Help before buying/starting a shop site please

1

Hello Lovely people,

My wife is an artist and currently has her site hosted on squarespace (https://www.ninaharris.co.uk/).

We’d like to take it away from squarespace and also integrate a shop so people can order prints etc online. Now that I am a Rapidweaver demon…(ok you can stop laughing now), I’ve foolishly told her that I can do that for her.

Before I risk scuppering the nice dinners and sleeping in the same bed I thought I’d better ask you lot some advice, as I’ve never done shop/cms before… so here goes.

We basically want a gallery site with different sections for different subjects, with the option to ‘add to cart’ for each image, then a dropdown type thing to choose small print, big print, framed print etc. etc.

I’ll be building this in UIKit, so whatever I use must work with that. I’m thinking an e-commerce stack like Rapidcart Pro would be perfect for this? Or is that overkill?

She will want to be able to add and update images herself, without asking me all the time (in case she’s kicked me out!). So I need a simple to use but nice and intuitive CMS that won’t be too hard for me to integrate into a gallery site. (I’m ok with css etc. but not a coder). OR, does Rapidcart (or other shop solutions) handle the ‘cms’ bit and add products to a page I can style, therefore not needing a custom cms system?

She only wants to take payments via her Paypal account, which is not a commercial one, so I’m hoping we’ll be OK for the whole SCA thing? (@steveb I’m sure you can advise on that one)

She will want to be able to take payments from abroad as a lot of her customers are outside the uk, but I guess paypal handles all that? We’ll just add postage and packing…

She won’t be adding new stuff every day, so it doesn’t have to be a huge commercial type thing.

Just thought I’d ask as I’m sure some of you will have been down this road already.

Many thanks.

p.s. If it all goes tits-up, I may need to borrow a camp-bed and or tent! Thanks

2

Rapidcart doesn’t have its own CMS.

If I were doing what you’re wanting to do, I’d use ECWID 100%. Your wife can add images etc. through their system, then you use the ECWID Rapidweaver plugin or copy and paste the code from ECWID.

2 Likes
3

Hi, I wouldn’t use RW for this. There are loads of off the shelf solutions for selling prints online, some very reasonable priced. No matter what you use within RW it’s going to be pretty clunky, as to my knowledge there isn’t any one single solution.

If you really wanted to use RW then I’d go with my default phpjabber stiva store. It allows for plenty of images per product which could be the gallery, with the ability to add as many varients per product as you want (frame sizes). It’s all managed browser side, so 100% cms.

It connects to PayPal by default too.

4

Cheers Neil. I’d forgotten about them. Looks like a cool system except that once you add variable products the price ramps way up. £35 / month + vat is a bit steep for us.

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Hey Roger, bear in mind that currently RCP is not the best option to work with UIkit. The reason is that both are based on the same framework, but RCP is on the older version of UIkit, so there’re conflicts and the overall performance is not good at this point. This is something I’ve already discussed with the developers of RCP and an eventually update of the UIkit version in RCP wold fix issues.

On the other hand another option to consider would be Cartloom, the one I use for my shop.

Cheers
Lucas

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6

Hi @Lucas, Thanks for the heads-up. Coincidentally I’ve just been looking at Cartloom. It does look nice and not crazy expensive. Having discussed options with my wife we’ve decided that the site doesn’t need to be CMS as she’s happy for me to admin it and update products/artwork for her. This means I can build it how I want in RW and just have a cart solution.

Cheers
Roger

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Hi @steveb. I’ve had a look at the store on phpjabbers site and it looks very good. Lots of features and very reasonably priced. I’m still looking into stuff but I’ll put it on the list near the top!

Cheers
R

8

Hi @rojharris,
Take a look at https://marielaforge.com

This photography/art site is built with UIKit3, and with my soon to be released set of Ecwid Stacks (plug-in NOT needed at all). The stacks allow you to control and customize the Ecwid store, and it has many advanced features and customization options. You can even override many settings in Ecwid dashboard and fully control how the experience of the website user. I’ve tested these stacks for almost a year. I’ve tested with UIKit3, Foundation, Platform and Source, as well as with RapidWeaver themes.

Cheers,

Ricardo

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9

Great news! Could you please test it with Foundry? Thank you!

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Hi @Fuellemann,

I don’t have Foundry to test it with. However, I can’t see any reason why it should not work with it.

Cheers,

Ricardo

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Hi @Ricardo… Amazing! I love that store. I saw it ages ago when Lucas had it as an example of UIKit sites and spent quite some time yesterday trying to find it again (as its not on the page anymore).
It would be perfect for what we need. The only issue is that Ecwid starts getting really expensive if you want product variations, which we would need for different sized prints etc. My wife sells them for a lot less than Marie La Forge, so it wouldn’t be cost-effective for us to use Ecwid just yet. Perhaps in the future if we have success with online selling.

I’d love to know how you get all the picture into the interior renders. Are you doing that manually for each one or is it automated somehow? It’s a great idea to show people what their images will look like.
I think Marie’s photography is fantastic, especially considering she’s using an iPhone to take them. Beautiful work!

I may try and find a way to use the first £15/month tier of Ecwid and just sell one size for now… At the moment I’m looking to use Youzool’s Cart 2 stack once he’s modified it for SCA.

Thanks for the link though! I’m bookmarking it this time :-)

Cheers,
Roger

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FWIW I signed up for the free Ecwid store and have been getting emails offering me 50% off the paid-for plan.

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Good to know! Cheers Rob

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Yes, they do that for everyone that tries!
The https://marielaforge.com site also got that offer and took it for the first year.

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Hi @Ricardo, when do you think your stacks will be out? I’m pretty convinced Ecwid is the way to go but if it’s soon I’ll wait before starting the build.

Cheers,
Roger

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Hello @rojharris, @Fuellemann, @Neil, @steveb, @rob.beattie, @Lucas

Since there seems to be enough interest in the Ecwid stacks, I’ll “pre-release” them here ASAP in the next day or so. Please keep in mind that I don’t have documentation yet, but I will include some simple examples. The stacks settings tool tips should have enough text to also be helpful.

Thanks everyone.

Cheers,

Ricardo

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17

Hello @Fuellemann, @rob.beattie, @rojharris, @Neil, @Lucas, @steveb

ECWID STACKS BUNDLE: all you need to launch you Ecwid e-commerce with RW and Ecwid (no plugin). Includes an Advanced Store Stack (highly customizable), Shopping cart stack, Categories Menu Stack, Store Redirect Stack, Search Stack, Single Product Stack.

I’m offering a 20% launch coupon for the ECWID with the code RW4ALLECWID.

UIKIT3 STACKS (individually or as a bundle): includes Datepicker, Honeypot, Human Test plus with Graphic Captcha, Tab Customizer. I’m also offering a 15% launch coupon with the code UK3STACKSPRE for my UIKit3 add-on stacks.

SITE IMAGE FIT & IMAGE FIT Stacks: Advanced replacement for Stacks Site Image and Image. With responsive design, it can resize an image to exact dimensions. Images can be set to be clickable links. Perfect for creating thumbnails of same size from images of different dimensions and proportions.

You can find them all at: https://axyn.com

I hope everyone finds them useful.

Cheers,

Ricardo

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18

Well done Ricardo, nice set of very useful products.

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19

Thanks @Lucas, I had been procrastinating too long!

20

Hi,
Just before you plunge into it all a few things to consider, for which I apologize if you have.

Have you factored in how much time you have available to build and maintain this site?
I’m sure it would look great using foundation and all the stacks mentioned above , but with a well chosen theme and, say, cartloom, you could have a site up and running in a day. The more plugs ins / stacks you add the greater the likelyhood for conflicts and time required to troubleshoot .

An advantage of using a cart from a rapid weaver developer is that you can access rapid weaver centric advice if you run into problems, not always available from third party carts.

Promoting the site : you have great products but if the world doesn’t know that it will be reflected in sales. I would hope your wife is active in Pinterest which would drive traffic nicely to a straightforward blog , Poster is the best I’ve tried . You can spend time polishing a site that could be more constructively spent on Pinterest posts.

Keep it simple. There are stacks you want versus stacks you need. Over time you can add bells and whistles.

Hope that helps .

Thank you