Shopify or other automated sales website templates - what do you use?

[Andymac]

We are cataloging and photographing our print collection with the idea to get it up on the website. Anybody got some suggestions/comments/recommendations?

What do you use?

Thanks

ps I did a search, Paul Imagine's Bass fishing thread came up....

[zlandrum]

bigcartel is who I use. So far I've been very pleased with them - Oldesoulprintshop.com to take a look.

[boatdreams]

My site is on a platform called Concrete 5. It's free, but the e-commerce (web store) feature comes as an add-on, which was a one time expense instead of a monthly fee. It also doesn't take a percentage of each transaction, and you can link it to paypal (which still does take the usual percentage, of course). You can set it up so you get notifications of sales in your inbox (which I imagine is a feature that all of these sales templates have). I don't have any complaints with it.

[Evil Alice Corp]

check out Big Cartel

[alexfugazi]

I use Network Solutions- it's about $100 a month, with no per-transaction fee. A little pricey but the reporting is rock-solid and you can't beat the ease of use. It all depends on how much volume you're doing...

[thirteen]

Do you want to host it (gives you more power in general, especially when it comes to tweaking the plan according to how much traffic you get), or do you want the eCommerce company to host it (more support if something goes wrong)?

• The Concrete5 store plugin is great. But the entire site has to be built in C5 (CMS) and customized. Note: It's a great content management system if you want to build a site that is easy to update.

• If you want a store that is separate from the rest of your site (or even if you plan on building your site around the store later), I would recommend Shopify. They have great support too.

• If you're using Wordpress, I like Duka Press as a store solution. Alternatives include: Templatic (here's a template, here's another one, here's one more). A friend made Market Theme as well. And I've heard good things about Shopp, also made for WP. Sofa Suppastore is a theme I recently customized for a client. Works quite well for WP, and you can get someone to change it up for your store.

• Never used Goodsie, but looks like it could be good.

• Big Cartel is nice too, and it may be perfectly fine for smaller stores. Just keep in mind the cart holds products in it for a while and doesn't check the inventory as quickly as other systems. However, if you aren't going to have hundreds of customers checking out at the exact same time with a limited inventory, BC is acceptable.

All these eCommerce solutions have their limits, so read the documentation before purchasing (if it requires a license). Otherwise you'll need to hire a developer to make the store appear and function as you want.

[Andymac]

All good info, thanks. And the examples are great. My web guy is pushing me to use Shopify and do a complete redesign of Squeegeeville. My wallet is telling me to see if we can do a store subpage and then graft it on the existing website - for now.
My brain is telling me I might as well do it right from the ground up, (new site - the existing squeegeeville is from 2007) but then when I compare monthly fees, it seems big cartel might be better value - 300 items/$29/month, vs over 100 for shopify it's $54/month. Just redid TMI website so I've kind of blown my web budget for a year or so.
A couple of my old friends came over for beers yesterday, one is a designer doing a lot of web, and he started singing the praises of Concrete 5, I guess they use it to build sites all the time. But then he said they hadn't done a commerce site yet with it.

[vrooooom]

A big part of it is also traffic... take a peak at which search terms bring people to the site currently, the quality of traffic, etc. You're probably lucky in that I would assume squeegeeville has a good mix of traffic, but the problem with big cartel / integrated packages is that they add shops to your website without inherently driving traffic to it. I ended up starting with an Etsy store awhile back simply because there's loads of people hitting Etsy with the intent of buying items.

But now, I'm working on a big cartel.

^__^

[alexfugazi]

Andy- the main thing to consider for me was this- can I do 99% of what I need to do w/out calling anyone? If I have to get a web developer buddy on the phone everytime I need to add a product, manage a category description, or do a monthly report, I'm in trouble. I work with a lot of different artists that I pay on a monthly or quarterly basis, so I need to be able to get rock solid reporting on what sold and for how much. NOW- if I was just a lone artist selling prints, I'd probably go for a Big Cartel or something like that- I don't care what exactly sold, it's all mine. Also figure out what the payment gateway is, how you get paid, what it costs you, and how you do things like refunds to customers, tracking packages and all that. The reason I went w/ a more expensive platform like netsol is that it could do all that easily, giving me more time to draw, which is how I make my monies. There's a solution for you- just make sure it's going to be something YOU can manage mostly on your own, eh?

[boatdreams]

Thirteen helped me set up my Concrete 5 store, and gave me a quick tutorial on it. She's totally handed the reigns over to me, and I have no problem adding or removing products to the store. C5 is very user friendly, and the one time fee vs. a monthly fee was a big selling point for me personally. As was stated above, it's best to just weigh your options against what you think is best for you and how you plan to use the software.