This post was actually going to be an email for a good friend I spoke with last night. This friend has been running a shoe store business all his life but has not yet ventured into online sales. At the beginning of the conversation, he shared his plans regarding this new adventure and everything he said seemed very logical and sensible to me:
He has several physical shoe stores with two different brands and wants to set up their respective online stores so that the stock of all his stores syncs with the online stores.
Currently, he uses Microsoft Access as stock management software (ERP) in-store, which updates and synchronizes daily (at the end of the day) the stock of all his stores. He is very familiar and happy with this management program and would prefer not to change it (but he does not rule it out either).
He has been researching the different possibilities and has concluded that the best option would be to build his website with Magento since, as he has been informed, it allows him to:
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Manage multiple stores from a single administration panel
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Complete and total management of product catalog and product sheets
He is willing to invest a considerable sum of money in this project because he wants the final result to be practical and reliable and for the company that provides these web development and implementation services to be very accessible, efficient, and completely trustworthy.
He has consulted several companies and received varying quotes. As far as I understood, the average cost of the proposals is around 10,000 euros. All included.
He wants to keep investigating to avoid making a mistake with the choice of company because his future investment and a significant sum of money are at stake. Logical.
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On my part, I tell him that at Marabelia, we work almost exclusively with Woocommerce + WordPress, so if, as a starting point, he has decided he wants to implement with Magento, there is little we can do. That said, since we have broad experience in the e-commerce sector, I can advise, counsel, and analyze his quotes so he doesn’t get scammed and can evaluate the best proposals.
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What started as an email reply to my friend has turned into this blog post that I want to share with all of you, since there are a thousand factors one must consider when embarking on a project of this magnitude.
The first three considerations I raised were:
- Everyone will try to sell you their product as the best. Prestashop, Magento, WordPress… It doesn’t matter the platform one works with, they will always sell it as the best solution.
- There are many smart people in this field who take advantage of the client’s ignorance of the environment and rip you off everywhere.
- I forgot this last one. But after hanging up the phone I remembered it—and this was the most important!: Don’t build castles in the air! While it is true that the trend is that online shopping is trusted more every day, it is equally true that more and more businesses are joining e-commerce every day. It is a market saturated with supply and full of sharks. Good online positioning and management and control of social networks have become sine qua non conditions for success on the internet. If you are not yet positioned in Google + established on social media and have to start from scratch, you must start from the premise that, in the best case, you will lose a lot of money in the first year and maybe from the second year you will start recovering the investment. Two plus two is not four here. You may crush it with a shoe in-store but then not sell a single unit online. Hiring an expert SEO community manager who is not a smoke seller is another immediate great need you will have. Add this to the budget.
Regarding the platform to use, I have come here to talk about my book and my book is WordPress + Woocommerce… How about this:
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Possibility to customize the design
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Support for multilingual sites
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Multistore capability (manage multiple stores from a single admin panel)
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Complete and total management of product catalog and product sheets
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Customer management
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Multiple payment and shipping methods
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Inventory and stock control
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Possibility of comments and reviews
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Web and CMS: 2 in 1
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Marketing tools:
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Cross-selling, suggested products, related products
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Coupon and promotion configuration
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But undoubtedly, what makes it powerful is the infinite number of modules that currently exist, which provide any other imaginable feature at an affordable cost.
Do you know where I got this previous paragraph from? From a website explaining the virtues of Magento… Well, point by point, it is extrapolatable to WordPress + WooCommerce. You can do exactly the same and much more.
The main problem we have with physical + online stores in WooCommerce is connectivity. Among the infinite range of stock management systems for stores (ERPs), not all have a specific connector on the market to synchronize with WooCommerce — not all, but many of them do:
- Zapier. Integration of OpenERP with WooCommerce (Apparently they have a module that synchronizes with Microsoft Access)
- Plugin WooCommerce POS. It is recommended to install the PRO version to accept all payment gateways.
- ModernRetail. Integration package with the main ERPs and POS on the market; CAM Commerce, QuickBooks, RetailPro, CAP Software or Sage, among others.
- Plugin by Linksync for integration of WooCommerce with Vend point-of-sale software.
On the other hand, it is difficult to find a company that works with WooCommerce and offers a comprehensive service of ERP implementation + WooCommerce connection + full maintenance. Even harder is that they do it within a reasonable price range. Although Open ERP offers a technical service that performs the implementation (price varies depending on modules) and a fairly reasonable monthly fee, this company does not handle the web part.
However: At Marabelia, we have done this before! But not autonomously, that is, we do not provide this full service (It would be biting off more than we can chew, even for us!).
At the time, we thoroughly researched the market and after many frustrations and exorbitant prices, we chose a company from Barcelona: DTI Informática (Let it be known they are NOT paying us for this publicity) that has developed its own ERP software (https://www.daferp.com/) with specific modules for the textile business (https://www.daferp.com/control-gestion-erp-distribucion-textil/). This company is responsible for implementation (synchronization of your current ERP with their own), connectivity with WooCommerce, and tutoring during the transition process. Their prices are quite reasonable and are around €1500 for implementation — one DAF per online store — (with all necessary modules for managing stock, suppliers, invoicing, etc.) and a very affordable monthly maintenance fee of about €50. They are always available by phone, solve problems, and answer questions immediately.
On the other hand, at Marabelia, we can create online stores (also multiplatform) at very competitive prices. The price for multiplatform would be about €1500 per website and the development time about two months. This price per website would include the necessary mediations with DTI to ensure the project is implemented successfully and comprehensively.
This price does not include the server cost, as the client must choose whether they want conventional hosting, a shared VPS, or a dedicated server. Prices here range from €60 per year to €60 per month. If you expect huge revenue, maybe you can afford a server only for you! And this is another factor to consider: the hosting provider must also meet these three premises stated above: be very accessible, efficient, and completely trustworthy. They also play an important role: the website cannot crash.
I could keep writing for hours about “Everything you need to consider when deciding to set up an online store for your physical business” but this would become a real bore, so I leave the comments open for anyone who has doubts…
