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Ask HN: What is your favorite way of setting up online store in 2018?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite way of setting up online store in 2018?

#71

Post by zodPod »

petepete wrote: post #43

A friend asked me the best way to start a few months ago. I advised her to use Squarespace for a while and if her idea takes off, perhaps then look at something a little more bespoke. She ignored me and contracted a local development company, ended up paying £1200 for a Wordpress/WooCommerce site that could have been set up for peanuts.

Good. Sometimes people need to learn hard lessons. It's kind of nice to hear that she spent way too much money in the end. Hopefully her business takes off still but I get really tired of people asking for my advice and totally ignoring it.

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite way of setting up online store in 2018?

#72

Post by zodPod »

e40 wrote: post #45
Rjevski wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Wordpress website isn’t an advantage, it’s a nightmare in terms of security and maintenance.

Perhaps less so if you use a wordpress hosting service.

Are you actually e-40?

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite way of setting up online store in 2018?

#73

Post by blairanderson »

I'd say it depends on what you're selling but most people should use Shopify and plug into Amazon for better distribution.

Truth of the matter is if you're spending time building the store, you won't be spending enough time building the products or marketing them.

source: I help large(and small) companies strategize and manage roughly $25m/year of eCommerce sales.

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite way of setting up online store in 2018?

#74

Post by EADGBE »

zodPod wrote: post #71
petepete wrote: post #43

A friend asked me the best way to start a few months ago. I advised her to use Squarespace for a while and if her idea takes off, perhaps then look at something a little more bespoke. She ignored me and contracted a local development company, ended up paying £1200 for a Wordpress/WooCommerce site that could have been set up for peanuts.

Good. Sometimes people need to learn hard lessons. It's kind of nice to hear that she spent way too much money in the end. Hopefully her business takes off still but I get really tired of people asking for my advice and totally ignoring it.

'She don't know what she don't know'. I bet she thought/thinks she was getting a bargain.

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite way of setting up online store in 2018?

#75

Post by magic_beans »

nickthegreek wrote: post #48
amelius wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good suggestion, but he said budget is very low, so is there a free solution out there?

bigcartel (free for a few products, just fees) and if they start doing any amount of decent business, they can switch to shopify.

Odd choice for a product store... Is it for illegal products??

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite way of setting up online store in 2018?

#76

Post by wizzzzzy »

richjdsmith wrote: post #53

Please for the love of all that is good in this world, don't use Woocommerce. I maintain a WooCommerce site - it is a fucking nightmare. Oh, as for "saving money" by choosing Woo over Shopify, in the end you pay for plugins bringing you the same functionality already built into Shopify.

Out of curiosity, what is it you've found such a nightmare? I've worked on numerous woocommerce sites and have generally found the experience fine.

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite way of setting up online store in 2018?

#77

Post by chrisdsaldivar »

m_ke wrote: post #40
toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

Shopify or Etsy to MVP until there's traction. Don't prematurely optimize by thinking you need to use Django or write the shop yourself in the beginning. > Budget for building online store is very low. I want to full control over it and independent? Don't do this. Your time is worth something. Just keep an eye as things develop as to how you're going to get the data out of your prototype into a bespoke system, eventu…

100% this. I'd actually encourage your friend to start with an Etsy store and consider adding a shopify based store later if she gets some traction. If you'd like to help her and learn python while doing it then there's a lot you could do around analytics, market (keyword) research and marketing.

Can you recommend any resources for doing market research or analytics for small online shops?
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