eCommerce shop - instead of eBay and PayPal. Any recommendations?

[HolzKopf]

Since 2007 we have run a 'beer money' eBay shop as a bit of fun really selling approx 50 different lines of low value automotive / agricultural fastenings and widgets. Mondays bring 30+ orders over the week-end, Bank Holidays 50+, the rest of the week orders are steady at 10 - 20 a day.

eBay is ideal, as is PayPal, but doing the numbers recently, we're paying those two combined something like £2.5k a year in 'fees' i.e. final value and the Paypal cut. I want to start a parallel site, selling the same things but using a simple eCommerce package + payment through credit card, apple pay and any other similar service. Just to see really whether our customers love eBay etc for the security or whether a reduction of 5% or so on the sale prices in a competitive market will bring the same or more business.

Someone recommended Shopify but someone else said that it seems cheap until you factor in other costs. Is anyone else out there selling anything online through an off the shelf eCommerce package?

Grateful for any ideas

HK

 

[Chris F]

Shopify is pretty good, as are most of the big eCommerce packages. The problem you will have is getting the traffic to your new site. For that you will likely have to pay for Google Merchant or something similar. So while your fees will go down, your advertising will go up. You may find you are no better off. We spend over £1.8k a month on Google merchant alone. So the costs can stack up fast.

 

[HolzKopf]

That's a good point. Other sites we have are optimised by our friendly web design guru that we have had for 25 years nigh on. We could use him to write a 'proper' site but i just like the idea of a clean, simple site that we can alter ourselves and add or subtract to as new products arise (or are found at the back of our stores!!)
Thanks for the input Chris, that's a good starting point.

HK

 

[JeepJeep]

Ebay are doing away with Paypal later in the year... Or at least offering an alternative which from what I've read doesnt fill me with Joy.

Ebay's a ready made shop window to the world , But they know it and you dance to their tune.

We had a website for a while and continued with Paypal... to group it together to hit the tiers and reduce the fees.. Fee structures changed now though. We Priced the same as on ebay and were 10%ish better off due to the lack of ebay snatch.

 

[Chris F]

That's a good point. Other sites we have are optimised by our friendly web design guru that we have had for 25 years nigh on. We could use him to write a 'proper' site but i just like the idea of a clean, simple site that we can alter ourselves and add or subtract to as new products arise (or are found at the back of our stores!!)
Thanks for the input Chris, that's a good starting point.

HK

The site itself is pretty easy to achieve and a lot can be done DIY. It’s really easy to add and remove new products.

 

[Fatlamb]

I’m in the same boat, i need to start from scratch with a website to sell from but not a clue where to start really just sick of eBay