I want to sell things via a website

black-saturn

I want to set up a website where I buy vintage clothes from second hand shops and sell them on again via a website. How or where can I build a site which has a shop and checkout facility on it? I could take the payments via paypal but I would need the item to disappear from the site once the item is bought otherwise the same item might sell twice. I'm willing to pay for software and/or hosting of the site. So can anyone point me in the right direction in simple terms please?

All useful posts will be thanked :j

*zippy*

I just bought one of these website boxes after seeing them recommended on here, I haven't tried it yet, so don't know if it has everything you are looking for. It has an optional shopping cart and at £35 it may worth you having a look at their website.

https://www.mrsite.co.uk

helen_vasey

We have built our own site with 123-reg. £65 for a years hosting and less then a fiver for a domain name, it can be a bit confusing at first, but you soon get the hang of it, your paypal account blends seamlessly into it. we go "live" next week hopefully. the uk business forums has some good ideas on ecommerce. at the moment we are selling in our ebay shop, but it is getting quite expensive, at least with paypal only you only have one set of fees to pay. the problem with ebay is that you have to try and recoup your fees with postage costs. one thing with paypal, you will have to upgrade to their business a/c and have a business bank account to register with them as a business seller.

skim

http://www.krystalhosting.co.uk are pretty good as webhosts. The £50 option should do all you need to start & you get a free domain name to go with the hosting. I run 3 shops within this oprion.

The guys that run it are contactable by phone & thats makes a huge difference.

Regarding shop software you can have something free like OSCommerce which is an easy install from the Control Panel but to be honest if you are going to be serious about your business then I'd pay for the software as OSCommerce has it's limitations.

I'd go for X-Cart Gold @ http://www.x-cart.com which is only $199 anyway.

You can use paypal but to be honest it doesn't look too professional.
I'd go for 2checkout as your payment gateway. http://www.2checkout.com

pbuckley

Just a thought...anyone tried hosting on a US server?

I hear theyre quite reliable.

skim

pbuckley wrote:

Just a thought...anyone tried hosting on a US server?

I hear theyre quite reliable.

I've heard someone say that before but can't work out why?

the link I posted to Krystalhosting above is a uk company that has servers in the US here https://www.theplanet.com/index.html?p=facilities

buglawton

Krystal looks interesting, their £50/year package seems to beat my current Easily package on features for similar money. Hosting should be coming down in price like broadband is.

For our backup and testing online shop I am using an Indian host - it's speed & uptime seem just as good as Easily's but it's half the cost.

Don't overlook Cubecart as a free fully functional shopping cart that integrates with Paypal & a lot of other gateways. Click on 'buglawton' and visit homepage to see our site which uses this cart. Oscommerce is also free, has more features but is 20 times as complex.

I just went thru the 2checkout demo. Looks a bit US-centric and lots of steps to get to Credit Card entry point, but I see that unlike Paypal it does not distract you with too many options. Looks good and no monthly sub, pity it's more expensice than Paypal though. We need a UK equivalent!

skim

one of the reasons I picked x-cart over Cubecart or OSCommerce is because my business has do deal with shipping abroad which neither Cubecart os OSC did particularly well.

Best thing to do though is get a website set up & then test out the various shops to find out whichever one suits you best.

There are quite a few more carts out there - Agora & Zencart & I guess plenty more are free too.

The reason I suggested Krystal is that I started with them 5 years ago & they have been great & helpful. Like I said before - you can actually ring them & talk to a real person. You can get cheaper hosts but sometimes you just get what you pay for & £50 a year isn't going to break the bank.

Kilty_2

Re US Servers, my company's website is hosted in the USA at GoDaddy and it's rock solid, as is the e-mail system.

£18 for a year's hosting (5GB storage and 250GB bandwidth I think, 500 mailboxes) and £6 for a domain when I purchased them, exchange rates + PayPal's cut (because I don't have Mastercard/Visa) make the price vary.

buglawton

X-cart vs Cubecart - correct, shipping in standard Cubecart is basic but I purchased an add-on for USD 20 that copes with flat-rate shipping up to 30kg for a UK postcode database and a set of EU country zones. Basic Cubecart is basic so there's a rich add-on market.

black-saturn

*zippy* wrote:

I just bought one of these website boxes after seeing them recommended on here, I haven't tried it yet, so don't know if it has everything you are looking for. It has an optional shopping cart and at £35 it may worth you having a look at their website.

https://www.mrsite.co.uk

Thanks. I think this is about the best one for me at the moment.