Think I'm gonna need a new website

[brain357]

Greetings. I'm looking for some website advice. My current situation has fallen apart this year it seems. The person I am paying is hosting and also supposed to fix/upgrade my site. Well I paid for an upgrade in January and he still has been unable to complete it. In the past he has been very competent, so I don't really know why this is. But we've talked quite a few times on the subject and I still have a website that is over a couple years old without an upgrade. I'm currently using nopcommere. My site is not mobile friendly and the upgrade was supposed to make the site responsive which is something I really want. There are also other promotional things I'd like to use that I don't currently have like abandoned cart.

So now I think early next year I need to move to something else. I currently have about 400 products that I sell. Business is pretty good but I think it would be much better with a more updated website. I don't really have that much interest in completely running the site myself. I used to have an html site with paypal buttons that I ran myself. That wasn't so hard, but all I know is a little html. My research so far makes me thing a hosted solution would be good like 3D cart, Volusion, Shopify, or bigcommerce. They seem to have all the features I want and would actually be cheaper than what I'm paying now. But I do find negative reviews on them. I am hoping those are a small minority of their customers. Looking for suggestions on what route I should take going forward. I'm mostly leaning 3d Cart right now. This is the second company I have worked with on this current site btw. The previous company was local and had huge hosting problems and the site was slow due to errors after an upgrade which also took them forever. The current guy I am working with fixed up the site and took over hosting. So I don't know I want to go to another small web company since two have failed me already.

[littlehoot]

Greetings. I'm looking for some website advice. My current situation has fallen apart this year it seems. The person I am paying is hosting and also supposed to fix/upgrade my site. Well I paid for an upgrade in January and he still has been unable to complete it. In the past he has been very competent, so I don't really know why this is. But we've talked quite a few times on the subject and I still have a website that is over a couple years old without an upgrade. I'm currently using nopcommere. My site is not mobile friendly and the upgrade was supposed to make the site responsive which is something I really want. There are also other promotional things I'd like to use that I don't currently have like abandoned cart.

So now I think early next year I need to move to something else. I currently have about 400 products that I sell. Business is pretty good but I think it would be much better with a more updated website. I don't really have that much interest in completely running the site myself. I used to have an html site with paypal buttons that I ran myself. That wasn't so hard, but all I know is a little html. My research so far makes me thing a hosted solution would be good like 3D cart, Volusion, Shopify, or bigcommerce. They seem to have all the features I want and would actually be cheaper than what I'm paying now. But I do find negative reviews on them. I am hoping those are a small minority of their customers. Looking for suggestions on what route I should take going forward. I'm mostly leaning 3d Cart right now. This is the second company I have worked with on this current site btw. The previous company was local and had huge hosting problems and the site was slow due to errors after an upgrade which also took them forever. The current guy I am working with fixed up the site and took over hosting. So I don't know I want to go to another small web company since two have failed me already.

Hi there!

Sorry you've had shoddy service with your past web companies.

As far as platforms go it really depends on what your selling. I've used both volusion and shopify for other clients in the past and both have worked fine for each. I prefer shopify because of the user interface but I suppose that's "to each their own." I believe both have responsive options which is super important with mobile usage now.

I use WordPress for content management along with WooCommerce to manage my product and it's integrated with paypal to accept payment. I personally LOVE WordPress and the flexibility it offers - so I'm kind of biased ;)

With volusion and shopify they take a percentage plus some small amount, like .30 per transaction - but you'll find PayPal gets their cut when you withdraw funds (as I'm sure you know).
Another option if you want to utilize WordPress and accept payment is Stripe, but that's a little more involved.

If you want to limit the work, have someone else take care of payment, and manage the products yourself, I would recommend volusion or shopify.

Let me know if you need anymore guidance


Keli

[FirstPortMarketing]

Creating a responsive site from an existing framework will take more time than creating a responsive site from scratch. But you shouldn't be waiting a year for it! That's absurd!

My suggestion: Ask other small business owners, friends, even your local Chamber of Commerce to refer you to a trusted web developer or two. Pay attention and see whose name comes up repeatedly. Contact the referrals for a quote and see how they compare to Shopify/Volusion/etc., both on price and features. Demand your money back from the guy who never gave you an upgrade. And update us on how it all goes. Good luck!

[Harold Mansfield]

Some tips that I always give my own clients:



Don't let one person be in control of your website AND it's hosting.
Always insure that you have admin access to everything, have any and all licenses, and all accounts are in your name paid for with your credit card.
You should be the main admin of everything. Even if you have others working on things, they should only have the access that you give them and can revoke at any time. Not the other way around.


It takes a little more attention and time, but when you are in control of all of your stuff you don't have to accept poor work and service because you have no idea what is going on or how to access your own stuff.

As far as the eCommerce solutions that you're looking at, can't make any specific recommendations without knowing more about you and your business, and also I haven't used all of the ones you've named. I'm a WordPress and Big Commerce person, so I like those 2. Based on what you've said about wanting a hosted solution I'd lean towards Big Commerce.

You should definitely take bad reviews into account, but you should also understand what they are complaining about. Not all users are the same and some have unrealistic expectations of whatever product or software they are using, or are frustrated because of their own lack of knowledge...or even simpler...just refuse to read the directions.

None of the out of the box eCommerce solutions are perfect. The key is to find the one that seems to be reliable, and offers what you want based on your specific needs.

[Brian Altenhofel]

Responsive design is definitely easier to do from the ground up than to take something that's existing. Of course, if the branding already works, it may be worth it to no start from scratch.

Sounds like you were working with companies that didn't respect your website as being your revenue source. If your website is a revenue source, you should always host it with someone who has an SLA that actually has teeth. (Many providers will pay lipservice to an SLA by saying "99.999% uptime", but they won't credit or refund if they don't meet it.) For what it's worth, 99.95% is considered a good baseline in the <$1000/mo bracket. More than $1000, and 99.99% should be reasonably expected, with each additional "9" requiring another comma.

I'ma Drupal Commerce guy, and I also do Drupal hosting. Nearly all of my development clients also host with me. I also host for other developers' clients. But my SLA has teeth - every PagerDuty alert that I get has a dollar value attached to it that I am losing.

However, if you're leaning toward those solutions you mentioned above, I'd recommend either Shopify or BigCommerce.

[LarsJ]

Just wanted to ad...

This is a good read: WooCommerce vs Shopify: Which Is Better For E-Commerce? | Elegant Themes Blog (http://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/resources/woocommerce-vs-shopify-which-is-better-for-e-commerce) and so is the rest of that blog BTW...

Also, with SLA and uptime guarantees, may hosts might mention that routine maintenance and upgrades etc. do not count towards part of any down time percentage. If there is advanced notice this is acceptable. Hope you have root access to at least move everything...

[Brian Altenhofel]

Also, with SLA and uptime guarantees, may hosts might mention that routine maintenance and upgrades etc. do not count towards part of any down time percentage. If there is advanced notice this is acceptable. Hope you have root access to at least move everything...

Typically, it's "scheduled maintenance", and that notification must be made at least 48 hours in advance. Typically.

However, some will also enter into custom SLAs on a per customer basis. It all depends on how valuable the website is to the business as to what an appropriate SLA entails.

[LarsJ]

Yes, and then there is "emergency maintenance" etc :) And we have both; routine maintenance and scheduled maintenance. A lot of DC's will wait until the scheduled date and others do this when it's needed. They can call it routine or scheduled just as long as it's done. This may not always result in downtime but slower technical support while certain techs are performing these duties but clients need to know this. We'll even contact some clients and ask them if we can do it today or wait until they are ready. It depends on the issue. I think the important part here is that there is good communication and that clients are informed. I think the OP should go with what he/she is most comfortable with and check in advance that they can get the site migrated over. That's always the scary part.

You do raise an interesting point about custom SLA's for each client. I like that idea...