Hey you gurus of the online world…
My partner is pretty non techie and wants to build both a marketing website and an online store for selling herbal remedies.
I’d love to build it for her, but I’m just too busy with getting my app launched…
So what would you say is the most user friendly method to build and maintain both of these nowadays?
I’ve read that shopify is quite an easy way for non-tech people to make online stores.
Never heard of them…are they big?
Wix.com as well.
Can you just go to shopify and build a complete site, or do you need to integrate it into something else like wordpress?
So can you do a full shop with WIX nowadays?
I also re-direct all my clients that want to do online shopping to shopify… its affordable … no long term contracts… and has all the bells and whistles… so no big capital outlay… why re-invent the wheel… some of my clients still have a normal “retail front-end” site… with only a BUTTON to the shopify shop… the reason for that is… if they do decide not to do online shopping anymore… then their “retail front-end” site is not affected… and they can simply just remove the button.
Thanks for the feedback @Mozzi, that is really useful!
So you find that you can’t really build a multi-page kinda “normal marketing” type of web site with shopify, but you can easily build the main shop itself with some nice branding?
Or can you build both the “normal marketing” pages and the shop with shopify?
We are a business so we want to capitalize on “building” the normal marketing front-end… because 99% of the time that part of the business will always remain, but not the shop… because the shop is always a “speculative” approach in most cases… and we dont want to do the training… and stock management … and and and… because the shop comes with its own time consuming operations. So we let the client do that, save them money… but also “save” us money … by not using our resources by phoning every day asking how to do things… but in short… we do the marketing website … and just link it to the shop…
Yes.
You may want to consider https://www.bigcartel.com/
A bit late to the party but I reiterate what has already been said, I’d go with Shopify. Shopify are probably the biggest commerce platforms out there. Unlike the Wix’s and Wordpresses, Shopify specialize in selling online so they have everything you need including global tax options, out of stock reminders, easy ways to link up with your social media sites, domain sales in site and all sorts of reports.
Personally, I think your partner should focus on Shopify to see if she really needs to have a separate marketing site. There are so many Shopify themes out there (free or up to US$180), there may be some that can be used as both a marketing and sales or she may find that buying two Shopify sites will do the job - one site focused on marketing; the other on selling? My point is that it’s a drag to have to learn two platforms if you don’t need to. She’ll have a lot less frustration and more success if she masters one platform.
We used to sell a lot of art through Big Cartel when we run our gallery. Superb support! We were also a fan of OpenCart. Takes a bit of configuration to set-up though. The page layout is not the most sensible thing to get your head around but there are some great templates with inbuilt Theme Editors for around €50.00 or so… Could easily get two birds stoned with one joint.
EDIT:
Used this theme on a Client’s store. REALLY easy to work with! Had to search to find it but still being maintained.
Hi Mozzi,
Have you used the Shopify API in Wappler?
Best.
Jay
hi JayP. nope not at all… im sure it will work. But as said… its not our focus. Because the shop comes with its own “learning curve” and takes up resources we dont have. Our company is not in a position to hold the clients hand to learn shopify. And for that reason we only link to the shop on either a sub domain or a dedicated now domain for the client. But we dont get involved with the shop…