Thinking of opening a e-commerce, Any advise?

[mitdirect]

I've been running a small record business on eBay for about 3 years now and wishing to expand. Ebay is very good but sometimes can be expensive with there listing fees, I'm looking into opening a e-commerce to list a lot of my bulk records, the lower priced ones as I've had alot siting on my eBay shop for months upon end and only handful sold. I think it would be far cheaper to build a website and list them all in there.

If I build my own e-commerce, using oscommerce or zencart for example I would only have to pay the hosting fee's which are about £20 per month. Still I have to weigh up the pros and cons of not listing on eBay as they spend a hugh amount on advertising every year. I would still be keeping on the eBay shop, so I can advertise my website though that and also mabye look into Google Adwords, but that's sounds expenisve.

So I was just asking for advise on, once I've found a good hosting site, (appreciate if anyone could recommend a good one) and uploaded zencart or oscommerce to it my website, how easy it is to set-up after that? Also how easy is it to set shipping prices, I would need to set 3 different prices, national, Europe and rest of the world. Also I was gonna use paypal to accpet payment, however I've read alot of bad press on there about them, are they really that bad?

Any advice would be GREATLY appreciative.

Thank You

MIT Direct

[quikshop]

If I build my own e-commerce, using oscommerce or zencart for example I would only have to pay the hosting fee's which are about £20 per month.


That sounds expensive for hosting of an open source eCommerce package. Try talking to Carl at CS New Media Web Hosting (http://www.csnewmedia.co.uk/), we recently migrated one of our related services to Carl and his support has been second to none.

As for eBay, you can run your eBay shop and standalone shop side by side for a few months and use 'Thank You for your Order' cards in your dispatched orders to direct your eBay customers towards your new online shop.

Perhaps offer them a discount for their first order through your new shop?

[new2bus]

You could try

http://www.easynetwebhosts.com/

[Webtistic]

My advice is to invest a little at this stage and make your store professional, unique and secure.

Scrimping on an e-commerce store is unlikely to bring you the returns you crave...

[imageonline]

Hi, my site was done by (quikshop) internet retailer who posted on this thread. Costs less than £20 a month and the help has be outstanding. Sales are coming in steadily and I have great hopes for the future business.

[AdvantageDigitalMedia]

I would recommend OS Commerce as a good platform to build your shop....vastly more contributions (customisations) available and reasonably fast.

We use a small hosting company in Oulton Broad called designsolution.co.uk they are not a cheap host but are helpful and extremely knowledgable. Hope this helps!?

[mke]

A hunt around for shopping cart templates soon shows there are a limited number of ways you can actually display products online, unless you're prepared to pay more than the goods are worth. Which is a very powerful reason for going for Open Source free ones.

The look and feel outside the actual presentation of the goods is, of course, very flexible. There are many templates, often free, for most cart software applications.

osCommerce and Zen Cart are both superb products. My preference is for Zen Cart because it is fully written in css rather than tables for layout, which is of some help for search engine friendliness and DDA compliance. Note I said some help. It's not a massive difference. Other than that, they have many similarities.

£20 per month year in year out sounds an awful lot for hosting in today's competitive market place, unless your requirements are larger than the average shop. The up front for installation and configuration, plus a little help finding your way around it, fine. But costs to the host drop significantly once it's in and you are familiarised.

[consultant]

I am going to be biased and say look at testacart.com and if you like something, use their hosting (it is my site and I host several different sites, ecom and other, on the server).

Stay with ebay - it widens your market.

Use paypal. For every horror story, there will be thousands of contented users.

For shipping, choose you method, e.g. Royal MAil and cost from there!

[boho]

Hi, my site was done by (quikshop) internet retailer who posted on this thread. Costs less than £20 a month and the help has be outstanding. Sales are coming in steadily and I have great hopes for the future business.

My sites are with Dave of Internet Retailer (http://www.internetretailer.biz) too and they are an excellent service provider and having a hosted shop means that you can leave the technical know how to your host and concentrate on your business :)

[willanfei]

Verys strange?

[mrTibbs]

You may want to explore why the product is not selling before setting up another channel to market.
Have you defined your customer base?
built an opt-in email list for news and repeat sales?
etc.
Assuming you do set up this 2nd route make sure you monitor which channel gives you more success: That will inform your decision on which to drop or whether both have value.
Good luck

[fumse]

Hi,

I think it is okay to try selling on your own e-commerce site.

I tried to sell on e-bay ( ordinary account not ebay shop) , but I didn't sell a single item.

Undettered , using advise from the sticky on here for what is needed for an e-commerce site , my e-commerce site went live Sept last year and have made good sales and have got alot of enquiries and my traffic is steadily increasing.

Admittedly because of the kind of product I sell sales are not high right now, but the results I got last year/early this year, has made me think I made the right move and I am looking forward to Autumn/Winter.

No one knows where the market for your product is and that is why you have to continue tweaking the four P's of marketing .

So I'll say go for it , and there are many marketing gurus on here to advice on the Promotion side.

Best wishes,


funmi

[sally 76]

Try mistore.......they offer great eccomerce solutions and have key words a meta tags intergrated into their administrator system, which may help your rankings in search engines. you also have complete control of deliveries and payment schemes. They use paypal and protx. They also provide a totally bespoke design....so no tow sites look the same. All for under £20 a month

[groovycart]

Try groovycart.co.uk we are a new shop hosting service, it's free to set up with no listing fees and no sales commission. there are certain restrictions which you will see on the home page -
groovycart.co.uk
We are able to provide a free service by placing an advert on your shop.
You don't need any technical experience and it only takes a few minutes to register. You will then be able to change your shop colours and start uploading items for sale.
If you have any questions please email me.