Shopping Cart Suggestions

[huseyin]

Hello,

we were using TYPO3 for the last 10 years before we met ProcessWire. I regret the time before ProcessWire.

So i want to ask you which Shopping Cart are you using for client projects?

For now we use CS-Cart. But it is expensive and really difficult to modify for custom requests. May be there is an alternative shopping cart solution like ProcessWire istead of TYPO3.

Await you suggestions and if possible with pros and cons.

Thank you.

[dab]

I've used Padloper for two Processwire sites, but not found it suitable for other projects due to only working with Paypal & Stripe payment gateways; neither being the client's gateway of choice.

More recently I've used Foxycart; now on 4 ecommerce sites. I've really enjoyed the challenge integrating it into my sites with the help of some amazing Processwire forum members here ? (XML & JSON datafeeds).

It's compatible with over 100 payment gateways & the datafeeds can be used for updating stock levels, recording orders on to your Processwire site. I think it's worth a look if your project needs  to use a specific payment gateway. 

 

  

[bernhard]

Hm. My experience with foxy was quite bad. It looks ugly imho (both the backend and their frontend shop implementation), the checkout is complicated to impossible to customize and the implementation was not that straightforward.

Luckily I don't have any e-commerce projects on the radar, but this module might be worth a try:

 

[dab]

Thanks, very good to hear of other's experiences. I looked at Snipcart, but was put off by the fees (2%/ transactions + gateway fees) just made it too expensive. Yes, back end of foxy is ugly & I needed some help with some aspects of the coding, but have found it usable for simple ecommerce projects.

[cb2004]

I hate hate hate hate (repeat however many times you would like) to say this, but WooCommerce is my weapon of choice for eCommerce. For the level of my client base, they are on the understanding that if I say I am not doing that with this software and you would need something more highend and secure, then they are ok with the functionality. That will be the only time you will ever hear me talk WordPress on here (until the new Padloper comes along). But, I did check out the module by @Gadgetto that @bernhard was talking about, and it is impressive. Yes you can plug everything into the frontend yourself with Snipcart, but the backend integration is lovely.

If you are worried about the fees, then in my experience, you have a product that has too many competitors and there will always be somebody out there undercutting you. Just roll something out with a slightly higher price otherwise, test the water and adapt from there.

[Pixrael]

MY OPINION here:

While we wait for Padloper v2, using Shopify is the best option. You will pay $29/mo plus the common fees for payment gateways 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. This includes unlimited "managed" high-speed hosting, several free front-end themes and the easiest to use back-end you can imagine, including statistics, marketing tools, selling on multiple channels (facebook, messenger, instagram, amazon, ebay). Also you can stop your subscription at any time, and jump to Padloper v2 when it's out.

But.. if what you want is to use Processwire for content and implement only the shopping cart and the payment gateway inside: Your best option is Shopify.. again. There is a plan for $9/mo that does not include the front-end store, only the admin part in which you can enable the "Buy Button" sales channel and with a small javacript code you have the cart on your website. It's very similar to what Snipcart does, but muuuuch cheaper, because Snipcart charges 2% plus 2.9% of the payment gateway in each order. In my company (we sell Air Conditioners) the AOV is between $2000 - $4000 that total fees represent a maximum of $192 per order, where Snipcart will get $80 for each order. We are in the low season, and today we start the day with 108 orders, make the numbers.. ~$8000 in one day for Snipcart plus the CC fees!

I know this also depends on the type of store you have, but my advice --> never EVER go with a solution that charges you a percentage of the sale.

PS: Shopify also comes with a very VERY very easy to use API (REST and GraphQL too) ..maybe one day we can have our Shopiwire LOL

PPS: None of this is a Shopify affiliate program, it's just a personal experience after a lot of research.

https://www.shopify.com/lite

[OllieMackJames]

@Pixrael thanks for sharing that about shopify light, that might be just what I need roght now.

Does this also allow integration of the checkout details onsite or inside the pw page?

I'll check your link, but decided to ask you as well.

Once again thanks for sharing the link, but also your experience and calculations, good stuff!

[Pixrael]

1 hour ago, OllieMackJames said:

Does this also allow integration of the checkout details onsite or inside the pw page?

Check this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSglrisvE7Y

Shopify will provide the js code for a single product or collection every time you create a Buy Button.. But if you check that js code, in the "ui.createComponent" there is an element ID that corresponds to the product ID in Shopify, ..so you can tricky that js code (css style too) by assigning the product ID to a field on the PW page that represents the product, then you can use only one js code in the product template file, and just echo the ID.

Anyway you can try it yourself, there is a trial option for 90 days!!!

Check this too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB02qCpCTqg

[bernhard]

@Pixrael thanks for the insights! Do you have any links for live examples using PW + Shopify? ? 

[Pixrael]

2 minutes ago, bernhard said:

@Pixrael thanks for the insights! Do you have any links for live examples using PW + Shopify? ? 

Nope, I'm sorry.. We finally ended up using Shopify as the platform for our online stores, ..and due to the volume of sales, we went to the biggest plan: Shopify Plus, which also gave us a discount on the payment gateway fee that we could not miss. But I remember 3 years ago, that we tried several ecommerce systems, and one of the tests that I did was using the Buy Button code with PW and it was very simple and easy. Currently I use the Shopify API to get information about orders in an internal system (PW) and then get quotes for LTL shipments from different carriers and fulfill the order. In this process I need to deal with several APIs and I can tell you, the Shopify API is one of the easiest to use and the authentication process is very simple.

[elabx]

2 hours ago, bernhard said:

Do you have any links for live examples using PW + Shopify? ? 

https://maquiladorademuebles.com/

Here I did a very rough integration of the Shopify Js SDK with ProcessWire, so that I could add more specific things to each product, when I talked to the client it was more important to have the potential to have more flexibility when uploading the product's content so we went this way of using Shopify inside PW. 

My first mistake was rolling my own Js integration when I could have just used the Buy Button SDK (instead I used the Js SDK with Vue). 

Second mistake. One thing I didn't anticipate that turned into a mess: discounts. I had to setup fields in Pw where I had to set the discounts (after setting them up on shopify), so a lot of double data entry on some cases. 

I've done also things the other way around, setting up ProcessWire as an application that launches within Shopify, so that I could use PW pages as extra content management for Shopify product pages. (very complex product descriptions) unfortunately the project I did this for never launched. 

Agree with @Pixrael the Shopify API is really easy to work with. 

[Robin S]

5 hours ago, Pixrael said:

But if you check that js code, in the "ui.createComponent" there is an element ID that corresponds to the product ID in Shopify

Do you know if there's a way to query some Shopify API to get all the IDs and titles of products that exist in the Shopify store? So that a client only needs to maintain products in Shopify but the PW site could run a cron job where every day it gets all the product IDs and titles and automatically creates pages for them?

[Pixrael]

14 hours ago, Robin S said:

Do you know if there's a way to query some Shopify API to get all the IDs and titles of products...

Yes, of course ... check the documentation page, you can get all or just one product, create a new one, modify it or delete it etc.

PRODUCT: https://shopify.dev/docs/admin-api/rest/reference/products/product

You can do this simply using WireHttp, I think if you want to add much more information to the product than Shopify allows or to relate it directly to other PW pages, then it makes sense to have a copy in PW and keep the synchronization between them, but if you only want to display products in a section of your website like a regular store only for selling, then you can simply query the API from your template file and process/display the answer on your website. When you check the DOC page you will see very clear examples of how to use the queries, you will see that you can use filters, and the answer is JSON that you can easily manipulate in PW.

For the synchronization issue you can export the list of products to a CSV file and import it in PW, in my tests I used Ryan's module and it worked perfectly. Shopify also has Webhooks that allow you to update PW from Shopify according to events in the store such as new product, modifying or deleting it, new order etc.

WEBHOOK: https://shopify.dev/docs/admin-api/rest/reference/events/webhook

In other words, there are many ways to interact with Shopify and they are all very simple, well.. it seems to me, that I'm a graphic designer and not a professional programmer.

[Pixrael]

I really have a Shopify class implemented, but basically you can do this as simple as:

// https://shopify.dev/tutorials/authenticate-a-private-app-with-shopify-admin
$key = "yourkeyhere";
$pass = "yourpasswordhere";
$store = "yourstorename";

$data = array(
    "since_id" => "632910392", // Retrieve all products CREATED after the specified product (by ID)
    "fields" => "id,images,title", // include only this attributes in the response
);

// Is better to use try/catch here
$http = new WireHttp();
$response = $http->getJSON("https://{$key}:{$pass}@{$store}.myshopify.com/admin/api/2020-01/products.json", true, $data); // True to get an array, False for object
$products = $response["products"];

if (count($products) > 0) {

    foreach ($products as $product) {

        echo $product["title"]; // direct output or save to a custom array to use in views, etc.

    }

}

// use the id field for the Buy Button js code in order to have the cart/checkout in your site

 

[elabx]

I've used this library with success to import products or update them regularly like on a cron job: 

https://github.com/donutdan4114/shopify

Takes care of rate throttling too which is nice!

 

[Mikie]

Interested in updates on how deep any of you went with Shopify PW integration. Like:

What were the edge cases?
How did you deal with users and auth?
Did you set up CRUD for products directly in PW admin directly?

Just finished one Shopify site and starting work on another, OMG the content management outside products in Shopify is a complete and utter disaster. I am really reticent to build this new store as a shopify theme simply because of how broken Shopify content management is... even the upcoming sections everywhere architecture seems wrong to me in lots of ways. Here are some of the more interesting things I have found:

https://github.com/sellfino/sellfino 
Self hosted open source App Store with a content builder app that from my research is the only shopify app anywhere that offers a flexible content field (a la Repeater Matrix).

https://github.com/ctrl-alt-del-world/midway 
Gatsby stater for shopify + https://www.sanity.io. Sanity is an amazing product with very attractive pricing but I wouldn't touch Gatsby with a 10 inch pole.

https://saleor.io
Seems very mature and capable but the massive install freaked me out since I have never used Django nor python much besides writing my own little sublime plugins. I can't really tell if this is meant for smaller merchants or massive enterprises.

https://github.com/panoply/shopify-sync
If you are developing a shopify theme this is a great little node syncing library so you can drop themekit and run whatever build system you like. Works a treat.

[JeevanisM]

HI, 

I have done a few E-commerce projects in OpenCart, which really suitable for the mid-size E-commerce platform. I have tried Magento once but never get a knack on it. I tried to use ProcessWire for the E-Commerce but I realised I have to do a lot of custom coding which I am not that much expert. So I use different tools for different purposes, for any CMS related WEBSITE/WEBAPPS - ProcessWire is a rockstar for me. But for e-commerce I would go for OpenCart 

[The Upright Man]

On 3/30/2020 at 3:59 PM, elabx said:

https://maquiladorademuebles.com/

Here I did a very rough integration of the Shopify Js SDK with ProcessWire, so that I could add more specific things to each product, when I talked to the client it was more important to have the potential to have more flexibility when uploading the product's content so we went this way of using Shopify inside PW. 

The "Add To Cart" buttons don't do anything on that site.  They just sit there.  

[elabx]

46 minutes ago, The Upright Man said:

The "Add To Cart" buttons don't do anything on that site.  They just sit there.  

Being a long time I gave support to this site but last time I knew I got a notifications they closed their shopify store.