[Ipg-smz] Seeking recommendations for ecommerce site

[Christine Hall]

I ran a retain ecommerce site for nearly 20 years. For the last 15 years 
or so I used Zen Cart, because I kept several thousand different items 
in stock. Zen Cart would be overkill for stores offering less than a 
hundred or so items.

Until the last several years I processed credit card payments through my 
own merchant account while also offering PayPal and pay-by-mail as 
options. However, as Visa and Master Card began tightening their online 
requirements, requiring auditing of the software being used online to 
process the payments, I eventually turned to an all PayPal solution, 
since PayPal offers the option of a simple credit card payment that 
doesn't require the customer to have or open a credit card account.

Processing through PayPal was also much cheaper than the best rates we 
could get for merchant accounts.

When I made the switch, I figured I'd lose a substantial amount of 
business, because I thought some customers would be confused and think 
they'd have to have a PayPal account when they saw the PayPal logo on 
the payment screen, even though we made it as clear as possible that no 
account was necessary.

In fact we saw no decline in sales after our transition to an all PayPal 
solution, and in fact witnessed a slight raise in business as well as a 
substantial drop in the number of abandoned shopping carts.

Over the years I've also set up a number of WordPress-based ecommerce 
sites for clients using various ecommerce plugins, but was never happy 
with the results, even though the clients were.

Hope this helps.

Christine Hall
Publisher & Editor
FOSS Force: Keeping tech free
http://fossforce.com

On 7/2/19 10:51 AM, Scott Koegler wrote:
> Hi ipg-smz,
> 
> The obvious simple choices:
> Shopify
> Bigcommerce
> 
> There are a bunch of plugins for Wordpress and Joomla but those 2 can be 
> set up in about an hour.
> 
> . . .
> Scott Koegler
> scott at koegler.net
> 336-818-9463
> Skype: skoegler
> ScottKoegler.me
> 
> 
> On Jul 2, 2019, at 10:43 AM, Tom Henderson <ipg-smz at netpress.org> wrote:
> 
>> Yes, Guilders, this has caveats. A colleague has desires to eschew
>> micropayments and get it all for herself. I've studiously avoided
>> ecommerce site construction techniques, believing that these are not my
>> monkeys, and certainly not my circus.
>>
>> This said, an infallible, totally secure paradise doesn't exist, but
>> others here have successfully made ecommerce revenues and have used
>> their own recipe. I'm looking for the recipe. The user is reasonably
>> computer savvy, but not a "techie". Not a high volume of business will
>> be done on the site, under USD40K/annum. It's a high margin business.
>> The site would take paypal, credit cards, and will be USA domestic only.
>>
>> Ideas? Pointers? I'm just the bird dog/proxy.
>>
>> Thanks in advance,
>>
>> Tom
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Tom Henderson
>> ExtremeLabs, Inc.
>> +1 317 250 4646
>> Twitter: @extremelabs
>> Skype: extremelabsinc
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Ipg-smz mailing list
>> Ipg-smz at netpress.org
>> http://netpress.org/mailman/listinfo/ipg-smz_netpress.org
> 
> 
>