Help with ecom shop

[preciousbags]

Hi all, has anyone heard of create.net

I want a quick out the box shop for a friend of mine who wants to start selling online.

Any good ones out there that are uk based?

Create.net seems quite good for what it offers. Unless there is better. Thanks

 

[Vision2]

looks terrible. but like everything - you get what you pay for, and in this case you are barely even paying peanuts so you will most likely get some deranged monkeys

From looking at their examples, the sites they do look terrible. but that's what you are paying for.

 

[preciousbags]

Any recommendation for something better

 

[Vision2]

on that price range? not really.

in all honesty, unless you are willing to pitch in a good grand or so it doesn't matter where you go the result will always be the same.

It's just simple maths, even on minimum wage you can work out the time that someone would 'possibly' spend on something minus 50% for profit margin on the business, and minus 20 - 30% on 'discussions' the rest is left on what time is spent physically on site.

Obviously this is insanely rough, but you get the general idea of how you can work that out.

It's a bit different when you are dealing with a freelancer, but the principle is still the same. The only difference is the freelancer doesn't have the overheads so can do better for the price. But there are 'take the piss' aspects that come into play.

 

[Giggleberries]

Try http://www.ekmpowershop.com.

Good for starting out and quite a few features.

 

[Setfire]

I would suggest Shopify for an off-the-shelf hosted application.

 

[mud-stx]

ekm powershop - something like £20/month
got some nifty features plus helpline
very good to start off with - can do seo as well

 

[Giggleberries]

I started out with EKM and it is an affordable way to get your foot on the ecommerce ladder.

It is very customisable and as you say, it is relatively SEO friendly and their customer support was very very good.

At the end of the day, you get what you pay for and so long as you appreciate that EKM is just a means to getting started and that as soon as your business develops you will then need to look at upgrading to perhaps a bespoke site (depending on your needs)

I would also suggest that if you only plan on using something like EKM for a short time and you envisage investing in a bespoke site in a year or two that will have new and unique URL's for subpages pages, then for the time being only link build to your home page (even though there is a work around for this).

 

[Viron Media]

It really depends on your budget. If it's less than about £500 I'd say you should try to go with a self-hosted open source solution such as Zen Cart, osCommerce or Presta Shop. This isn't always the best/recommended option but as I said, it really depends on your budget.

 

[TotalWebSolutions]

We have plenty of merchants using EKM and I can highly recommend them if you are just starting out.