Thread: ECommerce Development Anyone?

I'm surely not the most qualified on this topic, but I've built some stuff before. And my company has had sites built (not e-commerce but we've dealt with professional designers). $2-10k is easy to spend and is not necessarily going to even get you a very sophisticated site. But I'm guessing these are probably quotes for custom work, and if working on a low cost platform is a concern, then he may just want to go with a template site with ecommerce. Like Yahoo...I'm not a huge fan of them overall, but my experience is that they have good customer service, and you can get a site through them with everything he needs to sell a few pieces like you describe. He could thrown up a template site with a custom logo for next to nothing, make some sales and get a custom piece when he has the cash. Hosting is pretty inexpensive also when you start this way.

Thanks for the feedback, Rxcknrxll!

I had no idea there were templates! Looking into them now.

That's kinda what I was thinking (although my brother may have other ideas) - just something to get started and then get custom/fancy, once the revenue starts rolling.

what kind of site is he looking for? does he want an ecommerce site? one which is graphic intensive?

i can hook him up with a guy who did some work for me. he's more on the "good looks" aspect and not so much the back end stuff though.

ryan

From my experience on the customer service side, it is hard to beat Tom at aptohosting.com. His service has been great.

PhlGirl, I just wen through the exact same thing you're talking about. My mom owns a small jewelry business, and I've been helping her out with some things. She wants a well-designed ecommerce site, she has a small product line as well - 10 to 12 items.

First I figured I'd try to go local, so I contacted all of the web designers I could find in the three counties near us. Most of the quotes were in the $3,000 to $20,000 range. Very high for my mom's small budget. Then I figured I'd try Craigslist. I posted an ad describing what we're looking for, our budget, and asked to see portfolios of live sites. I was amazed at the great response. I got over 50 replies, and they're still trickling in months later. I narrowed down the list, picked our 10 favorite designers, and we're going to make the final choice in the next week or so.

So, you might want to give that a try. As far as realistic pricing, $1,000 seems to the the bare minimum estimate from our CL responses. Hope that helps!

I'm not an ecom guy but I suspect there are some inexpensive off-the-shelf type options out there.

I'd start there:

• Amazon Storefront
• OsCommerce
• Magento
• Ubercart
• Yahoo Stores
• Ebay Stores

This is just off the top of my head; I'm sure there are a dozen others that can be implemented for the cost of the learning the software. I know Kenric started an ECom site with no dollars development dollars.

Google "Open Source Ecommerce" and see what treasures await ...

Isn't this something AptoHosting does? May want to ask him. Also, there is a site who's name escapes me at the moment where you can submit a web project and have people bid on it. The upside is I heard most of the individuals are pleased with the results (and price), but most of the time the entities doing the job are located far away (like in other countries, e.g. Russia). I'll try to remember the name of the site.

Originally Posted by NoMoneyDown

Isn't this something AptoHosting does? May want to ask him. Also, there is a site who's name escapes me at the moment where you can submit a web project and have people bid on it. The upside is I heard most of the individuals are pleased with the results (and price), but most of the time the entities doing the job are located far away (like in other countries, e.g. Russia). I'll try to remember the name of the site.

Sounds like Elance.com

FYI: I changed the title name so it might attract the right viewers.

NoMoney Down, the site you are thinking about is www.elance.com

I highly recommend this site to anyone. I've had some web site and other projects done using elance and the results were great.

Thanks PHX

Like everything, it all comes down to what you want to do. Each shopping cart software has a different purpose and there are LOTS of solutions out there.

I’m sure you could give OsCommerce (or Zen Cart) a try, its free and it looks like it has everything you need. The main thing with both of them is that making a custom look & feel can be pretty difficult although I have done it several times. You can always buy a template though, but its not very pro.

If you are going to do a website based on the “Joomla” CMS system (in case you want a “shop” section in your site and not just an ecommerce site), then you can give VirtueMart a try.

For bigger systems you can try “X-cart”, it has this affiliate module that allows you to get people selling your products online for a comission, and everything on (almost) autopilot.

I haven’t tried “Shopify.com” service yet but it looks like it could be good for testing a product in a certain market without having to develop a full blown system at first. Although its not that customizable it could be good for testing purposes in my opinion.

I have played with Interspire’s shopping cart and it looks great, specially in the design department.

Bottom line is, there are way too many solutions out there to pick just one as the winner, your best bet is to define what you need and then ask your programmer what’s the best fit.

Thanks guys!!!!

I knew I could count on you!

And, thanks, MJ, for changing the name of the thread. I didn't even know enough to know that 'Ecommerce' was the terminology I was missing. Now, I can point him my bro in the right direction.

You guys are the best.

Volusion has a pretty nice cookie cutter site. You are looking at $50/mo for the site, $50/mo for credit processing services. $150 startup. It's not bad actually for someone who wants a store instantly.

Try out their free demo site for 2 weeks, you can add your products on there and really see how your store will look and how to add and change products. Then if you like it after 2 weeks, you upgrade to a paid package.

Their biggest drawback is bandwidth, they charge alot for it.

You can probably get a site built on oscommerce for $1000 on elance.com. I think the problem for 1st time store owners is that they don't know what they want. All they know is that they want a store.

I should add, there is no way that I would ever pay more than $2,000 to get an ecom store setup. I can't imagine what they would do for $10,000. Think of how many shirts you need to sell to recoup that!

As for bells and whistles, what you really need is a clean store, easy to navigate and checkout and decent order processing system.

The rest of your store's success comes from "out of store" work, such as link building, marketing, adwords, seo, etc... Save some money for this aspect insteading of pouring it into the store for fancy stuff. You can always do that later after you have money coming in.

Originally Posted by biophase

I should add, there is no way that I would ever pay more than $2,000 to get an ecom store setup. I can't imagine what they would do for $10,000. Think of how many shirts you need to sell to recoup that!

A lot of these guys just install commerce packages (some FREE!) and pawn it off like they actually developed it, charging the end user $1,000's. The buyer has no clue that all they did was find the software, download it, install it, configure it, and present it. Of course, the aforementioned is worth a fee, but not $10,000.

Seeing that I own a company that does this, I would like to put in my $.02.

$10,000 for a site is not uncommon. $20,000 for a site is not uncommon.

If you're using a kid in his room doing nothing then, go right ahead. If you want a site that is custom designed, all security holes are plugged, and the ecomm side of the site is solid and error free, you are going to have to spend the money. Do I think his site is worth 10,000? No, not at all. That's not to say that no site is worth that.

I have a customer right now that has a site up and running that we built for her and she makes around $15k-$20k/mo. When she bought he site, she did it right and paid the price. We built her a one off shopping cart, not a off of the shelf product, and designed it to her specifications, and integrated a lot of nice features. She has multiple languages, price conversions, instant credit card transactions that pull actual receipts, cross referencing of products, and many other great things. The difference is, she paid of a bit more money initially so if something was to go wrong, we could support it. Who is going to support you when a credit card gets stolen off of your site after using a "free' software? Sure they can say that they are secured, but its all about your server and the use of SSL certs.

Being cheap in some cases is fine, but it's not always the answer. Im not trying to plug my business by any means, as I am selling it anyways. Im just letting everyone know that its not always advisable to go the cheapest way. With free software, there's always holes and back doors, because they are easily available.

Good luck either way


Best,


PerryC

For a t-shirt store, I'd probably open up a free cafepress store ( http://www.cafepress.com/ ) upload the designs, they handle EVERYTHING else, and test your sales.

Then once you know you have a winning product, go and build your own store.

My 2 cents

Love that idea, Jonleehacker! Thank you for that.

Although I am certainly no expert (in t-shirts or websites), I am of the thinking that he will want to make sure the products sell before investing too much in start-up costs.

I will certainly mention it to him. +++