the-box and huge number of
extensions. I wouldn't recommend it for very simple shop with couple
of goods and straight-forward delivery, but otherwise it is pretty
good.
My 2 cents. Good luck with your project.
Cheers,
Alex
www.altima.net.au
Matthew Ho
Community edition is free. Magento Go is hosted and free for 30 days.
Could also consider Shopify. Its a hosted solution. Not free, but
there's a basic option for $26/month with 100 SKU's
@Rob - There are also some whitelabel subscription based services I've
seen that could be more appropriate e.g. Sassy http://saasy.com
Cheers,
Matt Ho
Native Tongue
@inspiredworlds
Geoff McQueen | AffinityLive
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Rob Manson
you can avoid it. We found we were getting a 7:1 abandonment rate
solely at the point of passing people off to PayPal. When you take this
into account it makes it much more expensive than most people realise.
Since we've integrated a direct payment API into https://buildAR.com
this has almost completely disappeared. And because we store the users
credit card details and offer them one-click style purchasing our sales
are really taking off!
ymmv
roBman
> Cell: +1 650.450.4384
> Skype: geoffmcqueen
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>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Rob Shea
click style purchasing our sales are really taking off!"
Storing credit card details or any protected information is very risky
for start-ups and should only be done if it is core business or there
is simply no feasible way around it. The costs and risks are just too
high as rule, better to hand it off to someone more equipped.
On Feb 12, 11:26 am, Rob Manson <roB...@mob-labs.com> wrote:
> @Rob, on your question about PayPal...I'd really recommend against it if
> you can avoid it. We found we were getting a 7:1 abandonment rate
> solely at the point of passing people off to PayPal. When you take this
> into account it makes it much more expensive than most people realise.
>
> credit card details and offer them one-click style purchasing our sales
> are really taking off!
>
> ymmv
>
> roBman
>
> On Sat, 2012-02-11 at 16:07 -0800, Geoff McQueen | AffinityLive wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > With all the talk on pricing, don't forget to value your time when
> > looking at a solution. If you're a developer, you should consider your
> > time to worth $100/hour on an opportunity cost basis - paying a bit
> > more for something that saves you time and hassle is well worth it
> > (and with the cult around freemium, I think we tend to forget that
> > sometimes as an industry).
>
> > Geoff
>
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Rob Manson
And because we use the NAB Transact API the card details are stored with
the bank so that adds a level of security too.
roBman
Rob Shea
Good! ;)
You wouldn't believe how many start-ups follow the path of least
resistance with regards to infrastructure and end up... "negligent" is
mild.
Back to PayPal, I've noticed the reverse to be true, but this is in
the US where I think PayPal more be more established, almost universal
even. I would be curious if anyone else has analysed (even informally)
follow through with regard to different payment gateways.
Rob Manson
ratio was pretty consistent in the US and all our other regions. ymmv
but we found the poor PayPal UX and "low-budget" perception were the key
drivers for this.
I'd be really happy to hear other people's perspectives on this.
roBman
Rob Shea
I wonder if the level of internet-savviness might have skewed the
numbers in my experiences.
What the heck are PhD students of the world doing if not running
formal analysis on the impact of various payment gateways? Seems like
this is important research.
Alon Tamir
After adding PayPal (at launch we offered a fully integrated solution exclusively) we definitely saw an increase in conversions.
We've always felt that presenting customers with options is ultimately the best policy.
Hope that helps!
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Bartek
Shopify (http://www.shopify.com) simply to get my online shop (http://
www.inkdrop.com.au) up and running quickly. I'm hoping to redo it at
some stage into my own hosted store using Opencart, but will be a
while before I get around to that. Definately recommend Shopify to
get something up and running really quickly to test an idea or design,
while you build your store in the background.
Joe Ward
he's on his way to Sydney.
So if anyone catches up with him - please let me know as I'm working
on a deal to test our mppCache Java acceleration software with the CTO
and Founder before he leaves. So I'd appreciate any insights I can get
into their technology roadmap before I meet with them again.
- Joe Ward