Thread: Suitibility

Suitibility

Dear All,

My neighbour has a small hobby business to keep him active in his retirement. More for brain and body stimulation rather than making huge sums of money but he has to cover his costs and overheads. He buys and sells antiques and reclaimed furniture and so on.

He thinks that a website may be useful as a cost effective way of advertising.

However, he's not very computer literate at all. He's just about got the hang of email and can send photos from his digital camera, but this is really the limit of his expertise and the phrase of 'old dog' and 'new tricks' is apt. Whilst I'm able to devote some time to setting up a website for him, its really got to be simple to use and to maintain.

Unlike most classified advert websites, the adverts would be from just him. I don't think this would be a problem if he was the only user on wordpress and it wasn't open to new registrations.

Can adverts be marked as sold, or deleted when sold, or do you have to wait for them to auto-expire? Some things may be for sale for quite some time as its a niche market business whereas other items may sell quickly.

Do you think Classipress is a good system for my neighbour and if not can anyone think of anything more suitable? I'm doing this as a favour to him and his budget is very small, so open source or up to $ 100 (one-off payment)

Thanks for reading

Andrew

Re: Suitibility

IMO, with a little training he could work with it. There is an ad pausing feature from the dashboard which would remove the ad from display. After the expiration period it could be purged but some folks suggest keeping the ad within the system (hidden from view) for SEO purposes.

Re: Suitibility

IMHO, since the adverts will be posted only from him and they are antiques and furniture, I do believe an e-commerce WP theme would be better suited than a classified theme.

Remember, classifieds does not sell but advertise. Even though he can use the paypal as a method to sell his products, what happens if the user/client wants to buy two or more products? (Go, buy one with paypal then come back and buy the second one and keep doing it over and over for every product?) He needs a shopping cart for that matter and that is why an e-commerce theme would be better suited.

*Classipress is a great theme and I have nothing against it. I am just giving my opinion on what would be better in this case. (even though I might be wrong :D )

I recently came across an interesting e-commerce theme. I have no relations with them nor I have ever used their products so you're on your own to research them.
http://www.sarah-neuber.de/shop/wordpre ... p-reloaded

Re: Suitibility

Good call. I should of thought about it more....

Re: Suitibility

Thanks for the suggestions. Whatever it is it has to be very simple to use and to add new products. I would think that his website would act more of a shop window than a full e-commerce system and then the actual sales process can be handled by emails and phone calls afterwards.

I'll do a bit more digging about.

Re: Suitibility

ClassiPress is evolving. The next version is expected to be markedly improved in ways. For a novice, the best is to wait for the new version, which perhaps is not too far away (I remember end of September/October from some post, but do check on this). This is if your look-around makes you come this way.

If I were to decide for this person, I would definitely go for the eCommerce route as suggested by some. It will be more direct and focused on a single person's selling on the net. Good luck.

Re: Suitibility

There are also e-commerce plugins for Wordpress if you think that's better suited.