e-commerce web site project

unexploded

Hi Crux, I'll offer some advice as I run a small media company myself, and we've done a fair few ecommerce systems in our time for small businesses.

Your first option is probably the best option, paying a local company to do the work for you. The reason is, is because their staff should know how an end user (your customer) will navigate the site and therefore design the website with user experience in mind from the start of the project. You are paying good money for their knowledge; how to apply a user-friendly, good looking design, how to develop the website, etc. Make sure they know what they're talking about though - get in touch with other businesses that have used their services and ask their opinion.

You mentioned you might look at doing it yourself. I'll be totally honest and please don't take what I'm saying as offensive, as I'm not insinuating that the following applies to you. What happens a lot in our industry is that we'll get approached for a project, quote, and subsequently told that it's 'too expensive' for them and they'll do it themselves, or their computer geek nephew will do it for them. The site usually looks awful, goes against all coding standards, and sometimes they've even come back to us in the end. I understand investing in a website can be costly depending on what you want. But, you're paying for someone's knowledge, training and education, time, experience and overheads. Just like you'd expect that someone would pay for your services/products/expertise. Remember, you pay a lot of rent for a shop rent, a lot on rates, council tax, a logo and sign board. In comparison, a website doesn't cost that much and the potential audience is far bigger.

If you're going to do it yourself, may I recommend not using Dreamweaver to design the website (use it only for coding), and instead invest your time in understanding something like Wordpress and installing an e-commerce plugin. You could then approach a design agency who understand Wordpress and ask for a bespoke template to be designed for you.

I hope that helps. I understand if people may assume I'm biased with my opinion as we do specialise in web design, but one of the big factors to our success is that we've been honest and up front with our clients. If you want any more advice feel free to PM. Cheers.