Any Webmasters On Here

[Brad93]

What are your thoughts on shopify @eSCHEn

 

[eSCHEn]

What are your thoughts on shopify @eSCHEn

It's an almost turn-key sort of solution for a managed online ecommerce presence as far as I know. I think if you like the service and can swallow the fees (anything turn-key/SaaS is always more pricey) then I'd be happy enough if the reviews were decent.

Have to qualify that I'm not in this side of the business any more and I'm not a designer at all. I'm more like the hobbit who makes the magic happen for the hipster designer people who want weird looking things making for the client.

 

[stuvy]

So what I'm trying to ascertain is:

• Frequency of content change.
• Are the products data-driven or just static pages? These days not so much a distinction with the plethora of content management stuff out there.
  
• Is true ecommerce integration warranted/wanted? It's a massive step up in terms of work required to include this.
  
• Do you need a strong product management side to the site?
• A bunch of other boring things.

I'd always steer towards something that is widely used, regularly updated and respected. Free (in the source sense) is always a positive sign when the community is large enough as security issues are spotted. Something like WordPress (which @stuvy has mentioned earlier) is a good starter for ten.

I assume you mean the logistics of posting things when you say "post options"?

I'm thinking you should have something like "postage £POA" and link it to a guide on what your 'normal' charges for places are to give people a guide.

How do you normally take payment for the things you sell? Or have you not crossed that road yet?

did I?

Im not into computers but if I did no need to thank me

 

[eSCHEn]

did I?

Im not into computers but if I did no need to thank me

No sorry mate you didn't - I should have quoted @Brad93 as using Wordpress!

Busy day, many things on the go, insert generic excuse here.

 

[pressbrake1]

So what I'm trying to ascertain is:

• Frequency of content change.
• Are the products data-driven or just static pages? These days not so much a distinction with the plethora of content management stuff out there.
  
• Is true ecommerce integration warranted/wanted? It's a massive step up in terms of work required to include this.
  
• Do you need a strong product management side to the site?
• A bunch of other boring things.

I'd always steer towards something that is widely used, regularly updated and respected. Free (in the source sense) is always a positive sign when the community is large enough as security issues are spotted. Something like WordPress (which @stuvy has mentioned earlier) is a good starter for ten.

I assume you mean the logistics of posting things when you say "post options"?

I'm thinking you should have something like "postage £POA" and link it to a guide on what your 'normal' charges for places are to give people a guide.

How do you normally take payment for the things you sell? Or have you not crossed that road yet?

I don’t want e commerce
I just want more products with descriptions. Post prices are unbelievably variable at present and as I don’t hold stock I can’t just take sales.
Also I like to talk to customers to get it exactly right.

 

[eSCHEn]

I don’t want e commerce
I just want more products with descriptions. Post prices are unbelievably variable at present and as I don’t hold stock I can’t just take sales.
Also I like to talk to customers to get it exactly right.

Excellent, that helps drive the choice

If you have a limited number of products and you're happy to keep all the updating as a manual task* then Wordpress plus a theme you like and a bit of configuration would see you a good step forward from where you are now. The process is much the same as your website builder you've used but there is a learning curve to it. The great news is that because Wordpress is so popular there are just oooooooodles of tutorials out there and so there's always something to help when you need it.

Would you look a demo setting up in my webspace so that you can try it out as a concept? There's no changes to your current live site so don't worry about that, I'll just give you a temporary URL and a blank Wordpress install with a bit of config to make it like your site more. I'll nuke it when you're done. I offer as I am very much a hands-on kind of learner myself

*By which I mean you would log in to your backend and alter any text or images on a per-page basis rather than adjust a database and expect a single product page to then render it.