Can You Suggest the best eCommerce Solution to this?

[ASG11]

Was about to post this question to WarriorForum, but then I through BBHF would be a better place to ask this question for genuine suggestions.

Okay, I am a designer, a t-shirt designer to be precise. I have been into this business for about 1 year now. I have some "very popular" designs hosted on 5 different t-shirt fulfillment websites(Skreened, Spreadshirt, etc.). The design count is about 80, and as I said earlier, they are not generic, run-of-the-mill designs. I add about 1-2 designs in a week, focusing on quality and content in the design rather than "anything goes" or "all text" designs you usually see. This has been my philosophy since I started last year. I have come to a point that I get upto 200 hits on each of these micro-sites daily. Yes DAILY.

I am able to earn good amount of money, simply through organic traffic, e.g. on Skreened, which is my highest traffic store(~400 daily hits) - 80% of traffic is organic.

I have a FB page, Twitter handle, Pinterest account to promote my designs, which are not very active. Now here is the problem. It becomes kind of difficult promoting 5 different stores on social media. E.g. X design is hosted on 5 stores, but for the sake of promoting on social media, I have to choose to promote only one link at a time. If I promote same design with 5 different links in different posts, it begins to look like the a spam page which has no other content.

So, in short, is there a solution(preferrably WP based), where I can host the design on my website, and it gives the visitor to choose the store from where he wants to buy(may be the price is also listed on my website for how much each shirt costs on each store). Once the visitor clicks/chooses that store, he is taken to relevant/checkout page on that store?

I tried fiddling with WooCommerce, but this didn't seem to be an option with it.

Thanks much, for reading through. :)

[PooAlexa]

WooCommerce.

Just add a custom meta box to the product page with list of the places to buy it and the links to their stores.

No other WordPress shopping cart software is worth even messing with. There's a reason WooCommerce runs almost 30% of the WordPress stores now, with that percentage climbing every day.

[postman]

Hi ASG11,

I too have two stores up. Unlike yours, mine are hosted on my own domains.
1 is magento, the other is CS-Cart.

The problem you're experiencing is:

* managing 5 different stores
* giving customers an easy way to choose a store to purchase in their native currency or preferred currency
* sharing 1 store's product link which should allow people from different places to choose their store.
* even better, the store should automatically choose the desired location of the customer based on their IP
(so that if he is from Australia, the store will automatically display the Australian version of the website)

If you're making money out of your stores. I urge you to invest in a proper eCommerce solution.
wooCommerce is good when you're starting out. It's a simple solution but no where has the "proper" capabilities
to handle your business backend when you're growing.

PS: Just wondering, with your stores hosting on different solutions. What's the average conversion rate you're experiencing?

[ASG11]

Tried fiddling with it. Custom meta box does not reflect on the product page. Could you guide me to a tutorial somewhere.

[ASG11]

(08-21-2014 04:01 PM)emiko Wrote:  Hi ASG11,

I too have two stores up. Unlike yours, mine are hosted on my own domains.
1 is magento, the other is CS-Cart.

The problem you're experiencing is:

* managing 5 different stores
* giving customers an easy way to choose a store to purchase in their native currency or preferred currency
* sharing 1 store's product link which should allow people from different places to choose their store.
* even better, the store should automatically choose the desired location of the customer based on their IP
(so that if he is from Australia, the store will automatically display the Australian version of the website)

If you're making money out of your stores. I urge you to invest in a proper eCommerce solution.
wooCommerce is good when you're starting out. It's a simple solution but no where has the "proper" capabilities
to handle your business backend when you're growing.

PS: Just wondering, with your stores hosting on different solutions. What's the average conversion rate you're experiencing?

Hi emiko,

You summed up the picture perfectly. LOL, I couldn't have described it any better.

Why I am a bit biased towards Wordpress is because I have quite a lot on it. Not to mention the level of customization it offers.

The stores I have Spreadshirt, Skreened etc, already rank way up on SERP. I really want to go on to my hosted domain. It may take a long time for me to get on page 1, unless someone is searching for exact keywords. So my initial focus for my own domain would be to promote products on Social networks only, and probably later have it at the first point of contact through search engines etc. But that is a long shot thinking about it today.


My conversion rate is 0.5%-1% all 5 stores combined with total traffic of about 500-600 sessions on a bad day to 1000-1200 on a average day. It differs on a store to store basis. So, yeah, on a bad day at least 3-4 designs get sold, on a average day I see upto at least 10-12 sales, my margin on designs is usually $8-15, which I sometimes reduce/increase to promote a design which isn't selling well.


Is there any solution you would recommend? I really would not want to spend much time tech-administrating the website. Would rather design, communicate with subscribers, roll out offers etc.

[postman]

(08-21-2014 05:57 PM)ASG11 Wrote:  Why I am a bit biased towards Wordpress is because I have quite a lot on it. Not to mention the level of customization it offers.

How far are you with your store setup on woocommerce?

(08-21-2014 05:57 PM)ASG11 Wrote:  The stores I have Spreadshirt, Skreened etc, already rank way up on SERP. I really want to go on to my hosted domain. It may take a long time for me to get on page 1, unless someone is searching for exact keywords. So my initial focus for my own domain would be to promote products on Social networks only, and probably later have it at the first point of contact through search engines etc. But that is a long shot thinking about it today.

I assume all the sales you mentioned came directly from the SERPs and Social Networks. Spreadshirt, Skreened did not provide any sales, right?

(08-21-2014 05:57 PM)ASG11 Wrote:  My conversion rate is 0.5%-1% all 5 stores combined with total traffic of about 500-600 sessions on a bad day to 1000-1200 on a average day. It differs on a store to store basis. So, yeah, on a bad day at least 3-4 designs get sold, on a average day I see upto at least 10-12 sales, my margin on designs is usually $8-15, which I sometimes reduce/increase to promote a design which isn't selling well.

Have you thought of using Shopify? It'll save you a lot of time of setting up your own store and start selling. You can have it on your own domain too.

(08-21-2014 05:57 PM)ASG11 Wrote:  Is there any solution you would recommend? I really would not want to spend much time tech-administrating the website. Would rather design, communicate with subscribers, roll out offers etc.

In that case, you're seriously, really better off with a paid solution like Shopify. I've used woocommerce for a client in the past. Wrong move. The amount of hours I had to put into administering for them was crazy. I moved them to Shopify and now life's just more easier.

You're making a good consistent amount. Your conversion rate is low. Having a proper store will increase your conversions definitely. This could double your sales overnight. Go get shopify.

[ASG11]

I was hoping you would not suggest shopify. I did use it for a different project some 6 months back, and I am hardly impressed with it. For one basic things such as you cannot even create separate categories for your products. There were a couple of other irksome reasons as well, like non-existence of layered navigation and a couple others which basically limited the functionality a lot.

Shopify was the reason I moved to WooCommerce, LOL. That was a clients project and coupled with WooCommerce and a theme, some plugins the store was functional within a week.

I haven't started on the new store as of yet. Still looking for solutions.

[postman]

I do not know your level of technical expertise. But the words you're using indicate
that you're capable of installing and configuring a store yourself.

As such, you should go with WooCommerce. You would then need to get seperate
plugins that would allow woocommerce to add more features which you require.
* geo-ip targetting
* multiple currencies
* your choice of a payment processor
* and with a little bit of help from a dev, the ability to replicate the store on facebook as an app.

Magento and CS-Cart are my go to solution, even opencart. For a small store, woocommerce is good.
Requires little to no investment and can be setup fairly quick.

Now, how to move forward.

You're going to have to do some research to figure out how to extend woocommerce the way you want.
Your best educated answers will come from woocommerce itself. Write an email to them and ask for
their advice. You can find the advice online, but asking them directly will save you time.