Online Merchandising using Umbraco

Question

I need to build a website using asp.net + sql server for sports merchandise business where the requirement is to display and sell merchandise internationally.

After some research I have decided to use Umbraco to build the website.

However I don't know what else would I need to purchase for this website like paypal plug-in, shopping cart, hosting space(go daddy?) etc

I have no experience in Umbraco or online merchandising so need some guidance here.

Thank You! Arshya

Answer 1

I would never suggest that someone not use Umbraco as I personally think it is awesome, but I would ask why you chose Umbraco and not a 'dedicated' .Net ecommerce platform?

There is a package available for Umbraco called uCommerce which has fantastic reviews, and there is a free version although it has certain key restrictions, like marketing aspects and the multi-language/multi-currency version has an annual charge. However if you are new to Umbraco but not to .Net it may be better looking at something like nopCommerce which is free and open source.

Umbraco is a fantastic CMS and allows for the most flexible of site creation - but that is what it is, a site creation tool. nopCommerce is an out of the box ecommerce application that provides you a pre-built shopping website and administration area.

The only downside to nopCommerce is that it's CMS features aren't brilliant. By that I mean although you can create non-shopping pages, you can't create bespoke page/content structures in the same way you can in Umbraco.

Either way, before developing in anger I would suggest checking what your requirements and priorities actually are. Do you want a CMS with ecommerce features, or a ecommerce platform with CMS features?

Update:

Since writing this I have used an Umbraco package called uWebshop which is full-featured but slow, buggy and difficult to extend as the documentation as lacking. It is open source so I was able to delve and locate various extension points but it had too many bugs and the project was ultimately shelved.

There is another Umbraco package available called Merchello, again open source, which I am hearing very good things about and the documentation looks quite useful.

Answer 2

Umbraco is a good CMS - the online starter videos will be useful (http://umbraco.com/help-and-support/video-tutorials)

I've played around with nopcommerce and it seemed a decent platform - I deployed ucommerce and it is a good package that is well integrated with the Umbraco way of working. If you are used to Umbraco then including ucommerce functionality is a breeze.

If you go with ucommerce one gotcha that I have found is that the marketing foundation is not available in the free version - which means that you can't use the discounting and voucher concepts. For a genuine shop that is likely to use discounting, sales, promotions etc to knock money off the RRP you will probably need to consider a paid version of ucommerce.