What would be some good ways going about making an E-Commerce website?

[MTF]

I don't understand why you would think that. Why would wanted to program my website, add additional functionality, and have more control over my website show that I have a fear of failure? I want to program it so I know how my website is functioning, and so I have more control over it.

Thousands of 7-figure businesses are using any of the existing solutions but YOU need a custom one despite zero sales and e-commerce experience.

You're action faking.

You could have a working e-commerce store tomorrow and start doing the real work.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Doesnt MJ specifically warn about this strategy as a no go? If I rememeber correctly he even calls out the bs quick theme process. Why suggest this?

No I didn't.

If you want an eCommerce website, deploy one of the 1,000 available options and get to work driving sales.

Let me give you a metaphor...

If you want to start a limousine service, would you build the limo yourself?

The limo is fundamental to the business, but NOT THE BUSINESS.

If you want to start a publishing company because you love to write, you gonna build a printing press?

Stop solving problems that already have solutions.

Yes, coding is a great asset -- but using it to code for solutions that have already been solved a gazillion times is a waste of time.

 

[Kak]

It doesn't. @Kak is referencing your first blog post which insists you'll be building everything for a new website from scratch

Correct.

What if I wanted to start a pencil company...

So I decided to buy a lumber mill to get the wood.

But I can't buy a lumber mill without a forestry operation. So I need one of those.

But I can't have a forestry operation without a chainsaw manufacturer. So I need one of those.

But chainsaws need gas, so I buy an oil refinery.

But oil refineries need crude, so I buy an offshore rig.

But I need to move the oil so I buy a tanker ship.

But the tanker ship and the offshore rig needs steel, so I buy a steel plant

But the steel plant needs ore so I buy a mine

But the mine needs tractors so I buy a tractor company

But the tractors need engines so I buy an engine company.

Back to the pencil, I still need graphite, paint and rubber.

So I go down those habit holes too.

The point is, someone already did the work for you, you just need to buy the solution off of them. Instead, I just buy rubber, paint, wood and graphite and put them together. I deliver them with a delivery service instead of buying delivery vans. I retail them through retailers instead of building stores.

This is the beauty of capitalism. Everyone serves everyone in a voluntary way. It's epic cooperation between humans that organizes itself.

There are a million turnkey options for an e-commerce website that are incredibly visually appealing. Focus on the product and your competitive advantage, not the stupid site itself. People run billion dollar companies on Shopify.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Im really trying to understand what you are saying. In the specific case of an e commerce site, as a conclusion from what you said above, would you say that no one need ever code for an ecommerce site ever again to sell a product due to the available tech around?

What's so hard to understand?

Why are you solving a problem that has been solved a gazillion times, and the solution is readily accessible?

To give you another metaphor, if you invented the cure to cancer, are you going to build your own National Media Company to rival NBC, CBS, and CNN so you can control your advertising?

Your product is what matters, not the tools you use to sell it.

 

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[Bounce Back]

You may not intend this but whenever I see someone instantly start talking about coding an e-commerce site instead of just starting with one the readily available options like Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, etc. (many to choose from these days) I think it drips of procrastination or fear of failure (pushing off actually having to make a sale/make it real).

 

[MitchC]

I am building my own site from scratch. I am learning and teaching myself a specialized skill. If my first site fails then I have the expertise to build another and to exploit my new skill by building site for others. If you dont want to have web development as a specialized skill then i wouldnt go down this route.

Some people may consider it action faking, but it is only action faking if it doesn't lead anywhere. The ultimate goal may be to make a shit ton of money in the least amount of time as possible, but I dont want to just modulate each piece of my business and outsource it. I am respecting the process and learning a specialized skill that will help me build my company. It is really a matter of personal preference and what fits you and your life the best.

Building Shopify stores that converts/looks nice is a high value skill

Building SEO optimised wordpress sites that look good is a high value skill

Coding shit for no reason isn't valuable just because it's harder

My two cents is, learn how to build a site then you'll have that skill and wont need to rely on someone elses platform for the rest of your life.

You can build a better site on Shopify/Wordpress than you can with code, and it's easier

Good on you for doing stuff and learning stuff, especially hard stuff, but don't kid yourself into thinking it's valuable and not action faking

 

[MJ DeMarco]

I just thought coding your own solution was still a viable path.

Yes, when there are no ready-made solutions available.

Again, why reinvent solutions when the solution already exists, and cheaply and abundantly?

For example, GoalSumo.com is custom coded to my specifications because there are no solutions like it, or the existing solutions need improving in some fashion.

That software leverages Stripe -- should I have created my own Payment Processing Network instead of using the readily available solution? That software leverages Tolt.io for affiliate management and processing... should we have taken months and custom coded our own solution for that function?

These are problems we had (Hey, how do we charge $? Hey, how do we manage affiliates?) with ready made solutions. Yes, they cost money. We can pay them $X/mo, or we can spend X months/years coding it ourselves.

If creating a goal/productivity system was as simple as downloading WordPress or paying $29/mo for Shopify, we wouldn't have bothered.

People pay for solutions and the solution of needing to sell products via eCom has been solved pretty cheaply.

Your product sold on Shopify, WooCommerce, or wherever, should be the solution -- which is sold via eCommerce.

My product is the software itself -- software that isn't easily found, or if it is found, it is bloated with complexity.

You are comparing two entirely different things.

 

[Jon822]

I am familiar with Django (I prefer Flask) and you are either action faking because you're scared to work and learn in the most important part of business (sales and marketing) or you want to convince yourself you're driving in the Fastlane when you haven't even left your house.

I have over 10 years of experience in Python and Web Development and I would NEVER consider reinventing a wheel the size of an e-commerce site. You will waste at least one year accomplishing something you should have done in one day. In order for you to have FULL control which is what you said you wanted, you would also have to build your own payment processing system.

You should be driving the shortest path to your first customer but you're planning on driving in circles and pretending like you're getting somewhere. You really need to evaluate why you feel you need to build every component from scratch. If you value the experience and technical ability, then that's fine provided you understand you are delaying your actual business.

 

[MitchC]

If you want to glaze shopify that hard then go ahead but don't knock me for choosing webflow. Not everyone has 40 dollars a month to spend on a website, especially when there is a free tool that works just as well.

You came here for advice and then ignored everyone’s advice

I’m telling you right now you will not get anywhere close to Shopify with anything else without a huge amount of work, tbh even with a huge amount of work you won’t

$40 a month is not even 1 sale

I’m trying to save you a shitload of wasted time because believe me I have been there

 

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[xShepherdx]

Just quickly read through this thread and it seems like the scenario is this:

"I want to build my own eCommerce site because I want full control of my site along with X, Y, and Z functionality desipite never having sold a product through any website and therefore validating X, Y, and Z will actually bring in sales and are worth developing."

99% chance what you want already exists as a Woocommerce/Shopify plugin. If it doesn't there's probably a reason.

If you have no sales (or even a product idea??) there's absolutely no reason to worry about this stuff.

Find a product to sell, set up a simple site using Woocommerce/Shopify, and START SELLING.

If it works, you can build your own site later if you really want to.

If $40 a month is too much ecommerce isn’t the right business, it takes a lot of cash

Woocommerce might be a good alternative to Shopify if you insist on not paying $40 a month but I think hosting anything is gunna be $40+ a month anyway

@xShepherdx built a nice store with woocommerce, took a hell of a lot longer though

It kills me that people think $40/month is too much for software that can literally make them millions.

Yet many of those same people consider things like Netflix, Xbox Live, and Spotify "essential" and will spend more than $40 this month on keeping themselves entertained (distracted).

Woocommerce, Shopify, etc. are all great and have their pros/cons.

I'm personally a fan of Shopify because I don't want to deal with hosting or trying to piece together all the plugins needed to essentially make what ends up being a Shopify clone.

But again, all this discussion over such a small monthly fee in exchange for software that can make you MILLIONS is crazy to me.

Even if the business is a total loss, just consider the $40/month an education expense and move on with your lives.

I'm ok with paying 40 dollars a month it's just that I don't have anything to sell right now. I think that I just came to the realization that I should probably figure out what I should sell before I start a website.

This is the key. "Starting a website" takes 5 minutes and a credit card. Don't make this tiny step the thing that prevents you from finding and selling a product.

 

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[Devilery]

Customers don't care if you've coded your website, a premium Shopify theme with a solid product and excellent marketing will be superior unless we're talking about an 8-figure+ brand that can afford to spend a couple of million to develop a custom solution (and assuming it's even necessary).

 

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[Bounce Back]

I've been coding for quite a long time and I have to say it can reward you greatly in terms of time but it is still slowlane (may be one of the best slowlanes but it is slowlane).

Will it unlock ways to go fastlane for you that may be out of reach capital wise later on if you learn it? It could.

Is it a blocker to starting a shop now? So why waste your time? There is just layers of junk clouding someones thought process if they think that. Many will be traps of 1,000,000 fantastic reasons why their case is the special-snowflake and how they are not wasting time or why it is so great to learn coding anyways.

But this ain't a learning coding forum. This is a fastlane forum so I'm going at this from that angle.

If you can't clearly visualize your own goal you are many years from making this sort of life work. I deliver that message not in snark but in compassion as someone who has lived that sort of wantraprenuer life for a long time before making the realization.

What I mean is if you said you've got an ecommerce idea that is going to solve someone problems and you get lost coding before you first tried something that would take 1 hour to set up and then you could try to prove your idea with a week of trying to get people to actually give you $1 on that site you just don't get it yet.

So let me be very clear where this leads:

You are going to fiddle around for the next 3-8 months tinkering with odds and ends on your "ecommerce site". More than 3 times you'll scrap what you have because of some coding influencer/stackoverflow answer "ephiany" and think "wow see this is all going so well I truly am learning at such an accelerated pace look at all those idiots that do things the 3x+ ways I did it before - my coding value is going up".

All through out that time you are going to quit or fizzle out and have to keep forcing yourself to restart and get back on track. You'll exhaust yourself with excuses and various new productivity hacks or rearrange your life schedule 100 times and pat yourself on the back about how now you know how millionaires are made.

Around that 8 months mark or whatever you are going to realize or convince yourself the idea for the shop sucked and move on to something else flashier.

And not once did you ever actually put an offer in front of someones face or in their ears.

Prove me wrong.

 

[MitchC]

Forget 7 and 8 figure businesses, there's 9 figure ecom stores using Shopify and definitely multiple billion dollar companies using it.

Brands are switching from Magento or their expensive custom built stores to Shopify.

But you wanna use webflow coz Shopify is $40 a month (after a 90 day free trial where you can test the market) and webflow is free.

F*ck me.

 

[MitchC]

I listened to everyone advice and even read yours, and rejected it as you gave no reason to why you chose shopify and just sh*t on everything else besides it. Are you going to give me a reason why you likes shopify so much and hate everything else or are you going to continue being an a$$?

That’s fair my point was those big brands are using it for a reason and everyone in the thread said to so just shortcut the entire process and copy them

1. Faster and easier to get set up and make changes
2. Familiar UI which is designed to work and convert better, if you increase conversion rate a little you instantly offset the cost with extra sales you make. $40 a day is a tiny ad budget. When you spend 4-5 figures a day on ads you want to be sending it to something optimised, you don’t care what it costs.
3. Analytics. Most important thing in any business is data, Shopify has it all built in and easy to use.
4. Apps. App for everything.

Any of these is enough reason alone but the list is much longer than that.

You are a beginner by the sounds too, the amount of Shopify specific ecommerce content would be worth it alone too.

 

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[heavy_industry]

I want to have full control over the website and all components

Where did you get this idea from?

Even if you somehow pulled this off and managed to code everything "from scratch" (5+ years of work), this would result in you having even LESS control. Not more.

95% of your time would be spent fixing bugs and tinkering with the system, instead of actually using it to grow your business.

But wouldn't that make me a hitchhiker? If I'm using someone else's tool to rely on, what if the tool changes their pricing all of a sudden and I lose access to my website if I don't pay a certain amount

Sorry to burst your bubble, but everything in the economy relies on something, which relies on something else, which relies on something else...

By using any kind of programming language, operating system, server infrastructure, internet infrastructure etc. you are relying on other's people work to further your own progress.

This is how capitalism works.

@Kak explained it wonderfully well in this comment.

We appear to be so tall because we are standing on the shoulders of giants - the people who worked hard to build the modern world, with its tools, knowledge, and infrastructure.

Use it and thrive, or stay in the Stone Age and die.

 

[Bence Ur]

C++, Python etc. these are way overkill technologies, just use Shopify. How many sales do you have?

It is very possible that no one will buy your products ever, so first validate the market demand, create a store in Shopify in 1 day and launch it.

 

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[MitchC]

lol tell this to MJ when he coded his site.

Notice Mj didn’t build an entire forum software from scratch? He used an existing one

 

[biophase]

I don't know what I am going to sell, and I don't know if I am close to finding out so it doesn't make sense for me to immediately start using shopify,

Then why do you even need a website at this point? What are you going to do in webflow?

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Seems as though I took the principle of control

The bulk of your control should reside in your end product to the consumer. For you, that's your specific widget/product sold via an eCom application.

It's virtually impossible to be completely vertical in control of your entire operation -- for example, Stripe could cancel my payment processing here at the forum, causing some duress. But they can't cancel my forum-- the end product. Same over at GoalSumo.com -- Stripe can cancel us, but we still control the product itself.

 

[MitchC]

@MitchC Any current preference for Webflow vs. Shopify vs. Wix vs. Squarespace vs. anything else for an e-commerce site? Or site selling nice services?

I'm 100% platform agnostic, but am coming from the world of using pretty Wordpress templates, Elementor and plug-ins. That's definitely not the future which means learning something new from scratch. I'd prefer not to waste too much time evaluating different platforms and watching countless YouTube videos.

Friend of mine needs a website relaunch to e-commerce their retail crystal & gem store. Next up are replacing existing websites - including my own - for selling consulting, financial and legal services (3 different sites). Ease of design, ecommerce simplicity, marketing automation and social media ad magic are the big things that come to mind.

Monthly cost (within reason, say under $100) doesn't really matter.

What say ye?

Shopify is so far ahead for ecommerce I wouldn’t even look at anything else

I have no idea what webflow is

Wix is rubbish

Pretty sure squarespace is owned by Shopify and possibly shutdown, it was always just a beginner version of Shopify anyway, maybe I’m getting mixed up with something else

Woocommerce is probably the best DIY ecommerce platform, but you still have to host it yourself so there goes any money saved anyway.

If it’s for clients I’d just use Shopify because it’s hosted by Shopify so you can scale up traffic, don’t have to worry about security updates etc, you are processing payments on these ecommerce sites so easier just to leave it to Shopify rather than worry about security

Everyone is used to the Shopify stores and checkout now, they load fast and work well, so it converts better, this is the biggest thing, you make all your money back on that alone. Plug Klaviyo and a couple apps in and you are miles ahead of anything else.

I wouldn’t use Shopify for anything other than ecommerce. It sounded like a couple of your examples weren’t ecommerce.

Shopify 2.0 is probably similar to using elementor, you can have themes with sections and add and remove and customise sections on each page

 

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[Trismigistus]

Deleted. Bad post.

 

[Andy Black]

I suspect this might help too:

MINDSET - Start Faster. Stop "Learning".

If you're just getting started, haven't made a sale, or feel you're spinning your wheels then this 8 minute video should help. It's pulled out of a longer call (also linked below). Curious what your main takeaways are, and what you'll do different going forward. View...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

 

[El1mination]

It's $1 per month for the first 3 months, if you cannot profit at least $40 after 3 months, you're doomed to fail anyway. Besides that, running ads is expensive.

During this free trial, you can also take any and all of the premium templates and customize them as you want (your draft thing). Once it runs out, cancel it, and start a new trial if that's what you need.

Yeah but I realize now that I don't even need to make a website first I need to find a problems that I am going to solve for others.

 

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[El1mination]

Just quickly read through this thread and it seems like the scenario is this:

"I want to build my own eCommerce site because I want full control of my site along with X, Y, and Z functionality desipite never having sold a product through any website and therefore validating X, Y, and Z will actually bring in sales and are worth developing."

99% chance what you want already exists as a Woocommerce/Shopify plugin. If it doesn't there's probably a reason.

If you have no sales (or even a product idea??) there's absolutely no reason to worry about this stuff.

Find a product to sell, set up a simple site using Woocommerce/Shopify, and START SELLING.

If it works, you can build your own site later if you really want to.

Yes this is what I now realize, thank you. And everyone, the reason I didn't want to pay 40 dollars now is because I don't even have a product to sell so I would have been paying for nothing. But that is my first goal, to find a product to sell.

 

[Two Dog]

This was interesting, I didn't know it took those many people to make a simple pencil. Thank you for sending this to me. Although this was a very interesting story, I don't understand how it relates to my question of finding value for others and solving a problem.

It doesn't. @Kak is referencing your first blog post which insists you'll be building everything for a new website from scratch because you happen to know C++ for a graphics engine. Building a website from scratch in 2023 doesn't add value because my 12YO daughter can literally launch one for free in five minutes. Anyone can do the same.

Fastlane is a perspective, not a set of iron clad rules. It's 1,000% about speed of execution, trying things, failing and improving them. Connect the dots to solve a problem with the fewest steps possible while inventing as little as possible. You don't know *anything* about *anything*, so you'll not be jumping into Fastlane anytime soon. The toll road is closed to you.

Instead, you'll be slogging along through threads like this asking newbie questions until you actually start doing *anything*. That likely sounds harsh, but it's the same thing my kids hear all the time. Good enough for them, good enough for you. Doing *anything* really means only one thing: Ask strangers to give you money for something.

Personally, I find the whole "solve a problem and find value for others" far too challenging for anyone just getting started. It demands too much time and expertise that most of us have long taken for granted. Just look around your house, apartment, dorm room, whatever. Pick up something you don't want, put it on eBay, sell the damn thing and collect the money. Rake leaves for the next door neighbor. Walk someone's dog. Wash someone's car.

It literally doesn't matter as long as you're (a) collecting money (b) from a stranger (c) in return for doing something they are will to pay for. Boom. You've just progressed to the next level and can finally ask a question that starts out "I tried this and...".

 

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[El1mination]

I've been coding for quite a long time and I have to say it can reward you greatly in terms of time but it is still slowlane (may be one of the best slowlanes but it is slowlane).

Will it unlock ways to go fastlane for you that may be out of reach capital wise later on if you learn it? It could.

Is it a blocker to starting a shop now? So why waste your time? There is just layers of junk clouding someones thought process if they think that. Many will be traps of 1,000,000 fantastic reasons why their case is the special-snowflake and how they are not wasting time or why it is so great to learn coding anyways.

But this ain't a learning coding forum. This is a fastlane forum so I'm going at this from that angle.

If you can't clearly visualize your own goal you are many years from making this sort of life work. I deliver that message not in snark but in compassion as someone who has lived that sort of wantraprenuer life for a long time before making the realization.

What I mean is if you said you've got an ecommerce idea that is going to solve someone problems and you get lost coding before you first tried something that would take 1 hour to set up and then you could try to prove your idea with a week of trying to get people to actually give you $1 on that site you just don't get it yet.

So let me be very clear where this leads:

You are going to fiddle around for the next 3-8 months tinkering with odds and ends on your "ecommerce site". More than 3 times you'll scrap what you have because of some coding influencer/stackoverflow answer "ephiany" and think "wow see this is all going so well I truly am learning at such an accelerated pace look at all those idiots that do things the 3x+ ways I did it before - my coding value is going up".

All through out that time you are going to quit or fizzle out and have to keep forcing yourself to restart and get back on track. You'll exhaust yourself with excuses and various new productivity hacks or rearrange your life schedule 100 times and pat yourself on the back about how now you know how millionaires are made.

Around that 8 months mark or whatever you are going to realize or convince yourself the idea for the shop sucked and move on to something else flashier.

And not once did you ever actually put an offer in front of someones face or in their ears.

Prove me wrong.

I see the point you all are making now, my main concern was that using someone else's tool would make me a hitchhiker but it's better than wasting all my time learning coding when I could create a website in a few hours like you said. Thank you everyone here for helping me realize that.

 

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[Two Dog]

Firstly, I want to have full control over the website and all components, and I don't want to website to take too much time (I am still willing to customize and spend a lot of time on the website, I just don't want it to take longer than creating my actual business). I know C++ for Unreal Engine, and that is about all my programming knowledge. I have 2 main ideas in mind. The first Idea is using a tool called WebFlow to build my website and then customize the website using Html, Css, and JS from WebFlow itself. The second idea is learning Python Django and building the website with that. This is for an e-commerce website. If anyone here is a tech head or knows anything about how websites operate and work, please let me know what you think of these two ideas.

Enjoy learning Python while everyone else clicks a bunch of times to launch their e-commerce sites over the weekend.

Webflow Raises $120M Series C at $4B Valuation Led by YC Continuity

/PRNewswire/ -- Webflow, the leading no-code visual development platform for the professional website and CMS market, today announced that it has closed a $120...

www.prnewswire.com

 

[MitchC]

Alright this message is much better, I understand all of your points and from the looks of it Shopify seems better, but 40 dollars is too much for a beginner like me. I don't know what I am going to sell, and I don't know if I am close to finding out so it doesn't make sense for me to immediately start using shopify, maybe a year from now in the future when I'm getting some sales on whatever I decide to sell, I can switch from Webflow to shopify and continue making money. That seems more logical, start with webflow and switch the shopify

If $40 a month is too much ecommerce isn’t the right business, it takes a lot of cash

Woocommerce might be a good alternative to Shopify if you insist on not paying $40 a month but I think hosting anything is gunna be $40+ a month anyway

@xShepherdx built a nice store with woocommerce, took a hell of a lot longer though

 

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[El1mination]

If $40 a month is too much ecommerce isn’t the right business, it takes a lot of cash

Woocommerce might be a good alternative to Shopify if you insist on not paying $40 a month but I think hosting anything is gunna be $40+ a month anyway

@xShepherdx built a nice store with woocommerce, took a hell of a lot longer though

I'm ok with paying 40 dollars a month it's just that I don't have anything to sell right now. I think that I just came to the realization that I should probably figure out what I should sell before I start a website. But on another note, why do you dislike webflow so much? Whats so bad about it?

 

[StrikingViper69]

Because I can make a rough draft for when I am going to start selling things

A draft of what?

Your logic is back to front.

Start with the problem you want to solve, and work around that. The problem dictates the solution(s).

“AI” or “e-commerce” are not problems. “I want my video conference to be automatically transcribed and summarised” is a problem. “I want a better kitchen knife” is a problem.

Worrying about whether or not to use shopify when you have no idea what you are going to sell is no better than printing business cards that say “CEO” after paying $20 to register an LLC.

 

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