Looking for a catch all solution for your e-commerce presence is challenging. Did you realize that there are over 500 solutions out there? It’s enough to drive a business owner crazy. Today, I’d like to focus on two well-loved companies: Volusion and Shopify . I’d like to describe what they have in common and what makes them stand out. Hopefully this can help you make a decision when trying to decide which one to work with. Both are excellent, solid solutions that can help you increase your online sales.

First, let’s look at the similar features of the hosted solutions:

*Both companies have a base price starting at $29.99 monthly

*They both offer hosted solutions. Unlike other e-commerce solutions, both companies host the actual e-commerce stores and transactions and offer support through email and phone. They both upgrade and repair their software, handle bandwidth and security as well.

*They both offer to help you build a store with your own domain.

*Both work and integrate with most shipping providers (UPS, USPS, Fedex)

Here’s a look at some of the major differences:

Volusion:

*Provides extras features SSL certificates,  merchant accounts, live chat software, and integrating with social networking options.

*Their Shopping cart features real-time inventory management, batch order processing, and an integrated editor to make creating content pages simple.

*RSS feeds can be added to the dashboard and include free customizable, free website templates.

*They offer security alerts, step-by-step training videos

*Allows your customers to create wish lists, or email item information to a friend or even post customer reviews.

Shopify:

*Default theme includes easy-to-use product management tools to help business owners manage and track inventory and online orders.

*Ability to tag keywords for Search Engine Optimization and flexible layout of dynamic content.

*A wide variety of design, product management, online ordering, admin interface, and marketing tools. From the backend, you can have complete control over the HTML and CSS.

*Drag and drop ordering of product images

I’ve spoked with different businesses about which solution they preferred and the answers is usually “it depends”. I think it boils down to what features you are looking for, what’s important to you, how you run your current business (do you only have an online presence or are you only a brick and mortar store?) and many other factors. I hope this review can help you make that decision and help you move closer to using the best solution for your business.

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• Interview with Retail Expert Nicole Whitsell

You love working with Wordpress and using it as a tool to manage your website . Now your business is in a position and it makes sense to start selling products online. Why not keep using Wordpress as an ecommerce solution as well?  You want as much control over your shopping cart, so keeping it open-source and not paying a monthly fee sounds great. Also, you understand that if you go the open-source route, you need to hire or maintain updates and security patches on the plugins and software, but it’s all worth it!

Having arrived at this decision, what are really your options? We’ll look at the top 3 WP plugins, at the moment, that can serve as a shopping cart.

Download plugin: http://shopplugin.net/

$55 for single license,

See the plugin in action : http://www.soigneur.net/store/

Overall Shopp offers some great features:  drag & drop for multiple product images, support for physical & digital products, order history, email notifications, fast product search, shipping rate calculations, discounts and promo codes.

Speaking with developers, this plugin is probably the most user-friendly of the three and isn’t overwhelming to start using right away.

Pros

• Easy to Install, cleaner than free plugins
• Great customer support (lots of documentation)
• Is compatible with other plugins

Cons:

• It isn’t free

WP Ecommerce

download the plugin: http://www.instinct.co.nz/e-commerce/

See the plugin in action: http://icondock.com/ (unique drag & drop interface for purchases)

With over 500,000 downloads (the most popular ecommerce plugin for WordPress), tons of free and premium themes built using its code, and too many  features to list, it really is an essential powerhouse of a plugin. Developers I’ve spoken with love the different options this plugin provides, but does have a high learning curve and requires some patience to set up.

Pros:

• Payment options: WordPress eCommerce supports Google Checkout, Paypal, Authorize.net, and several others

• Social media is super simple, as they’ve optimized everything using the ShareThis technology, which will absolutely help your products get noticed.

Cons:

• Hard to customize
• Poor customer support
• No option to print invoices

download the plugin: http://www.phpurchase.com/

$49 for the Standard edition and $99 for the Pro version

see the plugin in action: http://www.hydrapak.com/

PHPurchase is a newer plugin that makes it simple to create an entire catalogue of products with custom variables (size, color, etc.), it has a a powerful dashboard-based order management system, easy to track your orders, with an option to offer discounts and provide shipping options.

Developers I know are excited about this newer plugin, but haven’t had the change to really check it out yet. Hopefully in the next 6 months there will be more feedback on this plugin!

Pros:

• Lots of payment gateways
• Very customizable
• Easy to add products
• Great customer support
• One page checkout

Cons:

• Not based on a template, so it can involve more work

Looking for more comparisons? Here’s some Shopp vs. WP Ecommerce blog reviews:

http://lbnuke.com/2008/12/30/wordpress-ecommerce-plugins-shopp-vs-wp-ecommerce/http://wordpress.org/support/topic/shopp-vs-wp-ecommerce

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• Top Business & E-commerce Posts of 2010

Lately, I’ve been getting  requests on which are the best Wordpress tools for a Membership based website. I’ve noticed a large trend with different coaches wanting to set up paid membership sites to offer tools for members.

One of my clients wanted a specific solution. Running Evolution,  a company who promotes and trains folks to run their first 5K and beyond through schedule runs and encouragement. Beth, the owner, wanted to offer different membership packages and each package would allow for special discounts on her classes and runs. At first it sounded easy, but then I realized that there’s a few ways you could skin this cat and worked with an e-commerce developer who made some great recommendations.

My developer suggested using a combination of two plugins: WP Membership Premium, a Wordpress plugin that allows create different membership plans, accept payment, and manage these accounts. My developer also suggested treating my client’s classes as “products” so that a coupon code could be applied to them. They could easily be connected into the Membership plugin so that certain memberships would allow for discounted classes. She used WP E-commerce for the shopping cart part.

The website has come together very well and gives my client the solutions she was looking for. I’m so excited that this has elevated her to a new level of growth for her business and gives her the opportunity to change packages and add/edit/remove classes whenever she wants.

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• Top 3 Wordpress Shopping Cart / e commerce Plugins

Just my luck, I live really close to Shop Adorn’s retail store and got the opportunity meet up with Nicole in person for this interview. Nicole recently opened the store this spring, featuring street wear and modern clothing for men and women and is really happy with the neighborhood. Located in Beaumont neighborhood, having a brick and mortar store is a dream come true for Nicole. Nicole originally held her store,  Shop Adorn,  online only.  (shopadornonline.com)

Online vs. Brick & Mortar

It’s fascinating the difference between her customers online and off. The store shopper tend to be mostly moms of all ages, especially stay at home moms who want a different wardrobe and want fashionable clothes as well as a more mature crowd of  ladies. Online, her sales are mostly ladies who hold higher income jobs and tend to be colleage grads.

Nicole has been focused on creating the online store to match more of the retail store’s branding.  Recently they’ve incorporated some the green and white from the storefront and gave the website the facelift it was looking for. It’s definitely a challenge to create the same emotional feeling and experience online and off!

Which tools to use?

Nicole’s a big fan of using Volusion as an e-commerce solution. Nicole told me she originally went with Magento for her online store, but found it a bit of a monster, it’s customer service was lacking, and the costs were really high.

While Nicole doesn’t use Volusion for her POS sales in her store, but has found a system to be able to link inventories, one of the main frustrations with a lot of brick and mortar stores who have an online store as well.

Reaching the market

Blogging has been one of the best ways to drive Shop Adorn customers to their online store. Nicole’s staff blogs daily, really focusing on getting excited about the clothing and why they are carrying it.  Over 50% customers find their website because of their blog!

Nicole wants to set up a local blog to incorporate more of her neighbors in Beaumont to help spread the news of events at different stores and restaurants. She’s been impressed with how merchants in the area help each other out. Other exciting things Nicole’s doing at her store: she’s  offering customers face-to-face style consulting, in-store trunk shows and neighborhood parties!

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• Shopify vs. Volusion – a review of e-commerce hosted solutions

I wrote a book! I actually wanted to write 4-5 books, but since I’ve never done this before, I decided to be more realistic to complete ONE book. So over the summer, I did lots of research and did chunks of writing. Sometimes the writing came easy, sometimes it was really hard and I felt like pulling my hair out. Did I mention that I was pregnant too? I think writing this book helped me focus on something else entirely and keep my sanity as my belly has gotten bigger. Don’t need to obsess about something growing inside of me.

In a nutshell, finishing this book proved something to me and felt amazing once I completed all the revisions and got it to the version I wanted to put on the shelf. I really believe that it has a lot of great insight and provides a great overview on the steps to selling products online. The stats of online sales keeps growning and growing! I personally don’t enjoy shopping and really prefer to shop online. Shopping online can be  a nightmare or a wonderful experience and there are so many methods and procedures that can help create that experience!

One of my favorite sections of the book is demystifing the different types of shopping carts and the costs/benefits. It was definitely challenging to know how to explain the differences since it’s really not crystal clear. I was surprised how little information I could find on building custom shopping cart software. I think it might just be a lost art or that it’s just too expensive so it’s a rareity when someone does it.

My deepest hope is to help educate lots of business owners and make them feel empowered by this information. I hope to save them lots of time and money by reading my book and help them make a decision that’s solid and will grow with their business.

Let me know what you think – have you ever written a book to help other business owners? Do you have a book in your head that’s dying to be written?

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• Shopify vs. Volusion – a review of e-commerce hosted solutions