Ecommerce and Shopping Carts

Cart Platforms

When you know you need a shopping cart that is an exciting day. But where to start? In recent years companies like Shopify have grown rapidly answering the call. Still, open-source solutions like WooCommerce and WordPress have kept pace with other options.

Shopify

Pros:

1. 1. Easy deployment
   2. A low-cost barrier to entry
   3. No security updates needed
   4. Cheaper gateway processing fees (2.6%+$.30 vs 2.9%+$.30, you save $.03 (3 cents) for every $100 collected through Shopify.
   5. Shipping solutions are also included

Cons:

1. 1. It is a software as a service. You don’t own your own code. You can’t take your hard work or data anywhere else. They want you to set up a huge store so it is impossible to leave.
   2. More features equal a higher monthly bill.
   3. They have an ecosystem of developers to help new customers. This oftentimes costs as much as hiring a developer in the first place.
   4. Your monthly bill for new features remains regardless of sales.
   5. While they have an extendible system, you are still limited in what you can do with their source code.

WooCommerce + WordPress

Pros:

1. 1. A low-cost barrier to entry – it is open source and free to download and use.
   2. You own your own code, and all work can be preserved and moved to other servers.
   3. More features oftentimes need only be configured and added. It does not equal a higher monthly fee to the degree it does Shopify.

Cons:

1. 1. Security updates will be required. We mitigate this risk through backups and security updates for our hosted clients.
   2. There is no contract discount payment gateway rate through WooCommerce like Shopify.

What do we recommend?

We recommend WooCommere + WordPress. If you are starting out a new concept or business, then gaining proof of concept with Shopify makes a lot of sense. There is no need to invest thousands of dollars with a developer building an eCommerce site that may not be successful. With Shopify, you can launch a cart, and get going. You can also build your site before you pay them, they charge you once go live. Then when you have proved the market is sound invest in a proper cart setup.

But, if you plan for your cart to be around for the long term, and you want a more robust website to evolve and grow around that cart; then WordPress is the better answer. With that combination, you have all the power of content creation and management, as well as store management under the same platform. While Shopify can achieve these things WordPress does it easier. This is not to mention the thousands of other community-created plugins you can freely use to extend your site. With Shopify, this typically means a higher monthly fee – in perpetuity.

Payment Gateways

Stripe

We use to be big PayPal fans, but they are a bit antiquated and there are better solutions out there. Stripe of one of them. They have a clean interface and make connecting with your website secure and easy.

PayPal

We mention them only because they have been around for so long. Their free plan is also one of the most simple to install and takes the user to PayPal for checkout, removing any risk of you taking a credit card on your website. However, in recent years they seem to have fallen behind on their solutions, not to mention charging 3.5% + $.49! Much higher than the industry standard of 2.9% + $.30.

Authorize.net

Very old, very solid company. You can’t go wrong with them but you will incur a monthly fee + your transaction fees.

Shipping & Taxes

We’ll start with taxes. Taxes used to be a big pain, but JetPack for WordPress and Shopify have both made this easier. So this is taken care of us now.

Shipping, however, is often the hardest to get correct with carts. It all depends on what you are selling, where, and what the margins are. If shipping is off it hits your bottom line. Too high and people won’t buy. Too low and you eat the cost. Either way, out-of-balance shipping eats profits. Shipping options we recommend from easiest to hardest.

1. Free Shipping Rates – If you have margins that can support it, it becomes a feature you can elaborate on and makes shipping easy since there is none.
2. Fixed Shipping Rates – In this model, you have one fee you charge for shipping on all orders. Woot.com follows this model. Each order incurs a $5 shipping charge, regardless of what you bought. Forgot something and you make another order? Another $5 gets collected. Like free shipping, this model is very simple and should be used ONLY if it works for you.
3. Tiered Shipping Rates – This is where shipping charges get based on the total cart price or weight.
4. Dynamic Shipping Rates – In this model, your website uses the API of a shipping company like UPS or FedEx. You must declare the size and weight per item for this to work. This will take all information about the order and try to return a close estimate of the actual shipping charges.

Trust our expertise

In all cases, we have done a lot, and I mean a lot, of shopping carts. While they all have the same core idea of selling something, they are all very different. This difference becomes more exaggerated when you consider the user workflow, up-sells, etc… that every cart needs. To learn more about the best path for you to take with your online eCommerce needs just reach out.