Own shopping cart or other online shop?

[Fi Wilson]

Hi everyone,

I'm putting together my website and hope to be getting up and running in the next few months (workshop, well back bedroom, should be finished this weekend:dance:) and I've been looking into how to sell my jewellery online. I was thinking of linking to my shop at somewhere like Etsy/Folksy/etc from my website so all the technical stuff is done by someone else (I'm aware of the commission they would charge), but now I'm not sure whether to bite the bullet and get my own shopping cart set up on my web page?

What do you think? Which shopping carts do you use?

Sometimes I think I spend far too much time worrying about stuff and making something more complicated than it needs to be!

Fi

[Di Sandland]

You can use paypal without the bother of a shopping cart. Yes, there is a commission, but you would pay that with Etsy and co anyway. I think the most of us use the paypal system, which is very easy. They walk you through a system that involves pasting a bit of code into your site for every item you want to sell - et voila, Robert et toi oncle (or something like that anyway)

[Solunar Silver Studio]

I think most internet shoppers want something easy and straightforward, and in as few 'clicks' as possible. You don't want to lose a sale because there was just too much aggro involved in buying it!! I have gone with Paypal on my website - not that I know how well this works....cos nobody has bought anything yet!!!:-D (it's early days yet...or that's what I keep telling myself!!!) Personally - I would be put off if I had to move off your website in order to buy what I wanted....

[snow_imp]

I've used a site that uses paypal for billing - the only issue i noticed was if i took the option to "continue shopping" and then decided there wasn't anything else I actually wanted - I had to click on "buy" on something to get back to the basket - there didn't appear to be a link just to take you to the basket. :(

Not sure if that is a paypal thing or the site owners thing - but it is sooooo annoying, so if you can avoid things like that paypal should be fine I guess.

Not that I have a website to worry about!

[Boo]

I've done a bit of both - I have my own site and I sell through Etsy too - did have a Folksy shop but gave up on that, it's empty at present. My own site is by far the more successful, but Etsy has been good enough to be worth continuing with.

I've reached the stage where I feel both together work well, they serve different purposes and compliment quite well. I could no doubt sell more if I took on more venues, but it then becomes a lot of work to keep them going and the two now seems a decent balance of effort and reward.

For my own site I went with CubeCart - at the time it was the one that met my needs best (I tried ZenCart and OSCommerce as well) as I could have multiple photos of an item, but I think they all do that now. I've modded it quite a bit from a standard cart, although there are some more I want to add before Christmas, funds willing - those I'll get someone to do for me as they're beyond me. I've had very positive comments on how it works and embraced suggestions from customers for improvements.

It doesn't matter what system you go with, ultimately success will be directly relative to the effort you put in to market it, keep it fresh, add new stock etc. etc.

My site: Boo's Hand Crafted Jewellery (http://www.boo-jewellery.co.uk/) and my Etsy shop:
boojewels on Etsy (http://boojewels.etsy.com)

[Fi Wilson]

Thanks everyone, your comments are really useful. I started looking into shopping carts a while ago and vaguely remember thinking that the PayPal shopping cart thing was pretty good and the simplest way forward, but it's been so long since I did my research I'd forgotten everything.

It's also useful to hear that you advise to keep things as simple as possible for buyers. I suppose if there are less external sites to have to click through, the more secure the process is and the less chance there is of anything going wonky! :pc: Think I'll keep the idea of having a shop on an external site as well to see how things go. I suppose that opens the way for anyone who just happens upon something that they like.

Just need to find a quiet couple of hours to get to grips with PayPal now. Think I need plenty of biccies in stock for that online session.:-"

Thanks again everyone,
Fi
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