General Consultant Discussion

eCommerce Opinions Sought. I didn't think that WordPress was a platform to build an eCommerce site on; however, someone is tell me that with Woo Commerce Word Press is a great platform for this. Is this true?

We were show this late last week. Curious if anyone has done any evaluation. @Sage100Routine

I see there is a connection between WooCommerce and Avalara.

Websitepipeline will be at Meeting of The Minds - I've heard good things about them mostly that they're reasonable cost. I had a customer who used them though I can't say I've received a lot of feedback.

I have 3 customers that use Website Pipeline. They have had challenges but all three are still using them...

Same as @ScottHickman - we have one using Website Pipeline and they too had challenges but overall, they are happy. I thought they were good to work with.

What type of challenges? Are they unique to the client or are they issues that you wouldn't expect (e.g. interface issues)

And speaking of Web interfaces, how are they going to handle the issue that @ClarkWalliser is encountering? https://90minds-com.socialcast.com/messages/18383443?ref=stream

I have no idea how they are going to handle Clark's issue! I thought of them when he posted it. The challenges were simply getting them to understand how they process things - took some adjusting on both sides. They wanted to create new customers for any one-time purchase but they ended up having multiple customers with the same name, just slightly different. They went to using a guest account and I added the order number to the invoices tab in Customer Maintenance/Inquiry so they could find the order easily. You know, the customer calls, ""I placed an order but...

So you have a default vendor (e.g. web) for all web site orders?

No, they have a GUEST customer for all non-customer orders (they can create an account to use for future orders but it is not required). If they create an account, I believe it uses the next customer number feature. This customer also has some tricky shipping requirements - they sell some prescription items (non-human - they deal mainly with horses) that have to be shipped in a certain way for which they charge a handling fee. That took a while to iron out.

We recommend Website Pipeline or In-Synch (if they already have a shopping cart). In-Synch is typically 10K for software & services. For full to/from shopping cart integration I think that's a pretty good deal.

Back to the WordPress option from Woo...the site license is $79 per user per year.