Guidance needed

[Deleted member 24278]

I generally understand the concepts required to get online selling, but need help clarifying things.

Er indoors wants to sell gifts online, but wants a low initial outlay, as she is uncertain what level her sales will be. I have looked at what I consider to be the different options.

1 Opensource software and get a host for the site.
2 Commercial software and get a host for the site.
3 Bespoke software and get a host for the site.
4 All in one package with hosting included.

She does not have a merchant account, so payment will be via a 3rd party, likely a Paypal account, if sales are good then other options I guess will be more viable.

Looking at the options above I think....

Number 1 is a non starter due to the need to produce the site, and to keep the software updated etc.
Number 2 I think is also ruled out due to the high cost of the software.
Number 3 is a possibility, but cost also looks to be crucial, I notice that some people offer hosting, I am having difficulty deciding if this is the better solution than no 4.
Number 4 is looking good for price etc, but there seem to be plenty of tales of woe about fasthosts or 1&1 etc So at the moment EKMpowershop looks favourite.

What I am looking for please is comments/links and suggestions to help sway my decision. I would ideally like to buy the domain name and keep that seperate ie buy it from someone like freeparking, this allows some control if things go wrong with host etc.

As I have already said, at the moment we are most likely to go with EKM, what alternatives do I have. :|

thanks

Neil

 

[Biznaij]

Hiya

Someone else already opened a thread on this, do a quick search for a thread entitled setting up website.

You might find some helpful pointers there although you do sound as if you are clued up about it and may find it easier to choose for yourself.

 

[Spiderden]

1. This option isn't as hard as you seem to think. You can download the likes of ZenCart or osCommerce then buy a template at a reasonable price. Keeping the software updated isn't much of a problem.
2. There are some good commercial packages available at reasonable prices. Some members on this forum can provide S/W for you. Check out what Phil at Openmind can offer.
3. If you want a low initial outlay, then this is definitely the wrong choice. A bespoke site will be many times the cost of the other options (several thousand pounds). This should only be considered if you are sure of the sort of turnover/profit the site is likely to generate and you have a clear idea off exactly what you want from the site.
4. I'm not a fan of the all in one solutions as they can be quite restrictive. I'd definitely recommend that you steer well clear of 1&1, Fasthosts and Lycos, though EKM has many fans on this forum so it'll be worth your while talking to the people on here who use it to find out what they think of it.

For option one I'd suggest ZenCart with a prebuilt or bespoke template. For option two have a word with someone like Phil (Openmind Commerce) to see what deal he can offer on his S/W. Option three, how much money do you really want to spend? For option four, have a word with some of the other all in one store owners, though EKM will probably be your best bet for this type of store.

 

[DayTM]

You could just set up an Ebay store to test the water - that takes care of hosting and the software. It might be a good way of gauging potential sales before you invest time and money in the other options.

 

[Gillie]

I would suggest you talk to Phil at Openmind (member on here) re site and hosting package and software.

If you are serious about this, I would say don't scrimp and 'get by' as this will lead to half measures, and thus lead to loss of interest etc.

 

[Deleted member 24278]

Thanks for the replies,

I have had a look at shopfactory demo. One thing that strikes me about that is it seems to be a long winded process of setting up, and there does not seem to be as much layout control as I would have liked.
I have just had a look at Open mind, and it looks good, I can see the benefit of paying for software/licence in the long term. But again how much control over layout?

Just how much more difficult is it to use Zen etc, bearing in mind the templates that are available.

 

[Optegris]

Thanks Lawrence and Gillie

You have complete control over the appearance of the OMC system as it is all controlled through a simple template file and style sheets. In addition, the front end is 100% customisable if you want to dig into the code although this isn't necessary to get a food design on board.

Take a look at www.nsdpowerballs.com to see what I mean, this design uses OMC as the engine and you can see it's dramatically different from the demo showing how flexible it is.

If you have any questions, post away or do give me a call on Monday morning on 08456 445 789

 

[awebapart.com]

Hi Neil

Firstly I'd say that the online gift market is a very competitive and saturated one, just google gifts to see what I mean. If you are thinking about entering this market, try to identify a niche, and if you cannot identify a niche, then think about other ways of marketing your site since it will be difficult to get traffic from the natural results of the search engines.

With your breakdown of the options, especially the first 3 options, I would add that 3 (bespoke) isn't the only bespoke one, but 1 (open source) and 2 (commercial) can also require some semi-bespoke work too, 1 more so than 2 depending on which system you use (and since development/design work costs money it can end up that buying a commercial system works out more cost effective than using open source, going the DIY open source system build route can sometimes be a false economy). To see what open source systems look like in their default state, have a look at www.opensourcecms.com

With options 1-3 it is good to see that you are thinking ahead and saying, choose a solution then get a host. It is very important to do it this way round (not everybody does) since ecommerce solutions do have specific hosting requirements. For example, Actinic has special hosting requirments which means that you wont be able to host it on just any old hosting plan, you will need a hosting plan that supports the special hosting requirements for Actinic (e.g. CGI-bin with Perl 5.02 or higher).

With option 4 the hosted managed solution route, there are other options apart from EKM (although it might interest you to know there is a member of this forum who has recently used EKM for their gift shop). There are members of this forum who also provide hosted managed solutions including www.internetretailer.biz (quickshop forum name), www.rentacart.co.uk (swservices forum name), and our www.awebapart.com service (with our service we recommend that clients purchase their domain separately at an established domain registrar like 123-reg.co.uk). Not all of these services are the same as EKM, some involve more handholding, some use custom versions of open source systems (e.g. rentacart use ZenCart, and we use our custom version of osCommerce for the online shop part of our websites).

 

[She Says]

We have a business running on a heavily modded and designed 'free' shopping cart. I say free as the software is free but all the modifications and design work have added up, not to mention the work I personally had to put into it (and learning curve).
I am setting up a new business and this time I am going to purchase a shopping cart. The time saved on having a cart pretty much ready to go will be worth it.
It might seem like a lot of money (£300 or so) when you want an initial outlay, and I know how things add up (I really do because I am going through it again myself!) but I can assure you that having a shopping cart with lots of features built it is just worth it. It is stressful working with some of the free options when the backend isn;t what it could be, and the experience for the customer is unprofessional and clunky.

 

[Deleted member 24278]

I have decided to give Zen cart a try, I spent some time on the weekend trying out some of the commercial software and decided that it was maybe too restrictive from a support point of view. I have spent some time talking to people from this forum, and have gone with one of them for hosting, and I will with a lot of googling, try and setup as much as I can of Zen cart for myself. If neccessary I will have to get someone to check it over and make sure I have not made any silly mistakes.

Can anyone point to any good guides for Zen cart with respect to UK customisation?

thanks

 

[Spiderden]

Can anyone point to any good guides for Zen cart with respect to UK customisation?

Most of the UK customisation can be done from the language files, the trickiest bit is changing the date format from mm/dd/yyyy to dd/mm/yyyy. I've explained how to do this here.

 

[Deleted member 24278]

Ahem yes date change was doing my head in, I had found the kg and the shipping offset in the Big Royal Mail add-in. I have also managed to sort Paypal out ( I think, I cannot pay with my own Paypal account, not sure how else to test it) As it stands I have placed a couple of dummy items in the store and it looks like it works, obviously I need to fill in the T&Cs Shipping policy etc, I have seen some online somewhere but I cannot remember where....
I will also need to think about logo etc, I have found a couple of free templates (I also found some expensive templates), are there many to be found?

 

[Spiderden]

If you look around the net you're find some T&C templates you can edit. There's even some on the Zen download page, though last time I looked they were all Americanised. There's plenty of templates available, you can start by checking http://www.dezinacart.com/.