ecommerce help

[Hooked]

I am currently looking at building my first ecommerce website, a small site with only about 50 products. With little experience in ecommerce I have been looking at getting an off the shelf package to run the site, but there are so many out there with +- points. Erol, oscommerce, actinic, everest, lynx. Are these the main ones?!

Can anyone kindly point me in the right direction of a package that would be suitable for a small business, allows me to be very flexible with the design as well as the running of the site. I would also like to find a suitable solution that I can then use on future sites.

Also, if there are any good books, info or sites that any one has used and can recommend, I would be very grateful as I havent had much luck so far.

Many thanks

[sparklyscotty]

Hi there. I have tried several things over the years, including Miva Merchant, but found it too restrictive in design and site integration. I think it is very effective if you have 'stock' that is listed in real time on your site though. You can sometimes get great packages that include hosting and e-commerce that you pay a monthly fee for.
I currently use a free shopping cart service from www.mals-e.com that is very simple to use and offers loads of customizable features. You can alo set up whatever payment gatway you like to use with it.
-Angel-

[Hooked]

Thanks for replying.

I will have a look at www.mals-e.com and see what its like. The problem I find is that I dont know the stages of what to do (setting up the payment bit), I am currently looking to get some books to guide me through the whole process, as I want to get this right, but I have no experience with ecommerce.

Do you know of any sites that may be able to help?

I have been looking at erol and oscommerce, but there are so may out there.

[sparklyscotty]

There are a few elements to selling online.
Basically you have a shopping cart, a payment gateway, and a payment processor. Your shopping cart is a piece of software that lets your customer create a list of products that they want to buy. The payment gateway is a place where they enter their financial information on how they want to pay you. The payment processor is how the money gets from your customer to you. Sometimes all three elements can be combined in one easy package, and sometimes you might want to pick and choose each element to suit your own situation. Most of the time, a payment gateway and payment processor work together.
I will give you my basic overview of some things I think you need to think about before starting, and others can chip in their opinions and experiences (and correct me!)
-First, you need a presence; a website, a logo, a slogan, an identity etc.
Second, you need to decide on how you will provide your goods to the customer, as this will dictate the best way to actually set up your shop. Are your goods electronic- can they be downloaded. This is something I know NOTHING about, and will leave it to others. Do you have a catalogue of goods or provide only one or two things? Do you provide services instead of actual goods? Do you have stock, or do you make/ fill orders as they come in?
Third, How will people pay you? Will you accept Paypal, Nochex etc? Do you want customers to buy online, and/or print an order form and mail you a check / postal order? Does your business have a merchant account so that you can accept credit cards?
All of these things should influence how you set up an e-commerce site. If you want to post any answer to the above, people can probably help you out with more specific places to start looking for more info.
Don't panic! I have been there, been overwhelmed, and am now trading online successfully. Although my infant company can't get a merchant account yet. :-(
-Angel-

[Hooked]

This is a big help, thanks!

Starting at the begining, the payment gateway, and a payment processor, is that what Paypal, Worldpay and Nochex come under? (again, do you know thebest to go with?). These were the things I was getting confused about, how these play their part in the whole ecommerce thing.

And as for the merchant account, where does this fit into the obove? I heard it was hard to get one if you have never traded before.

Going through your stages, I am basically ready for the third stage, but I feel I may have to change the design depending on what shopping cart to go for. I have just found these which I need to go through. Some I have heard of.

Free:

Mals Ecommerce - http://www.mals-e.com
osCommerce - http://www.oscommerce.com
CubeCart - http://www.cubecart.com/
phpShop - http://www.phpshop.org/

Commercial:

Actinic Catalog - http://www.actinic.co.uk/
JShop - http://www.jshop.co.uk/
Evolve - http://www.lynx.net.uk/
Ekmpowershop - http://www.ekmpowershop.com/
Erol - http://www.erolonline.co.uk/
Get Trolleyed - http://www.get-trolleyed.co.uk/
Cactus Shop - http://www.cactushop.com
ClickCartPro - http://www.clickcartpro.co.uk/
Squirrelcart - http://www.squirrelcart.com/
BazaarBuilder - http://www.bazaarbuilder.com/

What extra services do you think the commercial ones are offering? I suppose it more features like 'most popular' 'latest release' etc.

Also looking at making sure the whole site is secure for taking payment etc. what part does that fit in, is it the hosting, payment gateway...

Thanks again for your help.

[Hooked]

Just been looking at some other forums and have another quick question.

If I use a payment gateway like wordpay and paypal, I leave the site to may the payment and add crad details etc.. but can you get a shopping cart that incorporates all that and you stay within the site right through to the end?

[Webstuff]

If you're very new to this, I'd recommend getting oscommerce (because its free, powerful, and highly customizable), and Nochex if you don't mind only selling to the UK (because they're very helpful and 'safer' than paypal). Any shopping cart you get should incorporate multiple payment options, so you can add / change payment method at any time.

[kyber]

I think I must have missed a trick because I found oscommerce a bit heavy to customise and ended up going with litecommerce (which costs, but not much) instead.

Stuart

[Hooked]

are you not restricted with the design with oscommerce, they all seem to be in a three column grid?

[microbe]

No, OsCommerce can be customised extensively. You are not stuck with three columns.

However, if this is your first effort, you may find it far from straightforward to customise it to suit your requirements.

Like many things, it is easy when you know how, but you could find the learning curve pretty steep.

If what is important to you is focussing on getting your site ready, stocked and generating income, then seriously consider outsourcing this to one of the many people who specialise in OSCommerce customisation.

I suppose the question you shouild ask yourself is, do you want to spend your time being a web designer/developer or do you want to be a web entrepreneur?

[sparklyscotty]

Good point microbe; that is something that I wrestle with myself on a daily basis.
As far as a merchant account goes, unless you are dealing with over £10,000 annual transactions, it will be difficult to get one. (Or at least, that is my experience) I find that if people are willing to shop online then they usually already use Nochex or Paypal, so it isn't a big hassle to them.
I do think that going with an e-commerce 'package' is a good move if you can afford it, and if you don't have the time or experience to set up the various elements.
Unfortunately I am both impatient and a control freak, so my choices have been based on speed of set-up and maximum customization. My stock is also constantly changing, so mals-e works great for me where the shopping cart link is created with each product.
I am also a procrastinator, so the 'ready, fire, aim' approach is usually the only way I get things done. You could spend a lifetime weighing your options, but don't miss an opportunity by thinking too much. Often the best way to discover what is the right choice is to make several wrong ones. Goes with the entrepreneur territory. :)
-Angel-

[Webstuff]

I'm sorry, I was speaking from personal experience, but I guess people without a PHP background might find os-commerce a bit confusing to customize.

As for the payment system; are you aiming at a strictly UK customer base (or at least to begin with), or are you planning on international selling?

[Hooked]

I dont have any PHP experience, even though I have a course coming up over the next few months, I only really know HTML. I have heard that oscommerce can be a bit tricky, im just having a look at litecommerce now, there arre just so many options!!

We are also looking at probably just uk customers.

[microbe]

Choose very carefully if you are going out to buy a store.

One of the key reasons that I think you might struggle with OSCommerce is exactly because it is very powerful, very flexible and very extensible.

If you buy a commercial package and it doesn't do something which you decide you need in three months time then you will very likely find yourself back at square one, looking for new software or paying a lot of money to add the extras to your existing solution.

I would suggest you spec out carefully what you want from the system in writing. Set out in detail

a) Essential Features. Things you must have.
b) Desirable Features.

Make your own list based on your business requirements, don't cheat by cribbing from someone else's marketing spiel or you will skew your thinking.

Do not buy without examining a full demo of both front end (public shop) and back end (admin). If there is no demo available, go elsewhere.

Cost up the desirable features, and budget for these moving onto your essentials list in the short term.

This is helpful, by the way http://www.opensourcecms.com/ - has demos of the main PHP ecommerce systems.

[Hooked]

You are right, I need to set everything out and find out what my requirments are.

Some of the shopping cart packages that are from the US, will that be a problem and something I should look out for if I am just looking at UK sales?

Has anyone else had any experience with lite commerce?

[microbe]

You need to be sure that you are going to be able to handle multi currencies.

Also some of the things which look normal in the US are going to be potentially offputting to UK buyers. Make sure that it is straightforward to replace Zip Code with Post Code, that you can replace Shipping with Post and Packing. Tax on some US carts can be fiddley, but normally can be set to work properly with VAT.

Also, if you are running in multi-currency, make sure that you can configure default currency display, and any options to suit your needs.

I hadn't heard of lite commerce until you mentioned it. It might be worth Googling for any conversations about it. I sometimes try searches like "xyz is crap" to see what turns up. :-)

If you do buy open source, look for a large and active developer community. If you buy commercial, look for a company that has been around a while, is stable and is looking to develop its product further. An active on site support forum is very useful and will give you an idea of the kind of problems you may have to overcome. No software package is perfect, but the tone of the support forums can be revealing.

[c2webdesign]

There are plenty of off the shelf options but as Tim has pointed out - you need to be careful.

Really if you are reaslistic about selling online, have a very basic or no knowledge of HTML, PHP etc.. and want to give a professional look then stear clear of free packages.

The paid packages give more flexibility and can built straight in your website (whereas some packages direct the visitor to another site to hold the shopping cart contents and make payment). You have already come up with more popular choices, e.g. EROL, Get Trolleyed etc... plan what you need and which of these gives you better possibilities.

If you are looking for certain requirements why not get a quote from a developer to build you something a little more bespoke. You may have dismissed this because of price, but you may be a little surprised.

Why not contact me from my website, http://www.c2webdesign.co.uk and I can let you know a little more.

Dean
C2 Web Design
http://www.c2webdesign.co.uk

Web Design | Online Marketing | Search Engine Optimisation

Sign up for a FREE weekly search engine optimisation newsletter at http://www.c2webdesign.co.uk

[microbe]

Really if you are reaslistic about selling online, have a very basic or no knowledge of HTML, PHP etc.. and want to give a professional look then stear clear of free packages.
I don't necessarily agree. OsCommerce, in particular is extremely powerful, can be extensively customised and while the default look is pretty crappy that can be changed easily enough. I chanced across this site yesterday (following a link from another forum) http://www.oscroftdesign.co.uk/ecommerce.html and was very impressed by what she is doing with OsCommerce designs.

The paid packages give more flexibility
Not necessarily. Some paid packages are not at all flexible, the same is true of some Open Source packages.

If you are looking for certain requirements why not get a quote from a developer to build you something a little more bespoke. You may have dismissed this because of price, but you may be a little surprised.

That is very true. However, depending on the level of customisation, remember that you could find yourself locked into using the same developer for any minor changes you need doing, this can get expensive. An advantage of using a popular Open Source or commercial package as the basis for your store is that you will be able to find other people who can readily pick up the reins if you wish to change supplier at any time.

Having said that, if you can find someone who has a good track record, with happy existing customers for their e-commerce work and can deliver what you need, at the right time and price, then there is no reason to not consider this option seriously. My guess is that in the long run the people who end up happiest of all are those who have successfully gone this route.

[sportingmemories]

Call me negative and please call me wrong if you think that is the case but I am yet to find a decent third party shopping cart software. I`ve tried ones that you pay per month for or up front for. Ones that are hosted on third party servers and online only, and ones that you design on your own PC, but still to this day I can only recommend finding an individual or company to tailor make your site, no matter what the cost (if possible), as this provides a 1000 times better service and functionality.

[microbe]

It doesn't in the least surprise me to have someone say that.

You seem to have a problem with your site at the moment - I got this message from your home page

Active Server Pages error 'ASP 0113'

Script timed out

/Default.asp

[Whistle Ink]

Take a look at http://www.ecommercetemplates.co.uk/.

You can download the manuals and look at the online support you get. It also shows how you can intergrate major payment processing companies like Pay Pay, World Pay etc etc. You can also take a look at a demo store including the back end admin side of it.

They have a support forum just like this one where you also get help. Check it out!