WordPress and Genesis for ecommerce

[Collins]

Can WordPress and Genesis be used for a $500k per year ecommerce site? This particular owner started it in Magento on a shared hosting environment and is thinking of starting over.

[NicktheGeek]

Personally I'd keep Magento for the commerce but with that kind of sales look into a stand alone server or VPS. Then use WordPress for the blog. WordPress is better for the the CMS stuff and Magento is better for ecommerce.

[JohnEniste]

Nick just to pick your brains a little...

With the recent developments in wp ecommerce (most notably woocommerce and possibly marketpress) - how would you rate Magento against these options:
1) In a completely different class
2) Generally better suited to ecommerce
3) Better - but wp ecommerce is catching up

I have never used Magento, and i'd love to hear your first-hand take on things.

ps. Didn't mean to hijack the thread (still relevant to the question asked) and wasn't something i'd start a new thread for :-)

[NicktheGeek]

In this instance I would still keep Magento since that has an established database. Making a lot of changes isn't really something I like to do when things are going well.

On a new site, I weigh the client needs. I have not found a single commerce type plugin that does everything that needs to be done for a full functioning solution, but the major ecommerce plugins can cover most client needs and it is easier for most of them to use a single WordPress based solution than two separate solutions.

I still think there is a long way to go with the available plugins, but they are much better than they were even a couple of years ago. I think a big reason for this is there are more of them now. Just a couple of years ago there were only 2 or 3 semi solid options, and they were buggy at best. Now there are nearly a dozen solutions that are pretty solid and much less buggy.

I expect in a couple of years we will see several stand out options and that will really bridge the gap between plugins and stand alone solutions.

[blancastella]

Magento is in a league of its own. It provides every option you could ever want for eCommerce and there are some fantastic themes for it. There are three big downsides:

1, it has a very steep learning curve if all you're accustomed to is WordPress;
2, non free plugins and themes are expensive (extortionately so);
3, Magento lacks drag and drop for widgets, menus and other layout features that are standard in WordPress. Some themes require code edits to remove cross-sale, upsale and other ad images that are built into them; and,
4, Magento has a very badly designed backend interface. It's very awkward to get to grips with.

On the plus side, Magento works well with SSL.

If you use Magento, read the instructions. There is a good list of Magento guides at http://blog.belvg.com/how-to-start-with-magento.html

Read the instructions for any theme you install into Magento or you will get frustrated.

Magento will work on a good shared server such as those offered by Bluehost and Hostgator until the site gets very popular.

If you need a good WP eCommerce solution, use WP e-Commerce by getshopped. Look in the WordPress plugin repository for extensions to it. You need to pay for authorize.net payment gateway usage and support but the functions offered by the plugin are greater than those offered by other WordPress eCommerce plugins. Next alternative is MarketPress from WPMUDev.

Just my recommendations.

[JohnEniste]

Nick thanks for taking the time to answer. I haven't done a huge amount of ecommerce work and woocommerce has been sufficient for my needs, so i don't know what extra goodies come with magento.

Blancastella thanks too for your input...i would be interested to hear why you didn't include woocommerce in your thoughts (for me at the moment, i think it's the best wp-based solution - although with the new pricing structure it gets very expensive if you need to add several extensions)

[NicktheGeek]

Great summary Blancastella. I think it illustrates my point well, use WordPress as the CMS and Magento as the payment portal on a site that is already using it. In that case the investments have been made in components and in learning the interface. It is unlikely that any of the existing plugins will do what it can for commerce.

However, I have only moved one client to Magento or any third party cart from WordPress. They were building a full online shop. They have a brick and mortar store with tons of products and wanted to set all of that up with inventory tracking that integrated with the system they used in the store. Magento had a module for that and any plugin would have required my to write some kind of gateway to try and merge the system.

Every other client was able to use a WordPress plugin. I've used Shopp, Cart-66, WP eCommerce, Jigoshop, WooCommerce, and a few others. Each required some custom work to get things exactly like the clients wanted, but it was much easier than setting up a standalone cart and teaching them a whole new system.

Still, there are times a full cart is the best choice. When that system is already in place or when the client needs far outreach what the available plugins can offer.

[blancastella]

John, I Didn't include WooCommerce because of the new pricing structure and because MarketPress does pretty much the same without the extensions though MarketPress lacks a grid view and product slider. In other words, no need to pay more for authorize.net and other payment gateways.

WP eCommerce is the only WordPress plugin I know of that has an extension for minimum and maximum expenditure/order quantity values. There is a cheeky free plugin in the WP repository that opens up gridview layout, product variations are really easy to add (I do mean EASY) and there is a free plugin that automatically switches thumbnails when a variation is selected. It isn't Magento but it is as close as you can get. It's well supported in terms of free extensions and the upgrade to the paid version is less than $50 USD; though that is per site.

Another eCommerce plugin is based on OS Commerce. Forgotten its name. It is a powerful system but is essentially OS Commerce embedded into WordPress - it's not nice to use. Magento is the better option.

An up and coming eCommerce solution is Ready! eCommerce. The developers of this plugin are actively looking for ideas and suggestions for development.

I agree with Nick, you won't find Magento in a WordPress plugin but you can find ways to integrate the two platforms. Try Magento in a LAMP, WAMP or MAMP environment. Add a few test products and you'll see how awkward it is to use when migrating from WordPress but also how capable it is of selling. Few WP plugins offer the ability to feature cross sell and related products to prospects.

[JohnEniste]

Thanks for your answer. I read some bad reviews about WP ecommerce when i first searched around - maybe i should have tried it? I started with Jigoshop and then migrated to woo, but the new pricing structure is making me reconsider whether i will continue to use it.

I'm currently thinking about getting deeper into multisite, so i may look more closely at Marketpress.

Thanks to both of you again for your input.

[blancastella]

I looked around for ages before choosing WP eCommerce. Read a lot of bad reviews too. The last update fixed a lot of bugs. The upgrade was as easy as any other WordPress plugin upgrade - had heard bad stories about that. I think the plugin has been rebuilt since the bad reviews were written.

Install it in a test site. You'll see it's quite easy to use.

[Collins]

I just received another request from a buddy of mine to migrate an existing site off of osCommerce to Magento (http://bit.ly/TAOMgu). They only sell about 30 different items, so I was wondering if Magento might be a bit too much and if a WP solution might be the way to go. To be honest, I'd like to take on the project, but am not fully comfortable with Magento, yet I want to put his best interests first and provide a good scalable solution.

[JohnEniste]

I think you're going to need to find out exactly what options your friend is looking for, and then see if the wp commerce platforms can provide those options.
My only real commerce experience is with woocommerce, and they do have extensions for just about anything you could think of - but you need to pay for each one. Out of the box it supports paypal and other payment gateways are paid extensions. There are also extensions for things like flat rate shipping and all sorts of stuff.
They have just changed their own website to use woocommerce to sell their themes etc, so they must have confidence in it's ability to scale.
I am going to look at marketpress, purely because of the way it integrates with the other multisite options but i don't know if it has evolved to a state where it can compete with woocommerce in terms of functionality...?