need an online shop

joop123

Hi

Hope someone can help. My wife runs a successful ebay shop but now wishes to expand and requires her own website, i have offered to try to do this for her but have never done anything like this before. How easy are the ready made packages to set up and use. i have looked at 1&1 which seems to offer what she needs, has anyone any experience of them?

Thanks

Paddy

Woofles

Read this it may help.
http://forums.vnunet.com/thread.jspa?threadID=47367&tstart=0

smileyjohn

1&1 is a web hosting service, which of course you will need, but if you are looking for an online shop then there are four main Open Source products available:

Joomla
OS-Commerce
Drupal
Magento

All of them quite complex to use and set up, but essentially free. If you have money to spend have a look at:

Actinic

There is a 30 day free trial version to have a go with.

I would wait until you have decided which package you are going to use before selecting a hosting company because it will depend on what specification the software needs as to whether the host can supply it

bmwman

joop123 wrote: »

Hi

Hope someone can help. My wife runs a successful ebay shop but now wishes to expand and requires her own website, i have offered to try to do this for her but have never done anything like this before. How easy are the ready made packages to set up and use. i have looked at 1&1 which seems to offer what she needs, has anyone any experience of them?

Thanks

Paddy

Hi, essentially Iguess you want to keep cost down at first when building the site, until it is up and running succesfully. I may be able to help you, if you are intrested pm me and I will guide you the best way forward, in the interim you need to decide what methods of payments you want to accept, of course paypal is the easiest as you already use that, however merchant accounts can become expensive if your not getting as many sales as you expected. Feel free to get back to me, I am more than happy to set up a store for you and tutor you on how to use it.

thanks

buglawton

Some years ago I set up a retail + a wholesale online shop using Cubecart. There are 2 current versions of Cubecart (which is a UK based co BTW), Free and Paid, see http://www.cubecart.com/features/ for the comparison of features.

What I found nice is that this is tightly focussed product with practical add ons (eg Shipping Cost by Postcode and Country) and nice 'Skins' available cheaply. So it is quick to get up & running with a User Group to support you.

If you go to my MSE home page there's a link to one of our our shops. It is standard Cubecart a few versions back plus an off-the-shelf 'Skin' plus some tweaking of colours. By all means try out the shopping cart, just don't do the final Print Order or Proceed to Paypal/Google Checkout step as doing that would create a real order!

beer_tins

I've done an os-commerce site before, I found it quite easy, but I wouldn't recommend it if you haven't put a site up before.

A lot of people leave ebay and are then disappointed that they don't get as many sales from their own site. The fact is, unless you manage to score highly on relevant google searches you won't get the same interest. Also, a lot of people go straight to ebay to search for these items and don't even try google.

If you have the time and fancy trying it I'd suggest getting the site up (could take a while!), getting it into the search engines (post here again when you get to that stage) and finally getting your wife to provide a link to her new site in her ebay or paypal invoices. You'll find this gets her a few sales from repeat customers. At any rate, she should keep selling on ebay until she's happy with the volume of sales she's getting on her new site.

Just my 2p's worth.

noddy1792

I agree with beinerts, if you have never done one before, don't attempt it!
I have made 2 websites my self using a package called Mr. Site! Honestly it is the best I have ever used, according to forum rules i am not allowed to persuade people to buy a product, but out of my own experience I would highly recommend it, plus, all EFTPOS (Electronic funds transfer point of sale) is done through paypal, but still gives you the freedom of your own shop. Its good value, you get a '.com' website and hosting for £34.99 a year! Also it helps you choose relevant META tags which will help you come up in search results!

I'm not sure if this is allowed but i can show you a website i made using Mr. Site, if you pm me, because I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post the address!

Its a really great buy!

Hope this helps, and I wish your wife all the best for her new website!:D

aviator

why dont you just pay someone and get it done professionally.
It willl save you all the hassle and the website will look professional

joop123

thanks for all your replies 1&1 dosnt sound so good anymore. will investigate cubecart and mr site further

thanks

Paddy

Bob63

Just to add to the words of caution, I would seriously consider whether you should be making the move at all. Distance selling regulations are weighted in favour of the consumer and against the retailer. A few customer returns can be the difference between profit and loss. Furthermore, cardholder not present transactions are the merchants liability if a transaction turns out to be fraudulent. The type and average cost of goods you sell, you don't say what, can make a difference on the level of fraud that you attract.

buglawton

IMHO the key to retail on-line selling is the same as the key for running a good market stall: So long as you can find the right products at the right wholesale price and then you can find the right marketplace to be visible to your customers in, it is worth giving a go.

Don't assume that just because the investment needed to start an on-line shop can be quite low that is a automatically good idea. Get your products and market right in advance.

Having said that, running an on-line business is not as hazardous as OP above seems to suggest - just keep your wits about you and if using Paypal as your funds receiving mode, study Paypal's T's & C's well.