Current Online Shop Software?

[impulse]

Some of my Thai friends are interested in marketing various products, including some that I may be able to import for them from China.  

 

Several of them already do a lot of informal business buying eclectic goodies from their home towns and selling them into BKK.  They all help each other, but they don't have any formal organization and consequently, little synergy or any kind of critical mass to grow their businesses.  I'd like to enable them to organize their existing (extremely informal) distribution so they can continue "business as usual" face to face and over the interweb, while increasing their market through additional venues like Lazada and AliExpress.

 

What's in it for me is more the prospect of helping some great co-workers who may be out of a job within the next few years as the (foreign owned) company spools up operations in Thailand.  Making money for myself on products I can export from my contacts in China is a very distant secondary.  At my most likely outcome, I get to test market some products to see their viability- and get back up to speed with online selling that I had to give up when I took a real job in Thailand (company didn't want any WP issues, so barred me contractually from doing ANYTHING on the side)

 

In addition to the usual suspects Lazada and EBay, I'd like to help them develop a web presence that includes an online shop that allows them to make direct sales without involving any money being siphoned off by EBay or others.  They're amazing at Facebook and I suspect they can steer tons of traffic to any website and online shop- if only they had one.

 

So my question is, does anyone tuned in here to TVF currently use any kind of online shop software, either a one-off purchase or a monthly subscription basis.  The requirements would be to accept Thai bank based credit and debit cards and to allow placing orders with the payment to be made by Thai ATM or (going forward) any payment methods that develop in Thailand similar to Paypal or AliPay?  All accounts would be under a Thai name, and they can form a company or use existing small companies several of them have already formed and registered.

 

Thanks in advance for any input into what works and what to avoid.  Keep in mind that I'm doing this for fun and for free and for friends and don't really care if I make nothing out of my efforts.  It's good practice for me anyway should I decide to stay in Thailand after my gig ends.

 

Edited May 24, 2017 by CharlieH
Bold type removed.

[KittenKong]

I still run some Wordpress/Woocommerce installations but not in Thailand, so I have no idea about integration with local payment systems. These installations are all actually free to run, though some more advanced features of Woocommerce would require payment.

 

Whether Woocommerce would be suitable for you rather depends on the number of transactions you expect to make per day and the number of stock lines (products) you expect to carry.

[JSixpack]

Check:

http://www.wix.com/ecommerce/website

https://www.shopify.com/online-store

[MuntyC0re]

there are many useful tools, what kind of store he wants to create?