Choosing the right platform!

[ufoldager]

Hello everyone!

 

My boss and I have been toying with the idea of creating an online store to sell our products. This has lead me (who's responsible and in charge of the development of the store) to do a little research on different kinds of eCommerce platforms. And since it's a jungle out there, I am starting from scratch by visiting the community forums to ask for advice and hopefully have some of my questions answered. I have spent quite some time investigating into this topic, but it certainly wont help to talk with others out there who have been starting in my position.

 

Our store and product ideas are faily simple. I work as a graphics artist for my boss (it's only him and me in our little company), and almost all of my work are graphical illustrations (known as "Infographics" in a more professional term). Our infographics include everything from business diagrams, charts, frameworks, methodologies, etc. We also write leading-edge articles, powerpoint presentations and other kinds of research and scientifically oriented materials.

 

We use our different kinds of material to instruct and educate our clients in different aspects of business development. This is generally done through physical meetings (ie. powerpoint presentations for company executives, etc.) or through live websessions.

 

Now, obviously, we have managed to create quite alot of material over the last couple of years, and instead of just letting it all gather dust, we thought it would be worth a good shot to try and sell our work online through a webshop. We have different ideas as to what to sell and how to sell it. But obviously, it's quite a challenge to find an eCommerce platform that would fit our specific needs.

 

Almost all of our products would be purchased and downloaded through the webshop. In short, our range of products would be something like:

 

- Infographics as PDF files for download upon purchase

- Posters as physical and/or PDF files for download upon purchase

- Powerpoint presentations on particular topics available for download on purchase

- Video's for download/online view available on purchase (we are discussing whether to begin creating educational video's much like www.lynda.com does it)

- Video's that can be viewed through an active subscription

- Articles as PDF files for download upon purchase

- Seminars, courses and events (our packages usually include 3 x 5 days workshops) should also be possible to sell. These events will be held at the client's location, so we don't need an event managing system, per say.

- Other items available for download upon purchase

- Etc.

 

It is very important to note that while most of our Infographics are general-purpose items that will fit most corporations, most of our material are always being tailored to the specific needs of our individual clients. This means that our customers should have some sort of way (a special feature maybe) to request a customized product for their specific company. Usually, this requires a meeting of some sort (websession meeting or physical meeting) to dicuss the client needs and wishes. In fact, maybe you could just place a "Request customized model"-button on each product page?

 

We're not sure if we would need a seperate type of system somehow if we were to include a subscription fee in order to view our video's online. We would sell our video's, but are not sure if it's a bad idea because people could copy and distribute the video's to other people.

 

To begin with, we would only sell a few of our posters in physical form, and I can handle that manually in the beginning (we don't expect to sell several posters each day in our start-up phase). This means that we don't need shipping courier in the beginning, although we obviously need a way to calculate shipping prices and various country taxes into our product pricing.

 

We have a website at www.valueteam.biz. We are going to update this website soon and build our new website on the WordPress platform. This means that our new webshop will be available through www.valueteam.biz/shop, but I don't suspect there should be any problems between our upcoming webshop and WordPress.

 

Phew! I think that was it for the time being. I'm sure I will come back here with more questions and whatnot, but for now, this massive wall-of-text will have to suffice, lol.

 

Thank you for your time. Any help will be much appreciated!

 

 

Yours sincerely,

U.F.

[Mike Kranzler]

Hi U.F.,

First of all, welcome to the PrestaShop forums! With nearly 300,000 members and 100,000 active stores worldwide, I think you've made the right decision by coming to us. I am the Community Manager for the United States, and will likely be your resource for many questions you have about PrestaShop. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, onto your questions:

 

You can absolutely sell digital products through a PrestaShop storefront. As a matter of fact, it is an option for every new product you add:

 

 

In order to create a "Request a Customized Model" button, you will need to create it by changing the code. However, If you're able to your various products into categories (Infographics, Powerpoint, Posters, etc.) you can include a separate product listing in each category for "Custom Model," which can then be used to contact you and set up an appointment.

 

As for the video subscriptions, I'm not aware of a module that can handle it off the top of my head (although you can potentially do it using the downloadable product dialogue I posted above), but we have a massive community of developers here on the forums who can either point you in the right direction or even create it for you if you would prefer.

 

I hope this answers your questions, and I'm here if you have anything else you would like to have answered!

 

-Mike

[ufoldager]

Hey Mike!

 

Thanks for the kind response.

 

I am still unsure as to how we will go about with the whole video-subscription thingy, but it's still an option to just sell the video's the same way we sell other digital products. I think www.lynda.com more or less has the same business model. They got both direct, downloadable purchase and also subscriptions that grants you access to review their videos online at their website.

 

Oh wait! Come to think of it, you'll even need a pretty solid hosting solution and a solution for hosting a "video conference" area on the website where the customer can browse through and view the video's. Must admit I didn't think of that very important aspect.

 

That makes it even more complicated and requiring.

 

I guess, for now then, the aim would then be to just make the video's downloadable through direct purchase.

 

Do you know how the "best-practice" for calculating international tax rates and shipping prices are done today?

 

In Denmark, where I live, our postal system is a public institution (like a government-owned UPS company), and we are going to use them to ship our physical posters. I obviously need to contact them in order to find out about their pricing models, etc.

 

PS: I am not from the US, I am in northern Europe, Mike. Not sure if it matters, but thought I'd mention it!

 

 

Cheers,

UF

[Mike Kranzler]

Hi UF,

PrestaShop is configured at the base level to only calculate tax rates for the state/country of the seller, as this is how most national and international tax laws for e-commerce are set up, unless you have created a "nexus" in another tax region (for example, if you also had a physical storefront or active employee selling in the United States, then you would need to utilize the U.S. tax rates for that state as well).

 

If you would like to utilize multiple tax rates for different countries, you will need to make changes to the code in order to do this. Like I said, I'm not very well-versed on Danish tax codes, but most e-commerce laws worldwide only require you to charge your country's sales tax, not that of each individual country where purchases are made on your store.

 

I hope this helps.

 

-Mike

[ufoldager]

Oh right, cool. Thanks, mate.