Home – New › Forums › Selling online › Which is better? – Shopify, Wix or Big Commerce for online rental business
- This topic is empty.
-
AuthorPosts
-
September 9, 2015 at 6:00 am #992778Up::0
Hi all,
Just want to say what a great website FLYINGSOLO is, and how people are friendly and kind and generous about giving good solid advice.
Im planning to open an online accessory rental business somewhat like the US version, renttherunway, but emphasising on the accessories department. I have the stock already but wanted to ask
Which would be better? Doing a website via shopify, wix or big commerce.
Thanks for any advice given!
September 9, 2015 at 6:38 am #1188088Up::0You left off eCorner from your list we are Australian and you pay in Australian dollars. We also talk to our customers.
We have looked at solutions like renttherunway.com for customers and it is a highly custom built solution that you will not achieve with most hosted solution. eCorner have an ability to provide a rental or service type product as a standard feature but it will not do everything that rettherunway provides. You won’t build anything similar in Wix and to use Shopify or BC you would need a lot of customisation and even then not sure it would be possible.
I suggest that you take advantage of the free trial offers that we all offer and try to setup a single product as a rental and see how you go.
What you want to achieve can be done but not on a small (or no) budget. So you might want to really think through your requirements and list them in order of priority.
As a checkpoint I estimate that renttherunway has cost $100,000’s to build and $1,000’s to host monthly.
Regards
John
September 9, 2015 at 7:27 am #1188089Up::0Thank you John for the advice! Will look at ecorner as well. Do you have any example work similar to a rental business?
Would you know a rough cost to do a simplified version of it?September 9, 2015 at 7:30 am #1188090Up::0Also John, with renttherunway there is a lot more variable as it concentrates on dresses rather than accessories. I think it would be easier as Im just concentrating on accessories (99% jewellery).
September 9, 2015 at 8:21 am #1188091Up::0organicasian, post: 220508, member: 70710 wrote:Also John, with renttherunway there is a lot more variable as it concentrates on dresses rather than accessories. I think it would be easier as Im just concentrating on accessories (99% jewellery).
Hi there the easiest way is to just give you a link to a quick demo I setup on a trial site. I used an example of a dress with 4 sizes and a minimum 4 day rental. You cannot rent within 5 days of the rental starting. You can get to the product by clicking here.If you want access to the trial site shoot me a message and I can send you the links.
I didn’t really do anything with the design and it has all the standard trial products and categories still there.
Yes much easier without all the options.
What I have provided is completely standard.
John
September 9, 2015 at 9:20 am #1188092Up::0Hi Organicasian,
Which is the best shopping cart must be one of the most posted questions on FS.The answer is…
The best shopping cart is the one installed by the best programmer.If you don’t have extremely knowledgeable tech support, the capabilites of the system are totally irrelevant.
I say this in the middle of trying to help a client recover from a previous shopping-cart install disaster that cost him $13k of install costs and amounts possibly running into $hundreds of thousands in lost orders and wasted Adwords expense over the last few years. (The system installation was so bad that only 12% of his Adword clicks waited for his pages to load!)
Along with the skill of the cart system installer you must give equal importance to generating referrals to your site. This may or not be part of the same service supplier.
The online marketing strategies, tactics and costs for shopping sites has arguably changed more in the last 3 years than for any other type of website.
If all you are worried about is what is the “best” shopping cart software, your site WILL likely DIE within a couple of years.
I’ve read a lot of John D of eCornerner’s FS posts over the years. He seems to have his finger on the pulse of e-commerce.
Regs,
JohnWSeptember 9, 2015 at 12:35 pm #1188093September 10, 2015 at 1:08 am #1188094Up::0Congrats on your start up!
Firstly, from my experience, I would take off Wix from the list.
You can really find huge success with Shopify OR an independent / self hosted eCommerce platform. It really depends on how well built the website is.Shopyfy advantage I see are: A complete solution that is very tightly integrated. Can be scaled up easily and you can spend more time worrying about marketing rather than fixing ongoing bugs and issues when compared with an independent developer made system. Also less likely to shell out more money into breakfix, improvement, developments, enhancements etc. And it is very easy to switch developers. Loads of design options, payment options and system integration modules available.
I haven’t had much experience with Big commerce but they also seem to be on the same lines.
Magento / OSCommerce / WordPress / custom built options etc. are self hosted options which you also could consider if you plan to invest in infrastructure. If all done right, you have better control over the system unlike packaged eCommerce solutions like Shopify. In terms of SEO, custom features, User experience point of view.
To summarise, If you want to get quickly into business and dont want to really worry about the technical aspects and be too involved, Shopify is a great choice. Later when you are sailing smooth, scaling into much bigger system requirements, you could always consider changing platform, thats not a huge task for big businesses with the right resource.
Cheers
JoshSeptember 11, 2015 at 9:28 pm #1188095Up::0Just to add my two cents. Worked with Magento in the past. It’s a great system, really scalable, but if you’re going to go with it, you need to invest in programmers. A nice amount of time has to go into creating it. The benefits are it’s a really good system when your business grows.
I agree with Josh, if you are thinking of starting small, it’s viable to choose a simpler system now and migrate to a more robust one later when you grow. (if you do do that, keep in mind to think ahead, so when you’re expecting the current system to not support your size anymore to prepare before hand)
September 12, 2015 at 2:19 am #1188096Up::0Thank you Josh and Ratko for your advice! It is much appreciated. Planning to get a mentor and as well checking out ecorner.
September 14, 2015 at 12:23 am #1188097Up::0I note that iamlocalonline.com is missing from the options- specially focussed on the SME market- as easy as Facebook- with immediate ecommerce and CRM enablement all for around $250 a year. It uses the WebCruzer platform which is robust and there’s no ‘hidden extras’. Here’s some sites that run off the same platform:
gsegroup.com.au
birchgrovesydney.com.au
alexandriaagenda.com
Solarenergyenterprises.com.auSeptember 14, 2015 at 12:52 am #1188098Up::0Al Hirst, post: 220733, member: 70674 wrote:I note that iamlocalonline.com is missing from the optionsHey Al, does that include the ability to rent items, not just sell them?
I didn’t see that functionality in the list of features is all.
September 14, 2015 at 1:48 am #1188099Up::0Hi John- I should have read harder. The IALO rental (or periodic payment option) does not come on-stream until January 2016. Aplogies from an over enthusiastic new member.
September 14, 2015 at 2:02 am #1188100Up::0Al Hirst, post: 220746, member: 70674 wrote:Hi John- I should have read harder. The IALO rental (or periodic payment option) does not come on-stream until January 2016. Aplogies from an over enthusiastic new member.
Ha, no worries, it happens. (and welcome to the forum)September 14, 2015 at 4:00 am #1188101Up::0Shopify looks to have an app called ‘BookThatApp’ which might do the trick for rental functionality: http://pragmaticinsights.myshopify.com/collections/product-rentals/products/dress-rental
Unfortunately none of the listed options have a rental feature built-in (that I’m aware of). With that in mind it’s definitely going to cost a bit extra. Also worth noting the above comments that Shopify is all in USD so this hurts with the current exchange rate.
If you want to have a go at building yourself, I still believe Shopify is the easiest way to get a market testing website online fast. If it goes well you can expand on Shopify, or alternatively you can engage a developer – at which point almost any platform can work if everything is planned out. Anything but Wix that is.
(Disclosure: I personally work with Shopify a lot.)
-
AuthorPosts
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.