E-commerce retail in automotive industry

A

AlexFl

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Hi all,

I've been tasked with getting our 50yo retail business in the automotive industry an online shop. It's not a big business and, akin to small businesses, the few of our staff need to wear many hats. None of us are particularly tech-savvy.

The online shop needs to operate as seemlessly as possible with our accounting and our in store point of sale systems. It's a strategic initiative, so if necesary the accounting & POS systems can be reviewed if there's a particularly workable threesome out there somewhere.

The business currently has a website on WordPress with WooCommerce (a preliminary online shop set up by our IT vendor a few years ago - not currently configured to sell online). Our sister company, an online only retail company, also uses WordPress & WooCommerce. Logically (because our website is already on WP & WC, and our sister company already trades online on this platform), we'd like to follow suit but our recently deployed accounting and in store point of sale system doesn't integrate seemlessly with WP/WC (potentially only through an API which would require development). Unnecessary time on admin is a luxury we don't have. Flawless & seemless integration between the systems is essential because most of our business entails buying & reselling imported automotive product - 5,000+ SKUs thereof with volatile pricing.

Not knowing much about this, I've tried doing some preliminary research online but I'm not finding a resource there that's helpful. I'm mainly finding info on Shopify, Squarespace, etc. where they're promoting complex e-Commerce products, geared for another market and without sufficient information to answer our specific questions around our unique (?) needs.

We don't need expensive touch screen tablets for our shop (Shopify POS), POS devices/apps that'll work only on iOS, etc. etc. We just need something to
* manage inventory/pricing
* give our instore sales guys a tool to sell to our existing walk-in customers WHILST opening a new online market for us
* keep relevant business trade records for the book keepers

Is there a local guide? Perhaps some form of a checklist that'll nudge me in a direction? Something that'll give me a logical process to whittle down the options?
 
Most accounting systems should have pretty well waxed Woo integrations. Most important for a business like yours would be to make sure your accounting systems and inventory/stock management systems are synced with both your online store and physical pos.
 
You fail to mention what accounting & POS system that's currently running.
"our recently deployed accounting and in store point of sale system"
 
Zellephant said:
Most accounting systems should have pretty well waxed Woo integrations. Most important for a business like yours would be to make sure your accounting systems and inventory/stock management systems are synced with both your online store and physical pos.
Click to expand...
Agreed. Ease of inventory management across systems (incl. pricing & SOH) is paramount.
 
AlexFl said:
Agreed. Ease of inventory management across systems (incl. pricing & SOH) is paramount.
Click to expand...
Then you would not go wrong looking at some format of Zoho integration. They have a really great customer service team and can walk you through the set up process. They have integrations with many other systems as well, but it they don’t have one with your specific POS system, then it would be pretty easy to build one using Zoho creator.

If you aren’t deeply tied into your current accounting system, I would seriously recommend going all in on Zoho for Books, Inventory, Woocommerce integration and physical P.oS. If Zoho isn’t going to cut it, then then you probably need a custom build SAP system, but that is going to be serious money to do. Zoho will cost you a hundred ZAR a month to handle everything - and they now have SARS complaint VAT reporting built in.
 
Always going to recommend Shopify; even if your main site is WordPress; WooCommerce has a larger learning curve over Shopify.

Has a lot of integrations including Xero and most of our local payment processors
 
There are a few spaces where you can get affordable hands on development built for you and your business, removing costs of all the Unnecessary things you dont need. I find these big names becoming less about customers satisfaction and more about profits.
 
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