5 Reasons Why WordPress Is a Fantastic E-Commerce Solution

[Bryn]

Maybe I should start a new thread but we want to build a directory site and are contemplating using wordpress and I thought now with 5.5 a lot of the issues were being addressed. There seems to be a lot of debate over wordpress for ecommerce and the security but would you recommend it for a directory and if not what would you use?

I was discussing a similar scenario with a prospective client earlier this year. In the end, I didn't quote for the gig.

What is your goal here? Because theirs was to basically get a site worth at least R100k for R10k. You don't have to start with a monster budget, but the business plan should be realistic about how to start small if you want to keep costs down.

Otherwise, you're going to end up with one of two things: (1) a developer who is worth almost nothing per hour, which begs major questions about the quality of their work, or (2) a good developer who hardly invests any hours into your development, which also begs the same questions.

 

[yogidabear]

We do want a developer to assist us and are happy to pay to get things done properly even though we will not derive any revenue from the site. Its us giving back to our clients offering them a way to have their services advertised. We bought two wordpress themes to just see what comes out the box, and then waited for 5.5 to be released as we just started looking at wordpress. So we will need developer, but are we looking for a wordpress one is my question?

If this is going to digress further I need to get out of Ruan's thread... sorry!

 

[Ruan @ Webluno]

@Bryn

I have been looking into Webflow but they don't support any South African payment gateways for eCommerce so WordPress is currently the best option we have when it comes to comparing the two platforms. This is sad since Webflow is a really awesome tool.


There have been some requests, 64 of them back in Feb 26 2019 but nothing has happened since. https://wishlist.webflow.com/ideas/WEBFLOW-I-1871

 

[Bryn]

We do want a developer to assist us and are happy to pay to get things done properly even though we will not derive any revenue from the site. Its us giving back to our clients offering them a way to have their services advertised. We bought two wordpress themes to just see what comes out the box, and then waited for 5.5 to be released as we just started looking at wordpress. So we will need developer, but are we looking for a wordpress one is my question?

If this is going to digress further I need to get out of Ruan's thread... sorry!

A major factor in such a project is going to be whether or not these clients need to be able to maintain their own listings, like a Bidorbuy account. If that's not an issue, because they're happy for you to manually maintain the directory, then you're most likely looking at a pretty simple development.

Edit: Actually this wouldn't be much of a big deal. I looked at a site I've done previously and it's similar enough with its custom post types and custom fields (and specifically, users being able to edit their information on their account page) that adapting it wouldn't be too much of a mission. I'm really swamped at the moment but if your timeline isn't too hurried, send me a private message and we can chat about this. You'd be looking at a fairly ordinary custom brochure site rate.

 

[yogidabear]

A major factor in such a project is going to be whether or not these clients need to be able to maintain their own listings, like a Bidorbuy account. If that's not an issue, because they're happy for you to manually maintain the directory, then you're most likely looking at a pretty simple development.

No we want them to maintain themselves and we just authorise their changes. This seems to be possible with a few of the wordpress directory themes, and believe we should follow that route and get a developer to help.

 

[Bryn]

No we want them to maintain themselves and we just authorise their changes. This seems to be possible with a few of the wordpress directory themes, and believe we should follow that route and get a developer to help.

I didn't see your reply before I edited the post above. It won't be a problem for clients to maintain their own listings.

 

[JustAsk]

lol this advertising campaign really went south,

LOL...old skool create "value" blogpost style..but not subtle enough.

To be fair though...i have had plenty of wp sites over the years and none was ever hacked/defaced.

 

[Johnatan56]

@Bryn

100% agree - but don't let "crap designs" put you off of the actual framework. At my design agency, our websites are designed quite professionally and look stunning as well. WordPress + WooCommerce is a lot cheaper and personally more customizable than other services like Shopify and Squarespace stores. Since its a lot cheaper your average Joe tends to make their own online stores without any design experience.

I personally have a lot of design experience and therefore we are are to make stunning Woo stores.

But you don't even have your own site?

Or are you telling me you can't even rank for your own site's name?

Would hope the 3rd last site is yours. At least add HTTPS even if the site is "under construction".
Your web server is also super slow to respond:

And it shows me that you're okay in design, but not up to scratch in web optimization when you don't have:
- https
- svg for a vector image
- don't buy the .co.za version of your name when you operate in South Africa

This is true to an extent - We are currently hosting online stores for a few of our customers and their sites are performing extremely well when it comes to loading times and actual experience. Our customers are experiencing an average of 100k views a month on a 1core 512MB RAM shared hosting package.

And for backups - full account backups are made every single day and stored remotely, not on the actual user account. They can be restored at any time.

I do agree once your store gets bigger you might want to upgrade to dedicated or VPS

And I agree, balance your hosting with what you need. That's why I like docker.

 

[Bryn]

@Johnatan56

webluno.com presumably.

 

[Johnatan56]

@Johnatan56

webluno.com presumably.

Sorry, went added an a and it seems to have been similar. Checking out webluno

EDIT:

Ouch.
Why is the image to the left 300KB?:

Here it is at 87KB: https://tinypng.com/web/output/ew78c19cq3yj7p3phjmqnhtxpkgp8yht/headway-jfR5wu2hMI0-unsplash-min[1].png (note sure how long that link will remain valid, use tinypng.com)
Same for your home page background.


Doesn't seem like it, so much work on the main thread. This most definitely is a theme.

Speed up your animations, e.g. the title one the home page is way too slow, you're making the page feel slower than it is.
Services in the menu needs to pop up faster, that is one noticeable delay.

Under portfolio, don't make what I hover on smaller, I'm hovering on it, I want to make it bigger. Rather change the opacity.

Footer: Why is the bottom of the site not black as well?

Going to other pages as well, speed up that above the fold animation, very bad to have it so slow.

Even out the margins top and bottom, it's not difficult to do.

If it wasn't free, the CPA would like to have a word with you.


Spacing.

And this entire site is a theme.

How do you charge additional per page in maintenance? For every blog page I make, do you charge for images there? How exactly does this work? What if I want to add/remove 100 items, does each count as an item or page? Either your quote is too cheap (you're going 2x minimum wage) or way too expensive.

As demonstrated by your site not actually being mobile responsive:


Half window of 1080p at 100% scaling (and no, no one ever expects full coverage, though with css grid and flexbox you should generally have it, but never have items land up on top of each other).
Someone had to take shortcuts somewhere to be that cheap, and usually that's paid for in responsiveness.

 

[L-Dog]

Is there a feasible alternative for a side business grossing maybe 3k per month but not looking for large monthly overheads? If not I geuss this is the best solution for hobby / side businesses

 

[Pho3nix]

Is there a feasible alternative for a side business grossing maybe 3k per month but not looking for large monthly overheads? If not I geuss this is the best solution for hobby / side businesses

Build and maintain yourself with some of the learnings from here. What you learn will help you more long term.

 

[Ruan @ Webluno]

Sorry, went added an a and it seems to have been similar. Checking out webluno

EDIT:
View attachment 894742
Ouch.
Why is the image to the left 300KB?:
View attachment 894744
Here it is at 87KB: https://tinypng.com/web/output/ew78c19cq3yj7p3phjmqnhtxpkgp8yht/headway-jfR5wu2hMI0-unsplash-min[1].png (note sure how long that link will remain valid, use tinypng.com)
Same for your home page background.

View attachment 894746
Doesn't seem like it, so much work on the main thread. This most definitely is a theme.

Speed up your animations, e.g. the title one the home page is way too slow, you're making the page feel slower than it is.
Services in the menu needs to pop up faster, that is one noticeable delay.

Under portfolio, don't make what I hover on smaller, I'm hovering on it, I want to make it bigger. Rather change the opacity.

Footer: Why is the bottom of the site not black as well?

Going to other pages as well, speed up that above the fold animation, very bad to have it so slow.
View attachment 894748
Even out the margins top and bottom, it's not difficult to do.
View attachment 894750
If it wasn't free, the CPA would like to have a word with you.

View attachment 894752
Spacing.

And this entire site is a theme.
View attachment 894754
How do you charge additional per page in maintenance? For every blog page I make, do you charge for images there? How exactly does this work? What if I want to add/remove 100 items, does each count as an item or page? Either your quote is too cheap (you're going 2x minimum wage) or way too expensive.

As demonstrated by your site not actually being mobile responsive:

View attachment 894758
Half window of 1080p at 100% scaling (and no, no one ever expects full coverage, though with css grid and flexbox you should generally have it, but never have items land up on top of each other).
Someone had to take shortcuts somewhere to be that cheap, and usually that's paid for in responsiveness.

Our site is still under development hence the fact that its not ranking on google. We have a bunch of uncompleted pages as well. Development started a week ago and we’re busy with final optimizations.

 

[Ruan @ Webluno]

Sorry, went added an a and it seems to have been similar. Checking out webluno

EDIT:
View attachment 894742
Ouch.
Why is the image to the left 300KB?:
View attachment 894744
Here it is at 87KB: https://tinypng.com/web/output/ew78c19cq3yj7p3phjmqnhtxpkgp8yht/headway-jfR5wu2hMI0-unsplash-min[1].png (note sure how long that link will remain valid, use tinypng.com)
Same for your home page background.

View attachment 894746
Doesn't seem like it, so much work on the main thread. This most definitely is a theme.

Speed up your animations, e.g. the title one the home page is way too slow, you're making the page feel slower than it is.
Services in the menu needs to pop up faster, that is one noticeable delay.

Under portfolio, don't make what I hover on smaller, I'm hovering on it, I want to make it bigger. Rather change the opacity.

Footer: Why is the bottom of the site not black as well?

Going to other pages as well, speed up that above the fold animation, very bad to have it so slow.
View attachment 894748
Even out the margins top and bottom, it's not difficult to do.
View attachment 894750
If it wasn't free, the CPA would like to have a word with you.

View attachment 894752
Spacing.

And this entire site is a theme.
View attachment 894754
How do you charge additional per page in maintenance? For every blog page I make, do you charge for images there? How exactly does this work? What if I want to add/remove 100 items, does each count as an item or page? Either your quote is too cheap (you're going 2x minimum wage) or way too expensive.

As demonstrated by your site not actually being mobile responsive:

View attachment 894758
Half window of 1080p at 100% scaling (and no, no one ever expects full coverage, though with css grid and flexbox you should generally have it, but never have items land up on top of each other).
Someone had to take shortcuts somewhere to be that cheap, and usually that's paid for in responsiveness.

We know theres a lot of things wrong with our site. Development only started a week ago. The current design theme is only for us to get an idea. No prices or designs are final. Trust me, our site right now is ugly af


Why don’t we have a store? Why should a agency website have a store?


I’d love to hear you critique our new site once it is done though.

 

[Johnatan56]

We know theres a lot of things wrong with our site. Development only started a week ago. The current design theme is only for us to get an idea. No prices or designs are final. Trust me, our site right now is ugly af


Why don’t we have a store? Why should a agency website have a store?


I’d love to hear you critique our new site once it is done though.

?

 

[L-Dog]

Might be slightly off topic but why would you use wordpress instead of Wix for a small business ?

 

[Bryn]

Might be slightly off topic but why would you use wordpress instead of Wix for a small business ?

There are perfectly valid times to use Wix. If there weren't, Wix wouldn't be so popular. But almost all Wix sites are ugly as sin and don't meet the requirements of the site owner.

For someone doing a totally DIY job for a simple brochure site, something like Wix or Squarespace would probably produce better results than a WP site.