Add shopping cart to existing website

[courtesan]

Hi All
I have built a website in frontpage. Home, About Us, Contact Us, etc etc. I am now creating the product pages and want to add a shopping cart.

I'm selling clothes, so people need to be able to select size and colour. I would also like people to be able to pay with paypal, plus at least one other company, such as Worldpay.

I was advised to use cubecart, which I realised (after 3 hours of hell installation) that this is more for people who are building a site via cubecart admin.

So, I then tried a few other shopping cart companies... NOP design is free and does what I need, but there are no instructions with it and as I don't know Javascript, I'm getting annoyed with it already!

Anyone know a shopping cart that I can add to existing site? I would rather pay someone to help set it us rather than a monthly fee.

Many thanks, Katie

[behigher]

Hi Katie,

Are you looking for someone to do it for you? If so, I would be happy to prepare a quote based on the amount of work involved (for instance, the amount of products you want listed to sell) - this will be worked into a simple hourly rate and could quote you for that.

If you're looking to do it yourself theres a couple of other routes, which offer some free software such as zencart, wordpress, drupal and joomla.

OR...what I would always recommend is to have a company like us that does SEO (search engine optimisation) and web design, is to do the whole lot from day one, giving you the foundation of an excellent site not just in design, but having the building blocks of solid and ethical seo integrated in your site from day one.

Hopefully theres some options there for you

Thanks.

[courtesan]

Thanks,

Am happy to pay someone to do it, although will be adding more products all the time so would like to have that controll. Could you set up my first product page, checkout, etc etc. Any then I could just duplicate for more products?
Thanks, Katie

[behigher]

Sure,

we could work that out for you at a monthly rate for the adjustment in work each month, and adding the pages and purchase path for you,

drop me a pm or email me at info@behigher.co.uk and we can work on the right choice for you.

Thanks.

[brownie]

Katie when looking for a company to fullfill your requirement, a few points to note;

1. Ensure you see a portfolio of existing work, do they seem familiar with ecommerce solutions?.

2. If being offered design, look at the homepage of the company and see if you like their design or ask to see other examples of design work they have done. You should find this easily in their portfolio on their website.

3. You do not have to put all your eggs in one basket, hosting, design, ecommerce solution and SEO can be purchased seperately.

I've yet to meet anyone who excells in all areas. :)

Good luck whichever path you go down. :)

[behigher]

I agree, be sure to look at our site, and judge on our appearance.

However, we are not an ecommerce site with the target audience that is looking to buy products from us. Also, where you may not think our site will be on the front cover of vogue, it is smart informative and well produced, as are the sites we've produced for 70+ other businesses in the past.

Just to give you a little background, myself and David Thompson (another director at the business) have been working part time as web designers and providing SEO services since the early 90's - infact David was working on seo on yahoo in the dial up days of 50p per minute internet dial up! an expensive business to be in.

We then went full time in March, and set up our site early march - if you do a search today on search engines, such as google, you will find we are sitting on page 2 under "small business seo" an achievement we are quite proud of.

David is a regular contributor for the allinlondon website and talks about small business seo techniques, as well as marketing, search marketing and one of his favourite topics, "whats the point of a website?"

But, again do take the advice that brownie has given, select the right partner for you who will achieve what you need for the budget you have.

Hope that has been useful.

[brownie]

Also, where you may not think our site will be on the front cover of vogue, it is smart informative and well produced, as are the sites we've produced for 70+ other businesses in the past.

As per your post above you're offering website design, can you give some examples out of the 70+ sites?

[courtesan]

Thanks All

As we have already designed our own site - we are not looking for a web designer as such. We just need help with code and the actually functionality of clicking on a product, adding to cart, checkout etc.
Many thanks

[scottybowl]

Give OSCommerce a try. It is easy to install and has lots of plugins to make integration with payment gateways such as Paypal completely painless

[behigher]

we list 5 of our most recent projects on our website and are available under the links page.

We have produced, static information sites, e-commerce sites, mobile sites, .tv and video stream sites, business directories, photographers sites, creative builds, community builds along with national and international publishing sites.

The best proof of our work is to compare it to what you are looking for, we ask our customers to list businesses that are in their marketplace before we start work, and which ones they like the look of to help us make some design decisions.

Also, to ask the question of examples, it is best if you tell us what type of examples (in pm) so that we can share those with you too - from that you will be able to identify the work we have done and how it can compare to what you are looking for.

Like I said before, the designs we have worked on, we are very proud of, and have been ethically Search Engine Optimised and are part of our portfolio of well produced, high ranking sites that provide what the customer is looking for.

[courtesan]

Hi
If I use OScommerce, I cant control it from Frontpage can I?
Cheers, K

[scottybowl]

im not sure if there is frontpage integration but i highly doubt it

Frontpage is a pretty poor piece of software, I would advise that you try and move away from it ASAP

[courtesan]

Hi,
no will never leave frontpage, have used dreamweaver etc and hate it!

[scottybowl]

fair enough! but be aware it generates terrible code which will have a negative effect on your SEO and page load times

[brownie]

Hi,
no will never leave frontpage, have used dreamweaver etc and hate it!


I'd thoroughly recommend www.ecommercetemplates.com (http://www.ecommercetemplates.com), I use their generic ASP code for setting up stores, it's very easy, well written, has a UK local version, integrates with loads of payment providers and the support is excellent.

I use it with ASP and SQL Server although they also have a PHP mySQL version.

They produce a Frontpage templated version (which can be controlled from Frontpage) of which I have no experience but the codebase is the same so should be OK. If you have any questions try their forum or try out the trial version. For £75 I think it's the best put together ecommerce application I've yet worked with and you can remove copywrite notices and integrate it fully with your site.

[Busy Lizzie Crafts]

Hi Courtesan :)

Might be worth taking a peek at "Mal's ecommerce" for buy-it now buttons & shopping cart facility.

[Longworth]

RomanCart is a shopping cart where you add code to your existing website to create buttons, cart, etc - it's kind of like adding Paypal buttons to your site but with a lot more functionality and you can also accept other methods of payment.

[new2bus]

The problem with FrontPage is it is obsolete as of 2006 and users will be pushed into migrating to SharePoint designer as security issues arise.

If you are hosted on a Linux/Unix server then they will eventually have to stop support as Microsoft has withdrawn support from Unix/Linux.

This is from the Microsoft site:

What happened to FrontPage?
After nine years of being an award-winning Web authoring tool, FrontPage will be discontinued in late 2006. We will continue to serve the diverse needs of our existing FrontPage customers with the introduction of these three brand-new application building and Web authoring tools using the latest technologies, Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Designer 2007 for the enterprise information workers, Microsoft® Expression™ Web for the professional Web designer and Microsoft® Visual Studio 2005 for the Web developer.

This is a cut and paste (NOT from Microsoft)

If your site is using FrontPage, you have several options.

Wait For Microsoft Expression Web Design

Continue to use FrontPage, but move to a host that offers FrontPage extensions.
Make sure it is a Windows Server. Any host offering FrontPage on a Unix/Linux server will eventually have to discontinue support. This will give you a little more time to decide your next move. But, remember that Microsoft itself has discontinued FrontPage (as of December 2006).

Continue Using FrontPage on UNIX, but WITHOUT using the server extensions.
If you are used to FrontPage, and just can't do without it (refuse to learn something new), then you still have the option to upload your site using FrontPage's built-in FTP client.

You can build your website in FrontPage locally on your computer and have FrontPage FTP it to your site. (Check the help file in FrontPage to see how this is done.) Your FTP login is usually the same as what you were using for FrontPage.

Note that special FrontPage features like Forms and Hit Counters will not work.

Redesign your site using something from this Century.
FrontPage is from the 1990's (even if it says 2003 on the box). It relies on technology that even Microsoft has given up on. Early reviews of their new editing software is positive, though a little late to the party. Bottom line:

You MUST STOP using Front Page Extensions

I don’t necessarily agree on all points, but, I wouldn’t argue them neither.

[courtesan]

Have just tried converting to Dreamweaver and its driving me to insanity already. wouldnt convert frontpage files, dont understand anything its asking me.

i now realise why my NOP shopping cart wouldnt work with frontpage... its because even though it says its enabled...Javascript is not enabled... and therefore when I copy code, it is shown in 'preview'.

I cant even get past the layout and how to publish a site in dreamweaver.

To be honest, I just dont have the time or technical know how. I'm one of those people that throw their keyboard out the window when something doesnt work.

I need someone to sit next to me and explain all this stuff. where do you find such a person? what do i search for? will people actually come to your home to work with you?

Sunday is my only day to work as I have 3 small children and I have achieved nothing.. dont you just hate days like that!

Katie

[scoobs23]

Hi, let me know the url of your site and I will try and help out. I had a paypal shopping cart and once you get the hang of it, it is ok.

I have just changed on to Romancart as they have more functions but it does cost (not much).

[Dawg]

If you don't have too many products and don't want a database to do clever behind the scenes stuff, (server side or summit), you could have a look at Roman Cart (http://www.romancart.com/).
It's very easy to configure, you can make it look reasonably good and it's cheap.
There is one uber-techie who used to be on this forum who swears by it, and he could use anything he wanted.

[stugster]

FrontPage is good for one thing, and one thing only: designing a front page. Anything more, and you're going to be up the creek without the necessary equipment for forward propulsion.

Dawg's suggestion about Roman Cart is mediocre at best (actually, that's a lie, Roman Cart is good!). I prefer XCart...although you do have to pay for it.

[weejimmy]

Katie use google check out or paypal they are easey to add to your web site instructions on both websites

[courtesan]

Am now a dreamweaver wonder.. well sort of! have converted front page website to dreamweaver.. havent thrown any tantrums today or wanted to smash my pc up.. so things are going well. i can now look at the shopping cart stuff. thanks for everyones time. katie

[new2bus]

Just visited your site and it looks ok and you wont regret swapping from FP once you have the hang of things.

I would just mention one thing, you have a space in your file name about courtesan.htm so it shows as about%20courtesan.htm you may find it better to use the underscore as a space eg: about_courtesan.htm

Should look quite nice when finished

[new2bus]

Hope you are not missing FP and you have got the hang of Dreamweaver now.

Software is always the same when you change, in that you have to find your way around.

I can not see you regretting dumping FrontPage as you progress.

[courtesan]

Yes, so glad i changed to dreamweaver. Things dont mess up for no reason like they did with FP! Katie