
Ask HN: What is your favorite way of setting up online store in 2018? - pyeu
I am learning Python and Web Development. I want to set up an online store for my friend who does stitching work. She needs a site where she can display her designs and take orders for stitching.<p>As I am learning Python, I am planning to use framework : Sale or - http:&#x2F;&#x2F;getsaleor.com&#x2F; or Oscar http:&#x2F;&#x2F;oscarcommerce.com&#x2F;.<p>For payment, I may use PayPal or Stripe.<p>Budget for building online store is very low. I want to full control over it and independent?<p>What services and technologies do you use when you&#x27;d like to quickly build a small online store?
======
toomuchtodo
Shopify or Etsy to MVP until there's traction. Don't prematurely optimize by
thinking you need to use Django or write the shop yourself in the beginning.

> Budget for building online store is very low. I want to full control over it
> and independent?

Don't do this. Your time is worth something. Just keep an eye as things
develop as to how you're going to get the data out of your prototype into a
bespoke system, eventually.

Source: I've helped ~5 people setup online shops this way, including quilting
and artisanal yarn shops. Total time to setup was 2-3 hours per store with a
screen share while on the phone with the person.

EDIT: OP: To your point about learning Python; find small consulting projects
that are just beyond your skill level, and take those on. Iterate along that
path. This is not the path to your Python Enlightenment. I understand it's
difficult to learn a programming language when you don't have a real problem
to solve, I face the same problem myself.

~~~
amelius
Good suggestion, but he said budget is very low, so is there a free solution
out there?

~~~
nickthegreek
bigcartel (free for a few products, just fees) and if they start doing any
amount of decent business, they can switch to shopify.

~~~
magic_beans
Odd choice for a product store... Is it for illegal products??

------
mattkevan
Agree with the other posts here. Don’t write your own store.

Shopify/Squarespace/Sellfy etc. are much cheaper and lower risk, at least to
start with. From experience PCI compliance and tax rules are pains you do not
want to deal with.

I’d only ever recommend custom coding if you have some extremely specific
requirements. Even WooCommerce on Wordpress would be a better starting point.

If you want to tinker, you could build a store using a static site generator
like Jekyll combined with a Google Docs spreadsheet to manage the inventory
and something like Snipcart [0] for e-commerce functionality (I’m working on a
site that does this).

[0] [https://snipcart.com](https://snipcart.com)

~~~
dfee
Wow. I’ve been down a rabbit hole with cart building and DB design and never
realized that Snipcart existed.

What other magic is out there?

~~~
thirdsun
It's rarely mentioned, but if you like Snipcart, Shopify also offers a custom
solution for storefronts and static websites:
[https://help.shopify.com/api/custom-storefronts/js-buy-
sdk](https://help.shopify.com/api/custom-storefronts/js-buy-sdk)

You basically get all the benefits of Shopify's excellent, easy to use
admin/backend area while building a custom frontend on top of it.

------
Galaxeblaffer
To the rest of the posters... __READ__ what he is writing.. He want total
control and a low budget. Have any of you even tried Shopify ? It's low
control and it's expensive as hell.

Ok, so i'm actually running a pretty large store on Django Oscar. But i would
say that it really depends on what you are building

The only reason i choose Django oscar over something like shopify is that we
sell a highly customizable product and needed total freedom to try out
different ways of giving discounts and creating vouchers. If you just sell
standard products then don't bother.

I will give credit to the creators of Django Oscar for building a highly
customizable framework and if you know your way around Django, the overhead of
using it shouldn't be too large.

~~~
akx
The OP probably actually doesn't want total control, they just think they do
for whichever reason.

As for the price, $29/mo + 2.9% for Shopify Basic isn't bad. It's basically
covered (one should hope) by a couple sales per month, especially for bespoke
stitching products.

~~~
exodust
So when someone says they "want total control", your response is "no you
don't". Wow.

Are you a sales rep for Shopify? That $30 per month fee is bad.

~~~
akx
No, my response was that they _probably_ don't, if they'd evaluate that
viewpoint further. Especially as a software dev/engineer, it's all too easy to
think that you need absolute control.

And no, now that you ask, no I'm not. I _have_ been the lead developer for at
least 3 e-commerce systems though, so I know it's not trivial.

Why do you think the fee is "bad"?

~~~
exodust
Because... it's a craft e-store, never going to have a lot of revenue; $30 per
month is $30 less for buying food; also Shopify take a cut of each sale, so
it's a regular double whammy and that sucks. And the owner will be a creative
person, and they are usually fussy/particular/perfectionists regarding visual
presentation of their artwork/brand/style/look and feel. I know, I've built
online stores for artists. The attention to detail requests didn't stop.
Fortunately I had total control over the store right up until payment gateway,
so it was fine.

Some small businesses are looking to set up shop _properly_ more than
_quickly_. Anyway, these are all opinions, I'm just sharing mine.

~~~
yazan94
Well what would you do instead? Assuming that OP will build the site for free,
the shop owner still needs to pay for hosting (assume $5 droplet at Digital
Ocean), domain name (assume ~$10 from Namecheap), and a payment processor
(assuming Paypal, (2.9% + 0.30) / transaction). Considering all of this is
abstracted away and handled for you for $30, doesn't sound that bad. We
haven't even touched on headaches from future maintenance, bugs, features,
scaling, etc.

~~~
exodust
You've included "domain name" in the list of things Shopify does for $30, and
you'd be wrong about that. It's an extra expense. And not only that, but the
$30 plan doesn't provide "professional reports" which most businesses would
want. Exporting invoice data as CSV, or to accounting software, backup of
database etc. These are things I would advise a business needs.

I never said build the whole CMS/store platform from scratch. I would use
something like Perch which is a CMS with shop-addon that allows you to build
the site and store normally, then integrate easily into a shop. It's possible
to be up and running quickly using a basic shared hosted platform as the host
- which is all you need at first.

The day that "scaling" is needed is the day you ask your web host to put your
mySQL e-store site on a better shared hosting plan with more RAM and more
CPU... _wow, what a huge effort!_ Or go VPS or something. Easy.

Every used mySqL? It actually works quite well believe it or not. Cheap, easy,
_not a headache_.

We can argue all day about the details, but in the end you are advocating a
microwave dinner as the solution for a small business wanting to make an
impact and good impression with new customers. I am advocating something a lot
better.

------
dopamean
It's 2018. There's almost zero reason to build an online store yourself if all
that is being sold is stitching work. This sounds like a perfect use case for
Shopify/Etsy/Big Cartel or any of the many sites that do this already.

~~~
mkirklions
I dont use these sites, do you get user emails for follow up promotion?

~~~
dopamean
Definitely with Shopify. I have bought stuff from companies built on Shopify
many times and I get all the normal promotional stuff you'd expect.

------
rwhitman
As someone who's done quite a bit of e-commerce solutions architecture for
ecommerce businesses leveling up, I can say without a doubt the worst solution
you could choose for a newly created store in 2018, would be roll out a home
grown build.

You need to choose the solution that is best for your friend's business over
the long term, not what is most interesting as a dev.

Use Shopify, as it's the most scalable over the long run, without a dev needed
to keep the lights on. But even something like Etsy will do.

Do not go with Django / Python, and I say this as a Django dev myself. The
second you get a higher priority project, your friend will be in a real jam.
Maintenance with Django / Python is prohibitively expensive with freelancers,
and needs a high level of engineering skill to keep up with business
requirements over time.

Particularly things like packages & dependency upgrades, can lead to tech debt
with cascading maintenance costs and increase likelihood of outages. Enough is
changing in ecommerce around 3rd party vendor dependencies, security standards
and regulations, that an un-patched Django site can get burned pretty quickly.

The cost of migrating to another ecommerce platform from something proprietary
can become extremely expensive as well, so do your friend a favor and choose a
scalable saas platform that will last. Good luck.

------
pasta
Most people don't understand that a webshop is like a normal shop: hard and
lots of work:

    
    
      Writing good text
      Taking good pictures
      Handling sales and delivery
      Handling returns (yes people will return sometimes)
    

So I agree with most people here: don't roll your own shop but invest time in
running your shop.

~~~
mattkevan
Also marketing. Running a successful online shop is 70% marketing, 30%
everything else. Mucking about with technology should be a fraction of that.

As someone who loves mucking about with technology, I got the balance very
wrong with my first shop – spent so long getting it working and keeping it
working I had no to time to tell anyone about it.

~~~
gav
I would suggest that you want to get that marketing number as close to 100% as
possible.

Spending time on anything technology related at the start is really a
distraction from the important goal of understanding products, pricing, and
customers. Any time spent on technology beyond that of doing the minimum
required to make selling possible is a premature optimization.

------
mythrowaway1124
Unless your product is an online store, don't code an online store.

~~~
aerovistae
I don't really understand this sentiment which seems to be widely shared here.
Stripe handles all the PCI stuff. What's wrong with coding up a basic store?

~~~
magduf
Exactly. PayPal is the same way: if you outsource your payment processing to
one of these, then you don't have to worry about the PCI stuff. If you're
intent on having a "uniform checkout experience", then it's much more
difficult of course, but if you don't mind redirecting customers to PayPal to
do the payment, then making your own basic store can save you a ton of money
in fees.

------
projectramo
This is how I would do it, step by step:

1\. Read through the django documentation and try to set up a single site.

2\. Realize I was reading django 1.6, and my system had v 1.8 which broke a
few things

3\. Get on Upwork to hire someone to do it for me

4\. Get frustrated with the quality of applicants, but have hope for one
person who made the interview

5\. Go back to Django and decide that Rails is the right way. Struggle with
RVM.

6\. Hire the person on upwork, and be disappointed with the first version. Ask
why they decided to use wordpress and a custom PHP widget.

7\. Go back to Django and get a basic blog up and running

8\. Finally pay someone a decent amount on Upwork who sets up the store in no
time.

Unfortunately, there is no known shortcut.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
_Unfortunately, there is no known shortcut_

What about just jumping to step 8 immediately?

~~~
projectramo
I tried that, and it turned out I was actually at step 3.

------
richjdsmith
Please for the love of all that is good in this world, don't use Woocommerce.

I maintain a WooCommerce site - it is a fucking nightmare. Oh, as for "saving
money" by choosing Woo over Shopify, in the end you pay for plugins bringing
you the same functionality already built into Shopify.

~~~
wizzzzzy
Out of curiosity, what is it you've found such a nightmare? I've worked on
numerous woocommerce sites and have generally found the experience fine.

~~~
x3sphere
same. Maybe it was awful in the past, but I've had no issues with Woocommerce
in the past 2 years or so. I suppose it can get messy if you are working with
some poorly coded plugins, but the base WC, works pretty well.

I looked at Shopify but it looked like a huge headache to customize - seems it
would be a good option if you want more of a turn key experience though.

------
jkkorn
The comment section is ripe with "over engineering"suggestions.

If you're looking to build an online store so you can get a deeper
understanding of Python: go ahead.

If you're actually looking for the most efficient way of putting up something
online and start selling, you're better of hitting WooCommerce, shopify, etsy
or looking at other solutions on ProductHunt.

Best :)

------
petepete
A friend asked me the best way to start a few months ago. I advised her to use
Squarespace for a while and if her idea takes off, perhaps then look at
something a little more bespoke.

She ignored me and contracted a local development company, ended up paying
£1200 for a Wordpress/WooCommerce site that could have been set up for
peanuts.

~~~
zodPod
Good. Sometimes people need to learn hard lessons. It's kind of nice to hear
that she spent way too much money in the end. Hopefully her business takes off
still but I get really tired of people asking for my advice and totally
ignoring it.

~~~
EADGBE
'She don't know what she don't know'. I bet she thought/thinks she was getting
a bargain.

------
a_imho
WordPress with WooCommerce. In the end there are only a handful of subtle
differences between off the shelf solutions.

~~~
mkirklions
This does the job for me.

Plus then you get a wordpress/php website.

Im very happy now that I understand php and was able to make a custom theme.

~~~
Rjevski
A Wordpress website isn’t an advantage, it’s a nightmare in terms of security
and maintenance.

~~~
e40
Perhaps less so if you use a wordpress hosting service.

~~~
zodPod
Are you actually e-40?

~~~
e40
Are you asking me if I'm E-40 the rapper? What do you think the chances of
that are?

~~~
zodPod
Haha, I am. I think probably pretty low. But I thought maybe. I'm a programmer
who does music as well so it could be! haha

------
0x4f3759df
It seems like a good way to learn Python, but after you've learned enough you
will lose interest in maintaining your friend's web store for practically no
money.

------
jordanmoconnor
Check out [https://www.starterstory.com/](https://www.starterstory.com/).
There' a list of tools that these e-commerce companies use.

~~~
patwalls
Hey! Founder of Starter Story here!

Check out the tools page -
[https://www.starterstory.com/tools](https://www.starterstory.com/tools) and
you can see some of the more popular tools and who is using them.

edit: And anecdotally, I've interviewed a few companies doing $100k/mo and
loving Shopify and WooCommerce. I think those are great places to start.

------
Hoasi
I'd recommend Gumroad for something like this. One of the fastest, easiest
ways to get a small shop going. The interface is very intuitive, but what
makes Gumroad stand out is that e-commerce couple with basic CRM. A sound
approach to sell craftwork while building an audience. Your friend can start
with the free plan. You don't get full control yet—although an open-source
version is planned. But as others have said it, it is not worth the pain when
starting out.

------
neya
I wrote my own over the last two years[1] and it has served me really well.
I've designed it in a way that can support multiple sites from a single node,
so, it's really a very pleasurable experience now. I enjoy working on it,
fixing bugs and thinking about the strategic direction for this project.

I don't use Shopify for many, many reasons[1]

If you want to setup a quick store in just under a week of development, I
highly recommend using Jekyll + PayPal. Contrary to popular believe, PayPal
actually converts better than rolling out your own integrated solution based
on Stripe/etc.

I run a couple of dropshipping stores based on my stack, so please feel free
to ask me anything :)

[1] [https://medium.com/build-ideas/my-journey-of-writing-an-e-
co...](https://medium.com/build-ideas/my-journey-of-writing-an-e-commerce-
engine-from-scratch-wip-ff4adb54c352)

------
kabren
Etsy, Shopify, something like that.

As someone else here said, when running your own store, you want to get as
close to spending 100% of your time and energy on marketing and closer to 0%
of your time on tinkering with technology.

Etsy is nice, because you have some eyeballs built in.

------
rblion
Shopify and/or Wordpress. You can get so much done with those two but a lot of
developers I know just dismiss them. Not sure why.

------
blairanderson
I'd say it depends on what you're selling but most people should use Shopify
and plug into Amazon for better distribution.

Truth of the matter is if you're spending time building the store, you won't
be spending enough time building the products or marketing them.

source: I help large(and small) companies strategize and manage roughly
$25m/year of eCommerce sales.

------
wilsonfiifi
You could use an ecommerce API like Motlin [0]. This should allow you to have
more control over the site and offload the ecommerce logic and processing to a
3rd party until you're confident you can roll your own.

Haven't had the opportunity to use it personally but it seems like a good
place to start.

    
    
      [0] https://moltin.com/

~~~
ciaranconnor
I know I'm late to the party, but moltin is far from cheap, which is a shame,
as it's a very interesting approach.

As far as I'm aware, they still offer a free tier of 30k API operations per
month, which apparently approximates 10k page views - which is very kind of
them. However, I had to email them to get pricing information, and was
informed their pricing _starts_ at $1k/month (I was actually quoted $12k/year)
for 250k operations (i.e. ~80k page views). Ouch.

To make matters worse, they use to charge $49/month for 300k operations [1]. I
was informed that this was very out of date information, as apparently they've
got a new logo and everything since then. But still, I feel bad for anyone who
got vendor-locked to them.

All in all, probably not a bad product, but definitely one to avoid for
scenarios like OP's.

[1]
[https://www.g2crowd.com/products/moltin/pricing](https://www.g2crowd.com/products/moltin/pricing)

------
p0nce
Don’t write your own store, since GDPR and EU VAT it's absurdly complicated to
be compliant.

------
dataminded
Wordpress + Woocommerce on Lightsail

------
jotm
Drupal or Wordpress, full control, very low budget, very low expertise needed.
From a business owner's point of view, Drupal and Wordpress are amazing. But
if you ask any coder, they'll tell you they're a pile of shit, so don't ask
:).

~~~
Kluny
As a professional WordPress developer, WordPress is a non-stop frustration to
work with. But as a blogger, I couldn't be happier with it. I have full
control of my content and I'm not reliant on any company for hosting, software
or anything else.

------
h3cate
I work for a company called shopblocks
([https://shopblocks.com](https://shopblocks.com)) where you can create a
e-commerce site and have full control over the layout. I can highly recommend!

------
exodust
Perch Runway is good, it's a one time initial cost then nothing further. It's
a full CMS website solution where the shop is one of the add-ons
(shop.perchcms.com). It's all about full control, you make your site exactly
how you like, and host it wherever you want. Look it up and read over the
features to see if suits your needs. I built a store with Perch and it was
extremely snappy and worked well.

It won't take a day to build, it will take longer, like anything worthwhile.

Don't use Shopify or boring solutions like that if you want full control. Get
stuck in and make an original, responsive store!

------
Hackwar
Joomla and Hikashop. Yes, it is more work to set up than simply using shopify,
but you are independent, you are flexible, it is cheap and when something like
GDPR comes around the corner that prevents a system like shopify (or shopify
is bought by Amazon or similar) you still have your shop. It is also
Opensource. Also, if you are selling stuff that might be against the terms of
shopify, your shop might get deleted, but not if you role your own
installation. Definitely don't invent your own shop system, but use your own
installation and an opensource solution.

------
microdrum
If it's an affiliate shop (i.e. Amazon Associates), I recommend
[https://wpcommission.com](https://wpcommission.com) \+ WordPress.

------
jventura
Like other posters, I suggest to test the market before writting your own
software. A client of mine is using [https://shopk.it](https://shopk.it) for
the store front, and it seems quite ok at 10€/month. It allows you to have
your own domain attached to it, but you have to pay a little extra for https
(which is kind-of strange, but...).

------
cdjk
Shopify or something like that unless you have very specific requirements. And
if you’re asking in HN you don’t have very specific requirements.

------
mkbkn
I don't have much to say, I go with most of the commenters saying go with
Shopify like platform. In that case, I would like you to check ecwid.com, it's
similar to Shopify but also offers a lifetime-free starter account. So you can
play with it until you hit the profits and then you may move on to Shopify if
it doesn't feel right.

------
pi-squared
What is more important for you - learning experience or getting your friend up
and running fast? If it's the first - go with the frameworks you have listed
but expect it will take longer than you thought before you can give her
anything to work with. Like 10x longer. If it's the second - shopify or other
mentioned in other comments.

------
cridenour
I've used Saleor before and while it was great, I was pretty familiar with
Django at the time and worry it could be overwhelming as a way to learn.

I've also used Wordpress + WooCommerce so if you can find a theme you like,
it's a great way to get something up in < 4 hours so you can hack away on
Saleor for the next few weekends.

------
codyzazulak1
I've posted once in this thread already, but I can't stress enough that you
should use Shopify.

Not only that, but there's an excellent article front page regarding selling
online here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17239128](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17239128)

~~~
exodust
And I can't stress enough that they should not use Shopify. They said "total
control" and independent. That is the opposite of what Shopify provides. It
sounds like you love Shopify, that's great for you. Some of us like to
actually develop websites and customise the checkout proecess, the cart, the
categories, the product pages, the collections, the wishlists, the account
membership, the invoices, reports, .... the whole lot. It's good to have
control rather than be tied to some fast food e-commerce solution.

------
funwie
Are there any online services that offer all the features needed for the
online store?

If yes, then why build? If no, can you customise the service? If not, then
build and make use of available code (libraries, apis, framework)

doing it by yourself will be a great learning experience but costly one.

Wish you and your friend all the best with your online store.

------
dade_
Have you looked at cartridge? It is based on Mezzanine which is really just
Django. Decent feature set, though not extensive. Completely open source.

mezzanine.jupo.org

[https://github.com/stephenmcd/cartridge](https://github.com/stephenmcd/cartridge)

------
sdnguyen90
Expanding on what other people have said with some anecdotes:

Most developers who don't have operational experience of a ecommerce business
will recommend some kind of open source cart. If they're in the WordPress
community they'll recommend Woocommerce. If they're used to building web apps
they'll recommend something built on top of their framework of choice.

Almost everyone who has experience working on a successful ecommerce business
will tell you to use Shopify. It has all the basic tools you need to run a
successful store. If your store is a failure on Shopify, then it would
probably be a multitude worse on a custom built cart.

As stated in other comments, the actual cart is a cost center in a ecommerce
business. There are stores using themes with minimal modifications doing
millions in sales. On the contrary, you could have the most well built site
and still have no sales.

If you want to put your technological skills to use, use it on things that
generate traffic like content or marketing.

------
leetbulb
I've found [https://schema.io](https://schema.io) to be pleasant to work with.
Check the docs, seriously, it's cool - there's a reason why it's called
"schema".

------
jrs95
Salesforce Commerce Cloud!

Just kidding. Don't use this unless you _truly_ hate yourself.

~~~
HenryTheHorse
That's Demandware, right? I am not familiar with the product, but what did you
not like about it?

~~~
jrs95
It is Demandware. The pricing is awful (a flat rate of hundreds of thousands +
3.5%), the old pipeline based model is awful, and even the new JS based
replacement isn't great. It has the ability to run "jobs" but the error
reporting around them tends to suck & so does the coordination aspect of it.
Importing data is a pain, there's XML everywhere and the schema borders on
being nonsensical. The underlying tech is just old and shitty and you can
tell. Not worth what they're charging for it IMO. I'm hoping to investigate
Shopify Plus as an alternative. Not sure what kind of functionality it might
be missing vs Demandware, but the difference in pricing alone is worth it.

------
handbanana
Shopify. And if they start selling a lot and ship things themselves, have them
look into shipping software as well (where you can buy and print
postage/labels and get shipping rates for packages online)

~~~
thatthatis
Shipstation is probably the right shipping software to start with.
It.Just.Works.

~~~
handbanana
Care to expand upon that?

------
elicash
I haven't used it, but you might be interested in
[https://craftcommerce.com](https://craftcommerce.com)

~~~
yurishimo
It's also $999 for use on a live website. It's a dark pattern that they don't
expose the pricing requirement except at the bottom of the home page.

I can buy a lot of hosting on different platforms for a thousand bucks.

------
scoot
Anyone know of an online store that lets you set up a revenue share with the
content creator (similar to ThemeForest etc.)?

------
wehere1111
do NOT write your own shop. you're putting your friend in a shit situation
when 1 year from now, you're too busy and she needs to find a contractor to
add a feature on top of your custom framework, when if you did the right thing
in the first place and built it with Shopify, she could find someone super
easily

------
IloveHN84
OpenCart 100%

------
mychael
SaaS founders: Observe how frequently Shopify is mentioned in this post. This
is the goal.

------
eyroot
What about Magento? :)

~~~
kenrose
Bought by Adobe... likely killed within a year. :)

------
elvirs
well, everybody already said shopify but if you want completely free then you
can try Square. They are very limiting when it comes to design though.

------
Kagerjay
I think for small stores shopify or woocommerce / wordpress / ebay / etsy /
amazon or whatever works just fine. Especially if you need to validate your
store as well. You can get a store up in a few hours if you are dealing with a
few hundred SKUs. You can add all the data there manually through the CMS or
with an excel / FTP import. For many places, this is good enough. For larger
stores, I consider the following approach

\- Develop agnostically. This means don't build with any stack of tools in
mind. I have a prepros-sass-pug-typescript template here
[https://github.com/Kagerjay/prepros-pug-sass-typescript-
boil...](https://github.com/Kagerjay/prepros-pug-sass-typescript-boilerplate)
specifically for generating an ecommerce frontend multipage mockup. Every
ecommerce site is going to be built in HTML/CSS/JS regardless of what backend
languages or frameworks you decide (PHP, python, etc). All you really need is
a home page, category grid, product grid, product page, and checkout page.
Throw in dummy data here, and then use whatever backend system and/or
framework afterwards.

\- Doing any backend development is just reinventing the wheel. Ecommerce is
tried and tested already. Things like how to handle an abandoned shopping
cart, security, etc. You shouldn't be doing these things honestly. Let someone
else do this, or use a library if you have too. You'll need to evaluate
backend / ecommerce framework depending on your requirements though.

\- Frontend, data, and your product / marketing are the most important things
for an ecommerce site. Your customer is not going to care about your backend.
Chances are you might migrate your ecommerce backend down the road anyhow.

In summary, if you want to start from scratch, and want full
control/portability, consider building your own frontend mockup for each
unique page type (category landing, product landing, etc). Expedite this
process by using a CSS framework like Bootstrap. Learn how to organize CSS
code with Sass. Worry about backend later. You should have an idea of what
content / data is going to appear on the frontend, and where it all ties in.

If you need to dial back even further for a truly agnostic approach, consider
UX design only. This will also shorten the gap in explaining to your
developer, should you outsource to one, what the final site should look like
and do.

If none of the above matters, just use shopify or and throw your pictures +
content and a template, call it a day.

Backend I personally have seen many successful custom enterprise level stores
using Laravel+PHP+MySQL+Some-Javascript-libraries (image LazyLoading)+PHP-
libraries(shopping cart functions). You can analyze what tools a store is
using through wappylzer. Some tools for doing a simplistic hosted backend
include 3dcart and snipcart if you want to forego backend all together.

Finally, what ecommerce framework you use also depends on what your selling.
If your selling high markup goods, such as T-shirts and stitching work, 2.9%
cut from shopify is going to be irrelevant. If you sell industrial equipment,
2.9% is like half your profit margins.

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borplk
Be a good friend and set them up with an existing solution like Shopify :)

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matte_black
How about a minimal static page with an email address or phone number at the
bottom for placing orders? Sounds very custom and high end. Total control over
the customer relationship. Even GDPR compliant.

~~~
bo1024
From my armchair, this solution sounds great. The only drawback is that
discoverability is difficult -- sites like etsy probably bring you some
marketing for free just by showing up in searches.

~~~
matte_black
Yes, but even if you have a product on Etsy you will still have to advertise
to make it successful.

The difference with a static page is you can have a very optimized experience
that loads fast for users all around the world.

And with a myriad of options for people to contact you, you can engage in real
conversation that will have a much higher chance of making a sale. Indeed, by
slowing down the checkout process and weeding out impulse buyers, you can
paradoxically break into higher quality sales for high value or custom crafted
items.

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mozumder
Every new brand in the fashion industry is using Shopify, even those with a
bit of name recognition.

