Website Help

[Dave]

Hello!

Looking to create a website as a channel to sell my products on. It will be the only place to sell the goods. So it has to be done right.

I will be selling to the general public & my product catalog will be around two digits potentially 3 digits in the long run.

What would be the best website developer to use?

I have heard that some take a percentage of your sales and cap your sales potential. Which I don't want

[tch]

You looking to do the website yourself? Or get someone to do it?

If you are can do it yourself I'd recommend that, will take a while be should be worth it. Am currently redoing ours, after having paid for a 'professional' one. The professional one looks fantastic but the back end is a nightmare.

I'm using weebly, but shopify comes highly recommend, as does squarespace.

Regarding sales caps, most have a limit on number of listings etc. for the free options.but is removed on the paid options.

[Dave]

Thanks for your reply!

Yes I will be doing it myself! I have used square space before to do a website, but for products / a buy catalog is not sure how easy it is,

Out of interest why did you choose Weebly?

[tch]

As silly as it at seem, because my business partner already uses weebly for something else, and is very happy with it, and she doesn't like learning new tech things. Probably not the right reason to pick a platform, but seems good so far.

I believe square space and shopify have a bit more customization in terms of visuals than weebly, but can't comment too much on the use of the shop functions.
A very successful small businesses who we know, use shopify and are very happy with that too, particularly in being able to integrate their physical and online sales. But that doesn't sound like a concern for you if your only selling through your site.

[Dave]

As silly as it at seem, because my business partner already uses weebly for something else, and is very happy with it, and she doesn't like learning new tech things. Probably not the right reason to pick a platform, but seems good so far.

I believe square space and shopify have a bit more customization in terms of visuals than weebly, but can't comment too much on the use of the shop functions.
A very successful small businesses who we know, use shopify and are very happy with that too, particularly in being able to integrate their physical and online sales. But that doesn't sound like a concern for you if your only selling through your site.

Ahhhh! Makes sense! I think I'm leaning towards Shopify or WooCommerce, I currently have a swuarespace website for my other business, however I'm not sure how well it would convert into a Shop front.

Out of interest and a slightly different note how do you store goods and mail them? I was thinking about doing it myself to begin with but can see my garage being full of products and me spending my life running to the post office 😂

[Dave]

Do you still have to pay transaction fees with weebly? Say 2-3% on all sales?

[mjogreen]

Ahhhh! Makes sense! I think I'm leaning towards Shopify or WooCommerce, I currently have a swuarespace website for my other business, however I'm not sure how well it would convert into a Shop front.

Out of interest and a slightly different note how do you store goods and mail them? I was thinking about doing it myself to begin with but can see my garage being full of products and me spending my life running to the post office 😂

I can't help you with webstore unfortunately, but I can help you with regards to how we do storage and postage.

We use a spare bedroom, office with IKEA storage (looks like a living room/TV cabinet) and the garage to store our stock. For the garage we got some metal racking from costco, I think it was on offer at the time (http://www.costco.co.uk/view/p/place...lf-unit-389481)

I have been looking into renting an office space for when I expand. Often you can rent space by way of square footage, so could be a small space within a big office block. Be wary of service charges etc.

We use Royal Mail to send all of our stuff out, where they come and collect your post from you. No stamps or anything, I don't have anything to do with that side of things but IIRC it's done on weight?

[Dangerousfish]

Find a hosting company that will setup a Magento store for you. It's what we use for https://shop.ds3club.co.uk.

Providing you're not making massive profits you can run the community edition free of charge.

Bear in mind that you'll need to create your products from scratch and this can be a time consuming process.


I've never heard of a hosting company taking a cut of your profits, normally you'd contract them to make your website and then pay £x/mnth for support or changes.

If you're using a webstore like cafepress or similar you'll be using their intellectual propery, hence the cut of your profits they will take.

[tch]

Do you still have to pay transaction fees with weebly? Say 2-3% on all sales?

Nope, just the monthly fee and the credit card or paypal transaction fee.

On the storage of stuff, we have a physical shop, so that's easy. I'd try to make do with the space you have, but if it's just for storage, a self storage place would be a good bet.