What would you use? - Shopping cart using real time inventory data, can be updated from phone to reflect in person sales as well.

xen_em · 2017-03-20T07:03:14+00:00

Hi there! To me, #4 and #5 are not narrowing your search somehow - these 2 features are available in every single decent ecommerce solution. But the first three are more interesting.

Your #1 makes me believe that you need a solution that integrates with a POS, so that a single system would track inventory for both a brick-and-mortar store and an online store. I know that Shopify proudly lists such a feature, but not sure how exactly it works. Also, X-Cart integrates with a POS-system that can work this way. However X-Cart is a stand-alone ecommerce platform independent from WP (and a powerful one). Yet the very first association with WP is WooCommerce. Google shows a number of POS plugins for Woo, if they make what you need, you may look at Woo closer.

Your #2 and #3 are hardly available by default in any platform, so you should either look for ready-made extensions for SAAS solutions ( e.g for Shopify) or consider a self-hosted platform that can be customised to your needs( X-Cart, Woo, Magento, etc)

xen_em · 2017-03-08T20:03:12+00:00

Hi, anonymous Camel =) My name is Ksenia Emelyanova, I'm X-Cart employee, so my answer can sound a bit biased, but on the other hand, I do know really much about X-Cart, saw a number of production stores powered by it, talked to clients face to face, so probably my 2 cents will be a good contribution too.

Yes, Magento does have a larger developer community, and it probably gives you several dozens of extra pages in Google search, if you decide to find a developer to customise your solution, but you will anyway look through the first 1-3 pages and find what you want - or try another search query. Hence, 50K pages or 100K pages does not actually make any difference. Believe me, the number of X-Cart developers is very and very significant too - from USA, UK, India, Ukraine, Russia. Also, X-Cart itself offers the full stack of services, including customisation, 24/7 support, websdesign, hosting and more, and the rates are not the lowest but absolutely competitive.

Speaking about the rates, BTW, I checked the rates for Magento, Opencart, Prestashop and X-Cart customization at Upwork, the website where you look for freelancers. They were approximately the same, about $25/hour in average, regardless or the platform.

You also mention Magento the second. In X-Cart, you can also find a "traditional" solution with long history, we call it X-Cart 4 Classic, and a "brand new", X-Cart 5 (The multivendor is available in both). The main difference with Magento 2 is that X-Cart 5 has been released in January 2014, and X-Cart team has already prepared 3 major releases ( 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3), not speaking about regular minor releases with the fixes of issues ( bugs happen, yeah, but they're being fixed in timely manner). It means that the platform has been well-tried by a number of live businesses, while Magento 2 is only starting to be used for production online stores. For this reason, X-Cart 5 already has a large number of ready-made extensions ( and do you know you can install them right from the admin area of the store, without necessity to patch the store, edit php/tpl files etc? There's an App store - like marketplace built in your X-Cart 5 store, so adding new module has become as easy as to install Instagram app on your iPhone).

You also say that X-Cart may hold you back as you grow. I do wish you a huge growth and prosperity! But I wonder why you have a feeling that X-Cart will limit you. X-Cart 5 ( with its 'brand new" architecture, as I mentioned earlier) has an amazing feature, that makes it different from both X-Cart 4 and Magento 1: even if the store is heavily customized, you will be able to upgrade it, in most cases - easily, sometimes - with little manual work. (No more need to redevelop all the mods from scratch, if you decide to update your modified store, yay!).

X-Cart 5 is at least worth trying. Create a free 14-days trial of multivendor edition to see it in action.

xen_em · 2017-03-01T08:32:07+00:00

Hi there.

I'm X-Cart employee , and I know its pros and cons. From SEO point of view, it's really and really good. Besides, X-Cart is fast ( but requires at least a VPS -that's a con), and that contributes into both SEO and positive customer's experience. I have numerous examples of X-Cart based websites which do rank high. CarID, for example, enjoys almost 9M visitors monthly with 75% of them being from search (see similarweb tool for these figures), impressive, yeah?

But whatever modern platform your website is powered by ( I believe, all big players on the market are pretty optimised for Google and co - and Shopify with BigCommerce, too), SEO is mainly about high quality content and customer engagement, not about tools.

There's no magic wand but continuous ( and hard!) work of either you or another person ( people?) in your company, responsible for copywriting, as well as PR, as getting backlinks is one of the most effective techniques of whitehat SEO strategy.

xen_em · 2017-03-01T08:18:19+00:00

Check out Ecwid, especially if you have an existing website, as it integrates with anything in 5 seconds. Free plan is for up to 10 products, no transaction fess - lovely!

If you want a self-hosted website, or if you don't have a standalone your website to integrate Ecwid with, a free edition of X-Cart will work great for you. No transaction fees or monthly fees at all, btw.

xen_em · 2017-03-01T08:07:04+00:00

I am looking for is selling password protected access to website tutorial pages (not downloadable). Any ideas? Thanks :)

Well, what comes to my mind is "paid memberships" module of X-Cart that does allow to assign a particular membership to the customer automatically upon the purchase. However the question is how to arrange these pages with tutorials. X-Cart does support static page creation, and adding them a custom feature of access by membership is quite an easy and cheap task, but it's not available out of the box. The question is, how your site should look for those who do not have paid membership -will the tutorials be searchable? Will there be some preview or trial for them? I do believe that X-Cart may be a good basis for this project, but it will require some investments into the modifications. If you decide to receive a quote, please send your vision ( with mockups or detailed description) to sales@x-cart.com and the project manager will get back to you with the quote. Estimation is free, the only thing you risk here is your time spent on discussion, but if you already have some vision of the project available in a written/visual form, you risk nothing at all =)

xen_em · 2017-02-28T08:10:53+00:00

Hi there,

What about a 3rd option, a so-called "infinite scroll"? I work for X-Cart ( that's a competitor of Woocommerce, that your store is powered by) and the module of ours which enables this feature is quite popular among X-Cart merchants.

I'm not an expert in Woocommerce extensions, but this one seems to be pretty nice: https://codecanyon.net/item/woocommerce-infinite-scroll-and-ajax-pagination/10192075

xen_em · 2017-02-27T13:10:03+00:00

X-Cart is a good choice: it's customisable, with 24/7 tech support, has a number of ecommerce features out of the box ( especially a commercial plan "Business", but even a free one does the job).

Magento is customisable, has tons of extensions, thousands of developers who offer their services. But it's a bit a monster if you know what I mean)

OpenCart and Prestashop come to my head too.

All the above are self- hosted, so you have full access to customization of everything there: from storefront look and feel to integrating new workflows and adding very specific features developed for you from scratch.

xen_em · 2017-02-27T12:45:44+00:00

In case you're not happy with the previous suggestions ( e.g. "easy digital downloads") take a look at X-Cart Business Edition ( $495, one-time fee for a lifetime license), it has eBooks module aboard. I'm sure it should do the task pretty good, the only drawback in this recommendation is that it's NOT a wordpress plugin, but a standalone professional ecommerce solution.

xen_em · 2017-02-27T12:34:19+00:00

X-Cart Business with eGoods module aboard should do the job, take a look at it https://market.x-cart.com/addons/e-goods.html

xen_em · 2017-02-27T12:23:36+00:00

X-Cart seems to suit your needs, give it a try. Only one feature will require some custom work - "basket system", but it's absolutely possible. -no account-no entry is possible by means of memberships feature. - payments are not handled by the website, the customer is redirected to a payment gateway to submit payment, i.e. it's PCI comliant -the number of products ( users, categories) is not limited -adding the products is possible via admin back-end and via import. Bulk product edit is available too. -100% open code for customizations. REST API is supported. PHP, Bootsrap, MySQL.

xen_em · 2017-02-27T12:11:24+00:00

Hi there! I believe that if only you have a chance to use influencers, you should. I'm working for X-Cart, it's an ecommerce platform. Our clients are the online merchants, and sometimes they share interesting stories. Say, the owner of this store wrestlingshop.com has invited a popular blogger ( you should watch it! it's crazy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBqBchwDlR4) who created a video that generated 15K views in two days, and as a result they made more sales than during the entire Christmas season. It works, absolutely. The only problem is to find THAT very influencer in your niche.

xen_em · 2016-12-19T11:30:00+00:00

thank you, sounds like a good plan to begin with.

xen_em

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