What would be some good ways going about making an E-Commerce website?

[El1mination]

Firstly, I want to have full control over the website and all components, and I don't want to website to take too much time (I am still willing to customize and spend a lot of time on the website, I just don't want it to take longer than creating my actual business). I know C++ for Unreal Engine, and that is about all my programming knowledge. I have 2 main ideas in mind. The first Idea is using a tool called WebFlow to build my website and then customize the website using Html, Css, and JS from WebFlow itself. The second idea is learning Python Django and building the website with that. This is for an e-commerce website. If anyone here is a tech head or knows anything about how websites operate and work, please let me know what you think of these two ideas.

 

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[Bounce Back]

You may not intend this but whenever I see someone instantly start talking about coding an e-commerce site instead of just starting with one the readily available options like Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, etc. (many to choose from these days) I think it drips of procrastination or fear of failure (pushing off actually having to make a sale/make it real).

 

[El1mination]

You may not intend this but whenever I see someone instantly start talking about coding an e-commerce site instead of just starting with one the readily available options like Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, etc. (many to choose from these days) I think it drips of procrastination or fear of failure (pushing off actually having to make a sale/make it real).

I don't understand why you would think that. Why would wanted to program my website, add additional functionality, and have more control over my website show that I have a fear of failure? I want to program it so I know how my website is functioning, and so I have more control over it.

 

[MTF]

I don't understand why you would think that. Why would wanted to program my website, add additional functionality, and have more control over my website show that I have a fear of failure? I want to program it so I know how my website is functioning, and so I have more control over it.

Thousands of 7-figure businesses are using any of the existing solutions but YOU need a custom one despite zero sales and e-commerce experience.

You're action faking.

You could have a working e-commerce store tomorrow and start doing the real work.

 

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[StrikingViper69]

- What are the specific functions you need which require custom coding?
- Why do you need them?
- Why do you think you need them?

 

[Vntonio]

So it's like having a nice store, the same as your competitors. The 2 differences:
1. You build the shelves, doors, roof, and everything custom and made by yourself, more expensive and more time-consuming. The main thing here is you know everything is custom-made by you. A thing that absolutely no one cares about.
2. You don't have lots of sales. If any.

While there are "idiots" with Shopify stores, barely designed, who make more than you could imagine.

 

[Bence Ur]

C++, Python etc. these are way overkill technologies, just use Shopify. How many sales do you have?

It is very possible that no one will buy your products ever, so first validate the market demand, create a store in Shopify in 1 day and launch it.

 

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[Trismigistus]

Deleted. Bad post.

 

[Jon822]

I am familiar with Django (I prefer Flask) and you are either action faking because you're scared to work and learn in the most important part of business (sales and marketing) or you want to convince yourself you're driving in the Fastlane when you haven't even left your house.

I have over 10 years of experience in Python and Web Development and I would NEVER consider reinventing a wheel the size of an e-commerce site. You will waste at least one year accomplishing something you should have done in one day. In order for you to have FULL control which is what you said you wanted, you would also have to build your own payment processing system.

You should be driving the shortest path to your first customer but you're planning on driving in circles and pretending like you're getting somewhere. You really need to evaluate why you feel you need to build every component from scratch. If you value the experience and technical ability, then that's fine provided you understand you are delaying your actual business.

 

[Devilery]

Customers don't care if you've coded your website, a premium Shopify theme with a solid product and excellent marketing will be superior unless we're talking about an 8-figure+ brand that can afford to spend a couple of million to develop a custom solution (and assuming it's even necessary).

 

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[Trismigistus]

Deleted. Bad post.

 

[Bounce Back]

I've been coding for quite a long time and I have to say it can reward you greatly in terms of time but it is still slowlane (may be one of the best slowlanes but it is slowlane).

Will it unlock ways to go fastlane for you that may be out of reach capital wise later on if you learn it? It could.

Is it a blocker to starting a shop now? So why waste your time? There is just layers of junk clouding someones thought process if they think that. Many will be traps of 1,000,000 fantastic reasons why their case is the special-snowflake and how they are not wasting time or why it is so great to learn coding anyways.

But this ain't a learning coding forum. This is a fastlane forum so I'm going at this from that angle.

If you can't clearly visualize your own goal you are many years from making this sort of life work. I deliver that message not in snark but in compassion as someone who has lived that sort of wantraprenuer life for a long time before making the realization.

What I mean is if you said you've got an ecommerce idea that is going to solve someone problems and you get lost coding before you first tried something that would take 1 hour to set up and then you could try to prove your idea with a week of trying to get people to actually give you $1 on that site you just don't get it yet.

So let me be very clear where this leads:

You are going to fiddle around for the next 3-8 months tinkering with odds and ends on your "ecommerce site". More than 3 times you'll scrap what you have because of some coding influencer/stackoverflow answer "ephiany" and think "wow see this is all going so well I truly am learning at such an accelerated pace look at all those idiots that do things the 3x+ ways I did it before - my coding value is going up".

All through out that time you are going to quit or fizzle out and have to keep forcing yourself to restart and get back on track. You'll exhaust yourself with excuses and various new productivity hacks or rearrange your life schedule 100 times and pat yourself on the back about how now you know how millionaires are made.

Around that 8 months mark or whatever you are going to realize or convince yourself the idea for the shop sucked and move on to something else flashier.

And not once did you ever actually put an offer in front of someones face or in their ears.

Prove me wrong.

 

[Devilery]

I've been coding for quite a long time and I have to say it can reward you greatly in terms of time but it is still slowlane (may be one of the best slowlanes but it is slowlane).

Will it unlock ways to go fastlane for you that may be out of reach capital wise later on if you learn it? It could.

Is it a blocker to starting a shop now? So why waste your time? There is just layers of junk clouding someones thought process if they think that. Many will be traps of 1,000,000 fantastic reasons why their case is the special-snowflake and how they are not wasting time or why it is so great to learn coding anyways.

But this ain't a learning coding forum. This is a fastlane forum so I'm going at this from that angle.

If you can't clearly visualize your own goal you are many years from making this sort of life work. I deliver that message not in snark but in compassion as someone who has lived that sort of wantraprenuer life for a long time.

What I mean is if you said you've got an ecommerce idea that is going to solve someone problems and you get lost coding before you first tried something that would take 1 hour to set up and then you could try to prove your idea with a week of trying to get people to actually give you $1 on that site you just don't get it yet.

So let me be very clear where this leads:

You are going to fiddle around for the next 3-8 months tinkering with odds and ends on your "ecommerce site". More than 3 times you'll scrap what you have because of some coding influencer/stackoverflow answer "ephiany" and think "wow see this is all going so well I truly am learning at such an accelerated pace look at all those idiots that do things the 3x+ ways I did it before - my coding value is going up".

All through out that time you are going to quit or fizzle out and have to keep forcing yourself to restart and get back on track. You'll exhaust yourself with excuses and various new productivity hacks or rearrange your life schedule 100 times and pat yourself on the back about how now you know how millionaires are made.

Around that 8 months mark or whatever you are going to realize or convince yourself the idea for the shop sucked and move on to something else flashier.

And not once did you ever actually put an offer in front of someones face or in their ears.

Prove me wrong.

This is exactly it. Statistically, the most likely scenario is this - he/she spends months custom-coding the store, it's still not ideal and is way more complicated to manage than Shopify, while Shopify premium themes are aesthetically superior. And the biggest issue - "I ran ads and got some traffic but it doesn't convert."

The point - validate your products first.

 

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[maverick]

Coding is slowlane

 

[Trismigistus]

Deleted. Bad post.

 

[Trismigistus]

Deleted. Bad post.

 

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[Bounce Back]

lol tell this to MJ when he coded his site.

Missing the forest for the trees. Been a bit since I read the book but I am pretty sure he did that to get functionality that wasn't readily available at the time and he couldn't afford devs. We can let MJ speak if he wants but I'd venture to guess if limo-fy existed back in the day for the low cost of $40 month he would've paid that verse learning to code/fighting with the website.

 

[dannyfor]

Firstly, I want to have full control over the website and all components, and I don't want to website to take too much time (I am still willing to customize and spend a lot of time on the website, I just don't want it to take longer than creating my actual business). I know C++ for Unreal Engine, and that is about all my programming knowledge. I have 2 main ideas in mind. The first Idea is using a tool called WebFlow to build my website and then customize the website using Html, Css, and JS from WebFlow itself. The second idea is learning Python Django and building the website with that. This is for an e-commerce website. If anyone here is a tech head or knows anything about how websites operate and work, please let me know what you think of these two ideas.

Choose a platform, set up hosting, and install e-commerce software. Customize your store, integrate payments and shipping, ensure security, and launch with marketing efforts to attract customers

 

[Trismigistus]

Deleted. Bad post.

 

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[Vntonio]

Coding is slowlane

It is if you plan to get a job with it. Otherwise, as consulting/building SaaS or having big contracts with the military/government, can be quite rewarding.

 

[maverick]

It is if you plan to get a job with it. Otherwise, as consulting/building SaaS or having big contracts with the military/government, can be quite rewarding.

Sell something. Fill a need. Get somebody else to build it.

Instead of:

Build something. And they will come.

 

[El1mination]

Thousands of 7-figure businesses are using any of the existing solutions but YOU need a custom one despite zero sales and e-commerce experience.

You're action faking.

You could have a working e-commerce store tomorrow and start doing the real work.

But wouldn't that make me a hitchhiker? If I'm using someone else's tool to rely on, what if the tool changes their pricing all of a sudden and I lose access to my website if I don't pay a certain amount, anything can happen if you're not your own driver. Creating my own website would make me a driver of my own vehicle, using someone else's tool would make me a hitchhiker.

 

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[Bounce Back]

But wouldn't that make me a hitchhiker? If I'm using someone else's tool to rely on, what if the tool changes their pricing all of a sudden and I lose access to my website if I don't pay a certain amount, anything can happen if you're not your own driver. Creating my own website would make me a driver of my own vehicle, using someone else's tool would make me a hitchhiker.

Business is full of non-binary choices. What is a problem at some point may not be a problem today. Currently you have sold nothing so if that happens (Shopify deciding to ruin their multi-billion business and brand by surprising everyone with 100000% price increases) then you stand to lose exactly nothing. You can solve that problem instead when you have something to lose.

 

[El1mination]

I am familiar with Django (I prefer Flask) and you are either action faking because you're scared to work and learn in the most important part of business (sales and marketing) or you want to convince yourself you're driving in the Fastlane when you haven't even left your house.

I have over 10 years of experience in Python and Web Development and I would NEVER consider reinventing a wheel the size of an e-commerce site. You will waste at least one year accomplishing something you should have done in one day. In order for you to have FULL control which is what you said you wanted, you would also have to build your own payment processing system.

You should be driving the shortest path to your first customer but you're planning on driving in circles and pretending like you're getting somewhere. You really need to evaluate why you feel you need to build every component from scratch. If you value the experience and technical ability, then that's fine provided you understand you are delaying your actual business.

I'm beginning to understand what all of you are saying, alright I've almost certain now that I'll just create my website with webflow and I'll be done with that (I chose webflow because it's free unlike shopify)

 

[El1mination]

I've been coding for quite a long time and I have to say it can reward you greatly in terms of time but it is still slowlane (may be one of the best slowlanes but it is slowlane).

Will it unlock ways to go fastlane for you that may be out of reach capital wise later on if you learn it? It could.

Is it a blocker to starting a shop now? So why waste your time? There is just layers of junk clouding someones thought process if they think that. Many will be traps of 1,000,000 fantastic reasons why their case is the special-snowflake and how they are not wasting time or why it is so great to learn coding anyways.

But this ain't a learning coding forum. This is a fastlane forum so I'm going at this from that angle.

If you can't clearly visualize your own goal you are many years from making this sort of life work. I deliver that message not in snark but in compassion as someone who has lived that sort of wantraprenuer life for a long time before making the realization.

What I mean is if you said you've got an ecommerce idea that is going to solve someone problems and you get lost coding before you first tried something that would take 1 hour to set up and then you could try to prove your idea with a week of trying to get people to actually give you $1 on that site you just don't get it yet.

So let me be very clear where this leads:

You are going to fiddle around for the next 3-8 months tinkering with odds and ends on your "ecommerce site". More than 3 times you'll scrap what you have because of some coding influencer/stackoverflow answer "ephiany" and think "wow see this is all going so well I truly am learning at such an accelerated pace look at all those idiots that do things the 3x+ ways I did it before - my coding value is going up".

All through out that time you are going to quit or fizzle out and have to keep forcing yourself to restart and get back on track. You'll exhaust yourself with excuses and various new productivity hacks or rearrange your life schedule 100 times and pat yourself on the back about how now you know how millionaires are made.

Around that 8 months mark or whatever you are going to realize or convince yourself the idea for the shop sucked and move on to something else flashier.

And not once did you ever actually put an offer in front of someones face or in their ears.

Prove me wrong.

I see the point you all are making now, my main concern was that using someone else's tool would make me a hitchhiker but it's better than wasting all my time learning coding when I could create a website in a few hours like you said. Thank you everyone here for helping me realize that.

 

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[Bounce Back]

I see the point you all are making now, my main concern was that using someone else's tool would make me a hitchhiker but it's better than wasting all my time learning coding when I could create a website in a few hours like you said. Thank you everyone here for helping me realize that.

No problem. You may eventually find an opportunity that you've validated that you absolutely need to learn to code for and by all means I promote doing so then.

You may also find learning it helps your slowlane career.

But for this? Yup wrong tool from what was provided. Best of luck to you on launching your ecommerce site.

 

[Two Dog]

Firstly, I want to have full control over the website and all components, and I don't want to website to take too much time (I am still willing to customize and spend a lot of time on the website, I just don't want it to take longer than creating my actual business). I know C++ for Unreal Engine, and that is about all my programming knowledge. I have 2 main ideas in mind. The first Idea is using a tool called WebFlow to build my website and then customize the website using Html, Css, and JS from WebFlow itself. The second idea is learning Python Django and building the website with that. This is for an e-commerce website. If anyone here is a tech head or knows anything about how websites operate and work, please let me know what you think of these two ideas.

Enjoy learning Python while everyone else clicks a bunch of times to launch their e-commerce sites over the weekend.

Webflow Raises $120M Series C at $4B Valuation Led by YC Continuity

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www.prnewswire.com

 

[Jon822]

Customers don't care if you've coded your website, a premium Shopify theme with a solid product and excellent marketing will be superior unless we're talking about an 8-figure+ brand that can afford to spend a couple of million to develop a custom solution (and assuming it's even necessary).

This is exactly what I meant to include in my response: worry about the 8 figure control leverage problems when you reach 8 figures.

 

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[MitchC]

Forget 7 and 8 figure businesses, there's 9 figure ecom stores using Shopify and definitely multiple billion dollar companies using it.

Brands are switching from Magento or their expensive custom built stores to Shopify.

But you wanna use webflow coz Shopify is $40 a month (after a 90 day free trial where you can test the market) and webflow is free.

F*ck me.

 

[MitchC]

I am building my own site from scratch. I am learning and teaching myself a specialized skill. If my first site fails then I have the expertise to build another and to exploit my new skill by building site for others. If you dont want to have web development as a specialized skill then i wouldnt go down this route.

Some people may consider it action faking, but it is only action faking if it doesn't lead anywhere. The ultimate goal may be to make a shit ton of money in the least amount of time as possible, but I dont want to just modulate each piece of my business and outsource it. I am respecting the process and learning a specialized skill that will help me build my company. It is really a matter of personal preference and what fits you and your life the best.

Building Shopify stores that converts/looks nice is a high value skill

Building SEO optimised wordpress sites that look good is a high value skill

Coding shit for no reason isn't valuable just because it's harder

My two cents is, learn how to build a site then you'll have that skill and wont need to rely on someone elses platform for the rest of your life.

You can build a better site on Shopify/Wordpress than you can with code, and it's easier

Good on you for doing stuff and learning stuff, especially hard stuff, but don't kid yourself into thinking it's valuable and not action faking