Forum menu
Whats the best way to get a web shop set up, contract someone locally, one of the big online companies?
I'm thinking of a retail ecommerce shop that'll also need to back office label printing stock control etc.
Ta
edit: sorry wrong forum 😳
Not sure about the label printing, but my first recommendation would be Shopify, dead easy to set up and very professional looking.
You should be able to get it up and running yourself, but might want to find a developer if you need it customising or aren't confident with the setup. This should get you up and running asap with minimal costs.
Then once your store is established and turning a profit, you can then look at a full custom jobbie, but expect to pay for it, you'd be looking at 2-3k at our place for something like that!
Presta shop is another option, not used that myself though. Don't be tempted by a WordPress based site though, they aren't anywhere near as good for ecommerce.
Stuff like 1and1 that you see advertised I wouldn't really recommend. Some of that stuff is beyond crap.
But as Karl says, it won't be cheap to have it built. In fact his prices sound very reasonable. Freelancer might do it cheaper for you, but in all cases, I'd check their previous work and see if it is the kind of thing you're looking for. Plenty of cowboys in the industry.
There are plenty of easy options though too, if you, or a friend have any technical ability. It's not all that difficult to setup something like OpenCart. And when you;re ready to build on it, just hand it to a developer. Label printing and stuff might require something a bit more bespoke though.
What level of stock control? Do you need to have it linked into Sage or another accounting or stock program? How will you take payments. You need to look at ecommerce systems that will meet your needs now AND in the near future. Ive worked on a lot of ecommerce sites. Shopify isn't that good, and your tied to paying them everymonth but if you haven't got a good few grand for a site to be built from scratch then an online hosted company might be your only option.
Best way to go about this is to write down your technical needs and get a few quotes from local companies.
Hard to know without understanding what scale you're talking about. People run extremely successful businesses using Etsy or Amazon Marketplace at one end of the scale.
+1 for Shopify