Let’s assume that I have to make a website for the online sale of wine bottles for one of my clients. what is my best method of those made available by Blocs 4.1, considering that my customer would like to have the opportunity to interact with the shop, inserting or deleting products?
tx everybody
I haven’t used the e-commerce side of Blocs yet, but I know it supports Ecwid, which I have used before and it’s very user friendly for updating the product line.
The downside is that you’ll probably have to fog the paid option, but worth a look.
Alternatively, and this is pure guesswork, there may be some way of using VoltCMS for the client to update and send the link to your payment provider of choice? Not sure if this could work, just putting it out there as an idea.
Ecwid would definitely be ok for this. You place Code in the Blocs construction and the client updates the shop in the Ecwid site and they sync up.
Ecwid is very good, but there is no easy way for a client to do this themselves right now in Blocs without buying the app and becoming very involved if they want to change products. It’s unlikely they want to do that.
You could do this with Blocs and Ecwid by building a WordPress theme and then using the Ecwid plugin, but that really means you doing a lot of the work in WordPress. Once set up the client could alter products fairly easily though through Ecwid and have the changes show up on the website. It’s essentially a good system, however there will likely be costs.
Alcohol in particular attracts a lot of legislation, so you need to dig deep and find out where they are selling etc. In the UK for example, I gather you cannot sell alcohol online without first having an off-licence permit just like a shop in the street. The transport of alcohol is also very tricky with couriers, however your client should already have that worked out.
I mention the above simply to advise some of the complications involved and not to treat it like a simple web build project.
I would make the website in Blocs and use Ecwid as a shop inside your website. Ecwid gives great support and you can easily integrate it inside your website.
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I agree, the tools that Ecwid has given and what @Eldar showed us on that video he did is a perfect integration if a client wants to edit and make product changes etc.
I personally think the new E-commerce that is now in Blocs is also a great addition - and one maybe for personal Blocs users for their products, or if a client wants us as developers to 100% take control of all changes etc, then do not forget this is chargeable to the client…so this opens up so many doors now and more profit for the business…for them…and us!
I personally would use a mix of the 2, use Ecwid for the main sales pages and then can bring the Blocs E-commerce for sales, specials, focus on special items (ie, Christmas products or Black Friday offers to highlight them)
I would let the client do the Ecwid side of it and embed the code(s) - and if they wants a specials, offers, product highlight page - then we charge extra for that and can be creative on the design in the theme of the website.
The integration is seamless and posabilitys endless. It is opening new ways of us being creative…having fun…and getting paid !
That is the way I do it too!
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I haven’t yet used the e-commerce side in Blocs, but I would imagine that only works if the client doesn’t add or subtract products through Ecwid. The original question said the client would want to " interact with the shop, inserting or deleting products".
Every Ecwid product has a separate ID and that is set inside Blocs, so edits to existing products should be replicated if they maintain the existing ID, but wouldn’t added or removed products via Ecwid create problems on the site?
@Flashman I have made a website with an Ecwid webshop integrated in it. My client can use the Ecwid client portal to add and delete products. So that is no problem
But I think you are right when you want individually add products in a Blocs page; each product has it’s own ID. You could try by manually change to product information every time, to keep the product ID’s the same… but I don’t think that is a smart way to do.
In that case I would follow @AdieJAM his suggestion; from time to time change the products on Blocs pages for a (small) fee…
I am mainly thinking about a situation where you have set up say 10 products on Ecwid using Blocs, then the client comes along later and wants to delete 3, then add another 7. I can do that on a WordPress theme created in Blocs, because the shop layout and product IDs are all coming from Ecwid, but I imagined that would be a problem if done on a normal Blocs site.
@Flashman I think you are right. I haven’t tested that.
Unfortunately, Ecwid free solution stops at 10 products.
PHP jabbers offers a free shop: PHP Shopping Cart Script | PHPJabbers
But, to be honest it isn’t by far not so slick as the Ecwid store.
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