A bit of ecommerce help please!

Hello all! I’ve had an enquiry about designing an e-commerce site for a florists. I’m pretty new to this type of design and was wondering which is the better shopping cart? I can see that on TF Magneto is pretty popular. Any advice would be happily accepted.. Also, does anyone know of a good theme for this type of project?

Magento is the fastest growing and widest adopted open source platform. It’s also owned/funded by eBay/PayPal, so it receives the backing necessary for an open source product to thrive. If you’re choosing an eCommerce platform for your client you should be asking several things:

1. Is there room to grow?
2. Will the platform be maintained in several years?
3. Is there an active extension and theme community?
4. Can the client afford to maintain the site?

Many thanks for your advice. Is it an easy set up for a client to add their own products?

Yes, but that will be virtually the same for any CMS. You should try the demo or install it for yourself to test it out.

GravityDept said
Yes, but that will be virtually the same for any CMS. You should try the demo or install it for yourself to test it out.

Thanks GravityDept!

Sorry to also jump in here, but how does Magento perform on shared hosting? A few years back I had to drop it as an option because a client was only prepared to pay for shared hosting, and their host refused to let them have Magento installed because it was so resource heavy. Is that still the case now?

I’ve been using JigoShop / WooCommerce for client sites – and generally it’s worked well, particularly as a lot of clients are already familiar with WordPress.

PixelBuffet said
Sorry to also jump in here, but how does Magento perform on shared hosting? A few years back I had to drop it as an option because a client was only prepared to pay for shared hosting, and their host refused to let them have Magento installed because it was so resource heavy. Is that still the case now? I’ve been using JigoShop / WooCommerce for client sites – and generally it’s worked well, particularly as a lot of clients are already familiar with WordPress.

Hummmm good point there Philip.

@ PixelBuffet — Never cut corners on hosting. If a business is only willing to pay $6/month for hosting they’re not ready to run an ecommerce business. Hands down.

With shared hosting you cannot get a dedicated IP address, which is required for an SSL certificate. So you couldn’t use this for a secure eCommerce site anyway.

Magento is a highly engineered platform, and it does require using a server environment that is designed for the platform to run efficiently. Magento hosting is specialized, but not expensive (starting ~$25/month). I wrote a Magento hosting recommendation on my profile if you’d like more information.

GravityDept said
@ PixelBuffet — Never cut corners on hosting. If a business is only willing to pay $6/month for hosting they’re not ready to run an ecommerce business. Hands down.

With shared hosting you cannot get a dedicated IP address, which is required for an SSL certificate. So you couldn’t use this for a secure eCommerce site anyway.

Magento is a highly engineered platform, and it does require using a server environment that is designed for the platform to run efficiently. Magento hosting is specialized, but not expensive (starting ~$25/month). I wrote a Magento hosting recommendation on my profile if you’d like more information.

I took a look at your profile, got distracted and now I’m midway through your talk on ‘mobile first, responsive design for eCommerce’. It’s really great!

Me too… I’m glad that I asked the question now as I’ve learned something new for today.. (always a good thing)