I’ve recently been helping my sister put together an online store, using Volusion. It has been eye-opening how complex they make it and how clunky this system is. This is a product that is ripe for being replaced with something a lot cleaner.
We looked at Shopify as well, but their business model of taking a cut of the transaction was a turn-off. And there’s always Yahoo Stores, but they tend to be, well, ugly.
On the surface, an online store is pretty simple. We can build simple ones with Webvanta, using PayPal or another third-party shopping card, but it’s not a complete ecommerce solution. The tricky bits come when you need to deal with tax by county, shipping options, returns, out-of-stock items, fulfillment workflows, etc. In time, we’ll make Webvanta a good solution for this, probably by integrating an existing third-party solution.
Do you know of any great solutions for simple online stores, either complete sites or hosted shopping carts that we can integrate? I’d like to be able to refer people to something great.
And just in case you’re looking for some inexpensive and very cool outdoor furniture, check out the Classic Butterfly Chairs at SimplySlater.com.
Update: my sister gave up on the Volusion store. We rebuilt the store using Webvanta, with FoxyCart as the shopping cart, and it has worked out well.
Categories: Technology, Building a Business, Riffs and Rants, Web Services