Website Help

Ldoak1

I'm in the process of starting a small online shop and would appreciate if any one could help me with advice on obtaining a website - I'm pretty clueless when it comes to IT so building my own would be out of the question.

I noticed a few websites that allow you to use templates to design your own which they say is easy to follow and charge you a monthly fee for hosting etc would anyone recommend doing it this way or would it be better finding an actual designer - please help I don't know where to start or who to approach as there are so many companies on the web offering different packages.

Thank you

mynamesnotdave

Hi,
If you are wanting an online shop the best thing to do is to choose a web company that has online shop preinstalled for your use.
osCommerce is very good online shop software and its free.
OrchardHosting.com has it on all their packages and they're good if you need any help with setting up etc.
You shouldn't need to use a designer with online shops like this as its a fairly easy process to make your store and to make it compatible with your payment system (ie paypal).

chunter

Bespoke shopping carts are generally NOT good value for money unless you are a very big company.

Actinic.co.uk is most well known of the shop-in-a-box online shop systems.
I've also used Romancart.com and merchandiser.com but there must be dozens, if not hundreds of systems.
A UK based company is strongly recommended from experience. Time problems.

Paypal are very good for small numbers of items.
You can let shoppers pay using their Paypal account.
So you don't need credit card processing facilities..

Google Payments will be similiar to Paypal and will be with us very shortly.

But generally the templates offered will never fit properly with your website.

I find that it's usually a combination of the shopping cart features emvbedded into your website.
So I would recommend finding someone who has designed up a sucessful shop before to guide you through the can'ts don'ts and musthaves.

If potential customers think the website doesn't look right, you'll have problems getting their credit card details.

Elf_2

PayPal is the best way to pay and can be implemented into pretty much any site - it might also be worth trying e-commerce.
FastHosts.co.uk are a great webhosting company, fairly cheap, good webspace - plus they give you a really easy to use WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) SiteMaker. PM me if you need any more advice.

Ldoak1

Thank you - If I went with Fasthosts do I need to change my ISP to them as well and do you think it would be more beneficial to have a website designed and maintained by professionals or to use templates and D.I.Y it - I'm so confused!!
It will be a relatively small business nothing too ambitious - I'm basically looking for one to display products and to allow a payment system to be incorporated into it.

Thanks

Chippy_Minton

Ldoak1 wrote:

Thank you - If I went with Fasthosts do I need to change my ISP to them as well

No, you can keep your current ISP.

Ldoak1 wrote:

and do you think it would be more beneficial to have a website designed and maintained by professionals or to use templates and D.I.Y it - I'm so confused!!
It will be a relatively small business nothing too ambitious - I'm basically looking for one to display products and to allow a payment system to be incorporated into it.

It depends how quickly you want to get up and running. If you have no experience of web design, then there will be quite a long learning process with the DIY approach. For a small site, you could try the free Site Maker that comes with the hosting package and see how you get on. Maintaining a web site, whether you've built it yourself or had it designed by professionals, is relatively straightforward assuming you have the software package (e.g. Nvu, Dreamweaver, Frontpage) to do so.

nickmack

If you have a setup budget, this should dictate the options you have. A decent full site with shopping cart will set you back several thousand pounds.

Although it's much easier now for Joe Bloggs off the street to create a website for peanuts, you only have to browse the internet to see how many awful sights have been made.

Off the shelf online carts are available, but it would still require the site design to a certain extent. Remember, if you are trying to sell to people, you want to them to find the site attractive. If you have no idea of good design practice, HCI etc, you are risking turning people away.

Depending on your projected sales, you need to consider how you're going to accept payments. WorldPay is very common and has good protection, but the fees can be high if your volume is low and/or you have a high percentage of Credit Card transactions. If this is the case, maybe PayPal is a better idea.