ecommerce facility on static pages?

[Lucy123]

Hello,

I hope you might be able to help.

I am working with a friend who is a dance teacher on setting up a site to sell dance classes online.
Aside from the main pages of the site which detail information about her school etc, we want to create static pages which appear thus, eg

domain dot com / ballet-classes dot html

so that when visitor clicks onto this page they read the blurb about the class itself and then can click onto a large graphic image button which bears the legend 'book class' at which point they are directly taken onto payment/booking.

The overall aim here is to be able to create pages with manually named urls (ie, as opposed to something like oscommerce which has dynamic urls) so that it is completely user and search engine friendly and v easy to book and pay online.

We have not yet decided on which payment facility to use, nor have we set up an online merchant a/c, but at this stage like the idea of secpay as it ?looks? straightforward to integrate and use.

We have not yet sent out the design/development spec to anyone and are at the stage of working out exactly what is needed but also what is realistic, so that the work is ultimately as straightforward as possible.

Would really appreciate some constructive advice-

thanks,
Lucy

[quikshop]

Hi Lucy,

Worldpay is also very easy to integrate with a static web site, although they can be a bit expensive compared to others. SecPay is a good choice, or PayPal do their own shopping basket stuff for static web sites.

Similar to osCommerce, our software generates dynamic pages named using the category or product title rather than the Actinic approach of static HTML pages. These days Google does not penalise dynamic page creation, we've seen more than a dozen of our shop owners Web shops reach page 1 of Google.

The important thing which you have correctly identified is making the name of the page (and the meta tags) relevant to its content, and this can be achieved either with static or dynamic page creation.

You also mention making it as easy as possible to use. Useability (http://www.internetretailer.biz/partner/best_web_shops.aspx?qsaid=159) is the second most important element to any web site, keeping navigation choices clear, simple and obvious and making sure the design of your pages is not loaded with over-bearing use of graphics.

[Lucy123]

thanks for the reply.

we're not looking for a hosted solution - we already have hosting lined up.

But I do disagree with you about the dynamic page creation,
eg definitely don't want a url that looks something like this.

domain . com / catalog / product. aspx? pid = 16714

This is what we're trying to avoid.

(can't show a 3rd party link properly as have not built up enough posts, but you get the idea)

[quikshop]

Lol, I'm not trying to sell you a solution but I have to disagree about you disageeing about, er, the page names :)

A page named essential_oils.aspx?cid=22 is as effective as a page named essential_oils.html.

I do agree that a page named products.aspx?pid=1234 is not as effective as either of the above examples.

I also agree that you are right to put this as a priority in deciding on page naming and the solution you use for your web site.

What else can we agree / disagree on? I do like a good debate in the morning :D

[Lucy123]

that's fine :)

I am just trying to get a serious spec together which I can send out as I would rather get these issues clarified beforehand rather than hire someone and waste their/our time (and money)

[quikshop]

Fair play, well I think you've already identified and understand the page naming issue ;), SecPay are as good a solution as any - if you do not already have a merchant account you might want to take a look at joining the FSB, Federation of Small Business (www.fsb.org.uk (http://www.fsb.org.uk)), they have a special deal with Streamline for discounted commission rates on transactions. They also have a deal with the Co-op bank although I've not used them personally, they do have a good reputation in terms of ethical banking.

[Lucy123]

forget the aesthetics for the moment, but here is a very clear example of what we are looking for

www dot water dash butts dash direct dot co dot uk

explanatory blurb at top with very, very simple buy buttons next to image lower down on page, next to a big eyecatching graphic.

This way you could get the page title urls exactly how we want them , eg
domain dot com / ballet dash classes dot html

making it super easy to book classes (buy vouchers/whatever) on each given page which is laid on in the same format (just different product)

[markbirmingham]

Hi Lucy

Have you looked at Actinic (http://www.actinic.co.uk)? The ecommerce software produces static HTML pages and doesn't require a database to run. We use it for our own shop and it's very good.

If you're looking for open source software such as Oscommerce, then maybe give Joomla and Virtuemart a try. Even though Joomla uses dynamically generated pages, you can have the option to rewrite the URLs to something which is more search engine friendly. Let me know if you need more info.

Mark

Homeware and Gifts - Ochigo (http://www.ochigo.co.uk/)
Clocks by Ochigo (http://www.ochigo.co.uk/acatalog/clocks.html)

[quikshop]

Hi Lucy

Have you looked at Actinic (http://www.actinic.co.uk)? The ecommerce software produces static HTML pages and doesn't require a database to run. We use it for our own shop and it's very good.

I'd second that, we used Actinic years ago for an aromatherapy shop and it was great... optimised product pages, intuitive desktop software which we found really easy to use.

Also has the advantage of lots of design companies out there can customise Actinic shops to get the look and feel you want for your shop.