After five years managing an extremely successful e-commerce site that uses Cartloom, it’s time to move on. I’d rather keep the site on Rapdiweaver and I’m looking at Shopify.
I only need to embed buy buttons into the site (and where products have variations, options to buy) but with so many orders coming in, I need to streamline the shipping process and Shopify has carrier integrations that Cartloom doesn’t.
Previous links posted here no longer work - does anyone here have any Shopify experience and could they post links of Shopify shops here?
You have a successful store using RW and Cartloom and want to keep it. Consider that moving it over to Shopify could bring more harm than good. The best solution is to step up to a proper order management system to process your good fortune. That could take a bit of time and work. No matter where orders originate a good backend system can handle everything after the sale, including shipping. For starters why not use the Cartloom Zapier feature to connect to shipping software. That should get you going very fast to solve your issues. New Integration: Streamline Your Shipping Processes with Shippo - Updates | Zapier
However, have you looked into Ecwid? It’s quite easy to integrate into RW, it has great carrier integration (amongst other types of integrations). And Ecwid, unlike Shopify, was designed to be integrated into existing websites.
With RW, you can integrate it using widgets, the Ecwid plug-in, or you can use my Ecwid Stacks which provide not only ease of integration, but also a great deal of customization. In, fact I’m close to release of version 2 of the Ecwid Stacks, which will add a lot more customizations, both in terms of look, but also functionality. For example, version 2 will add events depending on which page the site visitor land. You’ll be able to add dynamic fields to the checkout process, all from your RW project. Also if you purchase the Ecwid Stacks, you can get up to 100% rebate when you sign-up for one of their yearly paid plans, if you sign up using the link on my website.
I hope the link above is helpful, let me know if you have any questions about Ecwid.
The UK Carrier I use doesn’t integrate with Ecwid unfortunately. It’s the sytem I recommend to other clients who want to manage the upload of products themselves as it integrates nicely.
Cartloom has been mostly great. I wouldn’t move if I didn’t have to. It’s been a good tool but I think fallout from Brexit is also going to mean I need more function.
I agree, it’s hard to change something that has been working well, in this case Cartloom.
It’s too bad that for now Ecwid is not playing well with the UK carrier.
In any case, if I find more info on Shopify, I will share it here with you.
Can you share the name of that UK carrier? Also, what kind of integration between the carrier and shopping cart do you need? Showing shipping rates at checkout? Print shipping labels from the orders in the store? Some other fulfilment options?
Royal Mail; they have an integration that ties in with Ebay, Etsy, Amazon, Magento, Shopify, Woo and BigCommerce to name a few. It means postage is bought and paid for at the time of checkout; the client gets a special bulk rate, the shipping label gets printed out with the invoice and the customer gets a shipping notification when the package gets scanned it at the depot. It essentially streamlines the process.
I think for this particular project it’s going to mean moving away from Rapidweaver. It’s going to be an interesting new experiment.
@yabdab, you mean like having to send proof that parts of Europe are real and not made up places, in order to get them added to the list of destinations because Cartloom support didn’t believe me, nor had the initiative to google? That’s a cartloom feature I could’ve done without.
The regions of Jersey and Guernsey are not listed in the Checkout choices because you did not have them enabled in the Checkout settings. Enable them and they should appear in the dropdown for your customers.
It was Jersey and the Channel Islands, rather than Guernsey I think - you may be looking at the wrong ticket? I point out that they’re in the settings; just listed when customers put in their address. It’s the one where the reply was:
“What country are these “regions” located? I am not familiar with them ¯_(ツ)_/”
@Yabdab You weren’t being helpful, you were bashing a competitor that, as mentioned above, I’m reluctant to move to - but have little choice. Cartloom has been mostly great but now I need more features and I came here looking for help on Shopify, which you didn’t offer (much like the features I need).
If you want to discuss a Royal Mail integration, I’m very interested in having that discussion; i’m not interested in being told how Shopify is worse than you.
