Build an eCommerce app for a small business on Wordpress

What is it:

Our Milwaukee-area neighborhood wine bar is open for dine-in and curbside pickup! This app allows you to easily order and schedule pickup.

What did I learn:

1. Good reliable stack - Wordpress doesn't get a lot of love because it is not the newest latest greatest no-code tool. But truly an OG tool for #nocode. This site is built on Wordpress. I use wordpress for Sideprojectstack. I would recommend it if you are familiar with it and want a low cost option. There is a little bit of frustration around setting up hosting (I use Siteground for mine and it works great also cheap) and the dashboard takes a little bit getting used to if you have never used it. I think that its really not intuitive to use on the backend. But it is super reliable, not going anywhere and a ton of plug-ins are already out there that you can use. If you do use Wordpress my recommendation would be to use Elementor as your template provider. It's basically a drag and drop UI to visually build the web pages. It's the best out there. It doesn't come standard with a lot of icons or elements that you'll have to purchase separately.

2. Wine to go - What I really like about this experience is how easy Dan made it to order online and integrated with an app called Tock: https://www.exploretock.com/. Tock allows you to create select what item to curbside pickup, what date and time, and within a few clicks can confirm the order.

Tock made it easy. This was a really simple and clean experience. Really impressive. Dan is a designer. And it's easy to see how he thought through the user interface and experience. Compared to other small businesses buying experiences, this is a big step up. I can't tell you how many times I have tried to order online and its a completely frustrating experience fraught with so much friction.

3. Stripe - Wordpress comes with several plug-ins to use Stripe so that it is relatively easy to integrate. I wrote about using two different Stripe plugins for Wordpress here: sideprojectstack.com/stripe-review

To see all my notes on integrating with Stripe on Wordpress I would check that out. I hope that it helps you out.