Today I presented Evaluating E-Commerce Solutions at WordCamp Grand Rapids which focused on creating a process to evaluate different e-commerce solutions so that you can pick the best tool for your project.
Abstract
- E-Commerce is very complex
- Use a community driven tool to make sure it stays up to date
- Well known e-commerce solutions
- Several things to look for when selecting an e-commerce solutions:
- Is it open source? (can I look at the code?)
- If so, is it easy to contribute? (so people can easily fix bugs)
- Do they build themes for their e-commerce solutions?
- Can I use any theme with this e-commerce plugin?
- How many downloads does this e-commerce plugin have? (how many people have tested it)
- Is it hosted? (do I have to worry about an SSL certificate)
- How do you license the products?
- Do they have a community forum?
- Do they have a premium support forum? (can I browse other people's problems)
- Do they use a ticketing system? (can I have a personalized response?)
- Do they have unit tests? (is it robust? how many bugs will there be?)
- How many extensions do they have? (how versatile is this?)
- Do they ship physical products? (or is it only downloadable products?)
- Do they have recurring billing functionality? (can I sell a membership?)
- Do they have the functionality of a marketplace? (can I sell other people's products on my site)
- Do they have commission functionality? (can I get people to help sell my products)
- Do they have Stripe? (can I deal with an easy to use payment gateway?)
- Is there a mobile app? (can I view my stats on the go?)
- Does it support my currency?
Here are the slides from my presentation.
Hi there,
A couple things. I would argue Jigoshop should’ve been included. I think it’s certainly more known, than say, eShop.
Also a potential correction:
EDD’s does support shipping. I wasn’t there to hear you speak, so maybe there was a clarification provided, that shipping meant in core, but EDD has a great, simple, official Simple Shipping extension.
-Chris
Hi Chris!
Thanks for your input, the next time I do this talk I’ll have to add Jigoshop to the list. I honestly haven’t looked at it since I know WooThemes hired their developers away from them and I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) it hasn’t done much since.
I just heard that EDD support shipping yesterday from Pippin himself! It is however and extension and it is really simple shipping so I may leave it out so as not to confuse people who are looking for a UPS / FedEx extension.
Thanks for your thoughts. 🙂
[…] As for setting up an online store, Patrick Rauland went the pros and cons of the most popular solutions out there – you can see his excellent PowerPoint here. […]
Well there are many things to consider while choosing an E commerce solution for an e commerce website like how many features are available with particular E commerce solution, is an option of customization available, whether the E commerce solution is an open source. After concluding every parameter compare selected options with other to pick the best one.