To Build a Webiste or To Pay Someone ? - Wix vs SS vs Shopify vs [etc] - eCommerce Platform

[HellaSiccEtienne]

Hi !

I'm currently looking to have a website. But, as the title says, I'm a bit lost here. I've read through a whole lotta stuff about which website builder has the best options for a eCommerce platform, through which I will sell my product (only one product), after a (possibly, hopefully) succesfull Kickstarter launch, this september.

So, very simply, landing page would be a video that loops (it will be subtitled, and muted too) that shows the product, and the story behind it, with humor and all. Right next to that, or under, its the "I want that" or whatever, to click and purchase. And other sections that we don't care about yet, cause its simple text and images.

I'm very proefficient with anything computer-related, but I really really don't want to 1. babysit the website 2. code anything.

I've been looking into Wix, SquareSpace, Shopify, ClickFunnels, WordPress.

The payment processing and all that has to be efficient, and simple, both for customer and I. I'm also trying to minimize costs, but if Shopify at a 29$ plan (basic one) is the best options vs Wix's 25$/month plan or SquareSpace's 26$/month plan, I will go with Shopify. I have a custom domain, and email adress too (if it can help you answer this).

A web designer is like mad expensive, so ya... But hey, it's an option.

I want to know what do you guys think. Did you use one of those plans ? Which one and why ?

Let's have a discussion. I'm open and listening !

Thank you for your time !

(Previous forum thread : Looking for Manufacturers - From Small Scale to Wide Scale)

 

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[23Infinity]

Your best bet would be Shopify with a good theme ($150-$250), or honestly even a free theme - just get good photos or mockups of whatever you are building - I don't know what your budget is for this but IMO your $ would be better spent on good visuals / photos / infographics of whatever you are building compared to hiring a web designer for a product that's yet to be proven. Keep the website simple whether you are technically proficient at web building or not - because reading from the other thread your core focus shouldn't be creating a website but developing and marketing your product.

As for your other thread, I don't know if you are affiliated with a university, but I know a local university near me here (t-dot) offers 3D printing capabilities to students for free. Perhaps you can accomplish that with the help of a friend. Moulds in China are usually expensive - about a year ago I paid $800 USD for a simple "edit" to a mould to create a small 4mm hole in the product. I would probably validate your idea first and test for demand before putting up the cash, if it's unique / patentable - kickstarter might be a good resource too.

 

[Knugs]

We got freelance designers and devs to build our own website and it was a true nightmare. Cost spiralled out of control and took months to do. Worst of all; you cant really stay flexible as once you want to change a design you basically have to forfeit most of the work for that page.

My mistake was to think that we needed to code it all ourselves as we were developing a platform with specific functions. Now I'm thinking I could have just used templates to create the normal website and build the platform under a different link. oh boy

 

[KushShah9492]

Have a basic theme, but professionally clicked photographs of the product. But as you mentioned, you already have a video. Hiring someone is not a bad idea per se, but you might end up taking more stress and getting frustrated since you'll have to go back and forth with the developer to see what works and what doesn't. In my opinion, have a basic free shopify theme, good product, and quality photos..that's it.

 

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[Knugs]

Can I just hijack this thread and ask what you couldnt do with these website builders (apart from specific features)

 

[journeyman]

There is no need to spend a lot of money on custom work at this stage and take that from someone who charges people money to make websites for them.

Shopify with a good theme (or paying a cheap SE Asia freelancer to set it up nicely for you) is perfect for where you are at.

You can definitely achieve the same with WordPress + Woocommerce for less money, but the learning curve is a lot steeper and it will probably end up costing more.

Down the line, looking at optimizing conversions, etc, you can think more about customizing within Shopify more or even moving off the platform altogether.

 

[Johnny boy]

Unless you have a novel new way of sending traffic to this site or you have some product so special that it would sell like hotcakes without even trying, you are likely focusing on the wrong thing right now. This part is the easiest part of any business. It's easier than hiring people, managing customers, designing a product or service, etc. It's the easiest thing to do.

With that said, I can whip up a good wordpress site that looks and works like any other big budget website in like a day or two. So I would just spend the time doing wordpress.

 

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[eTox]

Your goal should not be focusing on which platform to choose or whether to hire or build the website yourself. The question should be why haven't you done it yet? If you can't solve the simplest task that any Indian guy can do with no education in 30 minutes, don't be surprised by the difficulties you're going to face one step after you've built a website.

 

[Blackman]

What do you guys think of WooCommerce? If I can handle Wordpress and play around with customizing themes, would you say that's a better alternative compared to the likes of Shopify and BigCommerce, etc?

They seem to be more focused on the US market, as they charge extra fees for processing non-US payments in currencies other than USD, so I'm not sure if it's a viable solution for me in the UK?

Any UK users happy with WooCommerce?

 

[Deleted70138]

Though Squarespace lacks a lot of tools, somehow it appeals greatly to visitors. If I needed simple website, I would 100% go with squarespace.

 

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[woken]

I don’t care what you want to sell.

If you choose to ignore what I’m about to say, kudos to you.

You mentioned you want to minimize costs.
Let’s assume your idea works but you want to tweak thebwebsite every now and then :
- Pay the same guy or other to rename your “Buy Now” button to “Grab yours”




Now let’s assume your idea does not work and you paid for somebody to do your website. If you cannot make it work, you’ll pursue another idea. Throw money again at a developer to create a website.

Whatever the platform, Shopify, Wix, Bigcommerce etc, you can literally drag and drop a goodlooking, functional website .
What you want to implement is a google search away.

What are you going to do when you have to finished website with the video on the background and you end up disliking it?

I’m not against developers, but I’m against spending money on something this basic in the early stages.

Also, you’re not in the driving seat if you have 0 clues about your website basic functions.


hate it or love it, that’s my opinion.
Good luck

 

[Devilery]

Get Shopify, it's super simple and it works. You would probably be fine with a free theme, and could build it out yourself. Worst case scenario, hire someone on Fiverr for $100 to $200 and he/she will create it for you.

 

[FastNAwesome]

For your specific purpose I'd say do it yourself.

I really like Shopify, and think it has all you need.

• Ecommerce.
• You can customise the look, plenty of themes too.
• Easy to use, you can have your website up and running today.

Also, it has plenty of apps for additional functionality. And if you ever need, you can even hire a developer/designer at some point to make a custom app or theme for your needs.

So you can have a professional website in a day, and this will also allow you to focus on what matters more to you now, which is promoting your product and getting customers to begin with. While having a professionally looking website to send them to, which also matters.

Btw. I'm a web developer, and still think, for your scenario - go with hosted 3rd party solution.

 

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[Dean Irwin]

I've done some e-commerce work for clients in the past, and this is what I've found works best for this type of business...

I would recommend against Shopify, becuase Shopify is ultimately not a great page builder, and there is a lot more to running an ecommerce site than just the functionality of purchasing the items.

Shopify is great for just ecommerce functionality, but it falls flat when you want to do the other cool stuff that an ecommerce website is supposed to do. In my experience, and it's been a couple years so this might have changed, but customizing Shopify and getting it to look exactly how you want it, and further optimizing the pages, ends up being a problem becuase it does not have the same ecosystem as a web platform such as Wordpress. Therefore, I would recommend, for a computer savvy person such as yourself, you should use a Wordpress-driven tech stack that you own and can change, which you would not have with a managed service like Shopify.

Here is my mini guide, the steps I would take today if I was doing similar work for a client:

Domain:
I would recommend first purchasing your domain name from Google Domains. Google Domains has domains at the same price as other registrars, ($12) but with FREE whois protection, and a nice interface not crowded with a bunch of other shit trying to upsell you.

Hosting:
Setting up Wordpress (Go to a managed Wordpress host, becuase they generally have great support, and the extra couple bucks a month can really make a difference. I can personally recommend WPX Hosting). This will get your website active TODAY (Google DNS updates very quickly compared to other registrars).

Page Builder:
This is where your extra work will start to shine, I think the plugins available for Wordpress is what gives you better functionality and an advantage over Shopify stores. Elementor is the page builder I recommend for this kind of Website. They have a lot of flashy and pre-built templates/components that are optimized to sell, and are highly customizable. Elementor is currently on sale for the lowest price I have seen it for the next 8 hours.

Landing Pages:
Build really nice landing pages for the different "personas" of your website using the elementor page builder. You should customize the message to the different types of customers, and build separate pages for them. Elementor makes this process fun and rewarding.

WooCommerce:
WooCommerce will allow you to build a storefront page, and also build product pages in combination with Elementor. There are nice integration plugins for them out there. If there is a fulfilment center involved, they will either have an integration for WooCommerce, or will access your WooCommerce API.

SEO Press:
If you are looking to build up SEO friendly pages, SEO Press is typically a lot less "bloated" to use than Yoast. If you are doing direct ads, I wouldn't worry about this as much, as SEO takes a long time to pay off, and throwing money at Google Ads might be a better route.


And with that, you own everything, have a hosting team wiling to help you with the basic/intermediate stuff, and you do not need to pay monthly for managed service. Of course, all of this is my opinion, and there are many routes to the same destination.

 

[GuestR401x3]

If price is a big deal and SEO isn't build your own. Personally I'd recommend WordPress, it's pretty easy to use to learn the interface and allows you to scale. The plugins you can get are amazing as well.
I've heard some good things about squarespace, but don't have experience and don't know much about its e-commerce abilities.

 

[AnNvr]

I've done some e-commerce work for clients in the past, and this is what I've found works best for this type of business...

I would recommend against Shopify, becuase Shopify is ultimately not a great page builder, and there is a lot more to running an ecommerce site than just the functionality of purchasing the items.

Shopify is great for just ecommerce functionality, but it falls flat when you want to do the other cool stuff that an ecommerce website is supposed to do. In my experience, and it's been a couple years so this might have changed, but customizing Shopify and getting it to look exactly how you want it, and further optimizing the pages, ends up being a problem becuase it does not have the same ecosystem as a web platform such as Wordpress. Therefore, I would recommend, for a computer savvy person such as yourself, you should use a Wordpress-driven tech stack that you own and can change, which you would not have with a managed service like Shopify.

Here is my mini guide, the steps I would take today if I was doing similar work for a client:

Domain:
I would recommend first purchasing your domain name from Google Domains. Google Domains has domains at the same price as other registrars, ($12) but with FREE whois protection, and a nice interface not crowded with a bunch of other shit trying to upsell you.

Hosting:
Setting up Wordpress (Go to a managed Wordpress host, becuase they generally have great support, and the extra couple bucks a month can really make a difference. I can personally recommend WPX Hosting). This will get your website active TODAY (Google DNS updates very quickly compared to other registrars).

Page Builder:
This is where your extra work will start to shine, I think the plugins available for Wordpress is what gives you better functionality and an advantage over Shopify stores. Elementor is the page builder I recommend for this kind of Website. They have a lot of flashy and pre-built templates/components that are optimized to sell, and are highly customizable. Elementor is currently on sale for the lowest price I have seen it for the next 8 hours.

Landing Pages:
Build really nice landing pages for the different "personas" of your website using the elementor page builder. You should customize the message to the different types of customers, and build separate pages for them. Elementor makes this process fun and rewarding.

WooCommerce:
WooCommerce will allow you to build a storefront page, and also build product pages in combination with Elementor. There are nice integration plugins for them out there. If there is a fulfilment center involved, they will either have an integration for WooCommerce, or will access your WooCommerce API.

SEO Press:
If you are looking to build up SEO friendly pages, SEO Press is typically a lot less "bloated" to use than Yoast. If you are doing direct ads, I wouldn't worry about this as much, as SEO takes a long time to pay off, and throwing money at Google Ads might be a better route.


And with that, you own everything, have a hosting team wiling to help you with the basic/intermediate stuff, and you do not need to pay monthly for managed service. Of course, all of this is my opinion, and there are many routes to the same destination.

Those are some great tips. Thank you for sharing them so clear and detailed!

 

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