Real deal online store - Magento, SCE, What? | Warrior Forum - The #1 Digital Marketing Forum & Marketplace

DanielBlue

11 years ago

Magento is a good solution. I think ebay bought is e few years ago so the integration should work 100%.

Thanks

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kjamesnv

11 years ago

Using Magento you can accomplish this. Additionally there is a FREE extension that will essentially do the same thing Channel Adviser. It is called M2EPro and works very well with Amazon and eBay.

I have lots of experience with M2EPro and it is definitely free and will synchronize your Magento inventory with Amazon and eBay.

Note that Magento is a high end solution and there is a learning curve but in my opinion it's the most powerful shopping platform around.

Thanks

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AJMontoya

11 years ago

You can accomplish this with Magento, however getting the hang of Magento can be a task.

Alternately, you can look into BigCommerce and Volusion. Both are hosted shopping cart solutions that can sync your products with eBay listings, you can purchase their professionally designed templates or customize your own, and both support tens of thousands of products. There is a monthly fee to run the store, but no fees per sale.

I've used both BigCommerce and Volusion, and can recommend both of them. They both offer free trials so you can create a test store, play around with the features, and decide if that's the route you want to go.

Best of luck!

Thanks

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OnlineStoreHelp

11 years ago

I use a variety of platform depending on the needs of clients and my own stores. Like others have said, many of the hosted shopping carts will allow you to sync with both eBay and Amazon as well as the comparison shopping portals. I can agree with many others that BigCommerce is a nice solution. They have about 100 different templates to start with and while you have to go into the CSS and code to update it, you can change the look and feel.

Realize that if you are used to typical non-commerce websites, changing look and feel can be a little more difficult on the more full featured platforms just due to the way they are set up.

Magento is all that if you are able to really dig in and learn it. I have avoided it because it does take more resources, a better understanding of PHP and Java Script but there are tons of ready made themes for them. I tried Magento Go and just couldn't get into it but I would be willing to bet the community edition is much more featured.

I have also played with PrestaShop and Opencart. Like Magento and Bigcommerce it is written in PHP. They both have a very robust community and lots of theme developers and is easier to get a hang of. What I like about those above is they have an open API and developer platform so lots of third party developers make things to make it easier.

I have looked at shopping cart elite and it might work for you. As I dug further I was less impressed with it and their prices are kinda ridiculous which doesn't even include real time support desk, that's extra. Their sales copy is very over the top and a lot of the points they used to make, don't apply anymore.

It sounds like this could be a lucrative and long term client. You are really better off trying multiple carts to see what works.

Thanks
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CreekChub

11 years ago

Originally Posted by OnlineStoreHelp

I use a variety of platform depending on the needs of clients and my own stores. Like others have said, many of the hosted shopping carts will allow you to sync with both eBay and Amazon as well as the comparison shopping portals. I can agree with many others that BigCommerce is a nice solution. They have about 100 different templates to start with and while you have to go into the CSS and code to update it, you can change the look and feel.

Realize that if you are used to typical non-commerce websites, changing look and feel can be a little more difficult on the more full featured platforms just due to the way they are set up.

Magento is all that if you are able to really dig in and learn it. I have avoided it because it does take more resources, a better understanding of PHP and Java Script but there are tons of ready made themes for them. I tried Magento Go and just couldn't get into it but I would be willing to bet the community edition is much more featured.

I have also played with PrestaShop and Opencart. Like Magento and Bigcommerce it is written in PHP. They both have a very robust community and lots of theme developers and is easier to get a hang of. What I like about those above is they have an open API and developer platform so lots of third party developers make things to make it easier.

I have looked at shopping cart elite and it might work for you. As I dug further I was less impressed with it and their prices are kinda ridiculous which doesn't even include real time support desk, that's extra. Their sales copy is very over the top and a lot of the points they used to make, don't apply anymore.

It sounds like this could be a lucrative and long term client. You are really better off trying multiple carts to see what works.

Thanks for taking the time with this response. It helps quite a bit. My only question off the bat is with respect to: "many of the hosted shopping carts will allow you to sync with both eBay and Amazon...".

I started researching this a few months ago, and sort of settled on SCE because it didn't appear that ANY of the others offered this service. Did I miss something? The SCE sales copy rubs me the wrong way as well, and pricing is certainly not the most competitive. Pricing is way down the list of concerns though. Honestly, if it costs an extra $200 to provide what we're looking for, that's a drop in the bucket.

My involvement is as a "Designer" for starters, and then the seo/hand holding guy from there. Channel advisor was a bear to work with, and unless you upgraded to their premium store there was very little in the way of customization that could be done to the site. That was the #1 reason for moving, among many.