Shopping Cart on website

[Tim Baude]

Just wondering if those of you with websites have the ability for online shopping? I have very basic website at this time with an online company where I pay $4.95 per month and I have to do any updating and such. I am exploring upgrading my website with a local person who would maintain it and such. They have suggested a shopping cart with paypal capabilities.

I am a 1 man operation working part time out of my garage. My business is growing...already made twice as much as I made all of last year. Most of my business has been from people I know and my contacts. My regular job has put me in touch with many people that use my services. I would at some point like to do engraving as more full time and work part time at something else to keep insurance and a somewhat steady income and possibly one day make it full time.

What are your thoughts on the upgrade?
Thank you in advance.

[Dennis McGarry]

Adding a shopping cart to a exsiting site is not a problem for any decent web designer.

There are a lot of different carts out there. One thing I would suggest is looking at your current web hosting company, most have at least one shopping cart that can be installed by clicking. Then you only have to admin it through the web interface.

If your doesnt offer that, have the local guy, look into 1and1 hosting, very inexpensive host, and a TON of features! Its who i use for all my hosting needs. Not affilited with them just like them

Any other help, feel free to ask.

[Randy Digby]

We use Yahoo to host our web site (I maintain it) and handle the shopping cart. We do not use their merchant services because we calculate shipping based on weight, destination and method of shipment and charge only the actual shipping. Plus, we charge the card when the product is read to ship and not when the order is received. We once had a Yahoo merchant services account but dropped it because it really didn't offer us anything.

We use QuickBooks for invoicing/accounting and use their merchant services to process credit cards. The set-up works really well for us, having the merchant account being a part of our invoicing system. The system is hassle free and has never experienced any downtime other than a minute or two once or twice a year, that we've noticed. I'm sure there are cheaper solutions out there, but we are pleased with our setup.

[Randy Digby]

A note I forgot...Look at GoDaddy. They offer a variety of services including merchant accounts. I have use some of their services off and on and their customer service has always been impressive...I'm talking a live person, with solutions, in a few minutes.

[Robert McGowen]

I know nothing at all about the business that you are in...... but I do know something about websites and selling on them.

1. If you are currently maintaining your own website, I would keep it that way. Either someone is going to charge you monthly to keep up with it or they are going to charge you each time you want to change something. Change a trinket on the site, pay the programmer. Add something to your inventory, pay the programmer. Want to have a sale, pay the programmer. Want to change a price, pay the programmer. Don't do anything at all, pay the programmer. You get the idea.

2. Most shopping carts are just copy and paste to your website and you add the product description and price. Easy to do and easy to change stuff.

3. It looks like most of your business is local. On the web, you are going to have to take credit cards or you are just wasting your time. You can just take Paypal if you want to though. You get your shopping cart and add the Paypal payment button, again just copy and paste from the Paypal site. I would take both credit cards and Paypal together.

4. Set up your cart so that you run the charges manually. It will be cheaper, plus a lot less trouble on a small scale.

5. You need to set up some sort of shipping plan. You will never sell anything if you say something like "e-mail me what you want and I will get a quote and then let me know how you want to ship it and I will get a quote on that and then you can decide if you want it after I already have an hour into pricing it out." Not really, but you can see what I mean.

6. There are quite a few things to consider, other than just "adding a shopping cart." I would either do nothing or go all the way. If you are planning on succeeding, you will need to take credit cards, have a shopping cart, etc. If you are planning on not succeeding, you are probably on the right track by short-changing your ability to maximize your business.

All of the above is just my opinion and experience and is worth exactly what you are paying for it. :rolleyes:

[Tim Baude]

I actually use 1and1 right now.....somewhat happy with them. Cheap enough. But working a 40+ hour a week job, 3 kids, little coaching, then the actual laser engraving business, not much time to play with website. I know I should, but trying to find time is tough. The charge right now would be $150 per page to build, $35 per month to host. They take care of any and all updates and working on getting me on the search engines. I live in a small town and the businesses try to work together and help each other out. They said they probably would work with me. This would have a shopping page with paypal at this time. I also use quickbooks for invoicing. Still not great with all the other parts of it. Thank you for all the input and I welcome any more that others have.
Tim

[Dennis McGarry]

150 to build? How extensive are you looking to have the site? also 35 a month to host, seems a little high for 1and1.

If you want drop me a line and I will see if I can help you out some..

[Tim Bateson]

Actually I was going to say that's a fantastic price jump on it! BUT..... before you do here is my 2 cents...
A web designer CANNOT design your web site, they CANNOT organize your website. They CANNOT put content on your website. Before someone tries to correct me read on...
They are not in the laser business, they do not know your business. They only understand web coding. YOU still have to provide all of the content, all of the text, all of the pictures, and how all of that gets organized.
After loosing several orders due to bad shopping cart software, I dropped my cart. It was too much work maintaining it anyway for the few orders that did go into it. 90% of my web customers prefer to deal directly with me via email or phone.
One last piece of advice - in 2 parts. 1. Free shopping carts are worthless so pay the big $ for a good one. 2. Free PayPal is near worthless too - you'll have to pay for a decent PayPal interface.
Bottom line - if you want to go the shopping cart route, you better have a LOT of orders to pay for it all.

[Dennis McGarry]

Actually I was going to say that's a fantastic price jump on it! BUT..... before you do here is my 2 cents...
A web designer CANNOT design your web site, they CANNOT organize your website. They CANNOT put content on your website. Before someone tries to correct me read on...
They are not in the laser business, they do not know your business. They only understand web coding. YOU still have to provide all of the content, all of the text, all of the pictures, and how all of that gets organized.
After loosing several orders due to bad shopping cart software, I dropped my cart. It was too much work maintaining it anyway for the few orders that did go into it. 90% of my web customers prefer to deal directly with me via email or phone.
One last piece of advice - in 2 parts. 1. Free shopping carts are worthless so pay the big $ for a good one. 2. Free PayPal is near worthless too - you'll have to pay for a decent PayPal interface.
Bottom line - if you want to go the shopping cart route, you better have a LOT of orders to pay for it all.

Mostly all true.

A good designer gets to know the market, the type of business, the products offered and the person behind the scenes. We will work very closely with the owner to make sure that it is Their vison that is conveyed, much the same way you would with a customer wanting a custom piece engraved.

As for the free carts, yes and no, if you have a good hosting company that already has the software there, through many vending arragements, then you can get some really good ones. Also the basic paypal carts are crap, you need to know the Paypal API and customize to the sites needs.

[scott keller]

I am not an expert by any means.

My first site is a pretty large site that I built using www.mals-e.com (http://www.mals-e.com)
It is totally free. It is secure so you don't have to pay extra for the ssl cert and such. It collects the credit card info securely and you process the card manually. I have used this for probably close to 10 years without any problems at all. I highly recommend it if you do not need a database driven site, have a little programming knowledge, and don't have a huge number of items to sell. It does well.

I have no affiliation with them other than being a fan.

[Doug Griffith]

A good web designer is more than just that. A good web designer is also a programmer that will deliver a CMS for you to manage your site yourself. For a web designer to get to know or learn the market the website targets is going to take time. Time that must be paid for. You are looking for a well designed skeleton of a website with a CMS that allows you to modify and evolve it in a manner that increases sales. That is it's main purpose.

As for shopping carts, you get what you pay for. Make sure it does real-time processing with a back-end that meets your needs.

Regarding SEO, take what they say with a grain of salt.

[Darren Null]

1. If you are currently maintaining your own website, I would keep it that way. Either someone is going to charge you monthly to keep up with it or they are going to charge you each time you want to change something. Change a trinket on the site, pay the programmer. Add something to your inventory, pay the programmer. Want to have a sale, pay the programmer. Want to change a price, pay the programmer. Don't do anything at all, pay the programmer. You get the idea.
It can work like that; and often does if you go with a 'new media' company. But it doesn't have to. I've been doing webdesign of late (frankly- webdesign is paying and lasering isn't); and what I've been doing is building the infrastructure and letting my customers get on with filling it up after a short course on how to work it.

It depends purely upon the skills of the customer- there's a great deal to know. Some people can't be bothered/are intimidated by complex internet stuff; and that's when they get charged big time. Some people (the vast majority of peeps on this board, I should think) are DIY types and you can save a lot of money by doing the work yourself. Now if you give the web chap your camera card and say 'put this lot in the shop', the web monkey (if he's good) will have to take the photos, do levels, crop, resize and save a bunch of photos. Upload them to the web. Write descriptions (either made up on the spot or written on the back of a till receipt...yes, I've had both). OF COURSE you're going to get charged.

If, on the other hand, you are capable of taking product photos; (optionally) optimising them; resizing them (600px on the longest side works); logging into the control panel of your shop and uploading your image and writing a description, then you're 90% of the way there. Web designers don't really want to do this bit anyway...it's boring.

There's several phases to getting an online shop going...here's the workflow:

1) Work out how you're going to get your product to the customer. Packaging, cost and timing. Add these costs to the cost of the product and decide whether people will buy your product at the combined cost. You'd be AMAZED at how many people don't consider this when thinking about going online.

2) Buy domain name. A .com, by preference. Also, decide whether you want an SSL certificate; or whether you can make do with a shared one. If you want your own SSL certificate, it'll cost you at least $10 for the first year ($79 the second)(there are free ones, but usually with a catch built in), and can easily run up to $500/year plus. Also, your own SSL certificate REQUIRES that your site has it's own IP address; which ups the price of your hosting. Your own cert shows https://www.yourname.com, when it goes to the secure bits. A shared certificate shows a different domain name like https://secure.completelydifferentname.com in the secure bits. If you use the Paypal IPN, you're only taking delivery addresses, so a shared certificate is adequate, if you can explain what to expect to your customers before they get the popup. If you're taking money directly, you need your own certificate, no exceptions. NB: A green bar will really cost you.

3) Get hosting. There's some good free hosts, there's some bad expensive ones. Do your research. You can get adequate hosting for $10/year if you don't mind a shared SSL certificate.

4) Attach domain name to hosting by tinkering around with the DNS. Easy enough, usually. Just RTFM. A word of advice here: DON'T get your domain name from your hosting provider. If the provider tanks, or if you get into an argument about billing, then they have you by the tender parts. No domain name, no biz. Don't do it, even if they're offering a free one. .coms are only $10/year.

5) Set up your shop. This can range from simple and step-by-step, to head-meltingly complex. Depends which shop you go for. And what toys you decide you must have. There are some immensely good free ones around. There's some immensely good ones with support for a reasonable 1-off payment. There's some COLOSSALLY expensive ones. I like free, myself.

6) Sort out payment and shipping options. You already know all about the shipping because you had that 100% sorted in step 1, right? Payment: there's 2 ways to go: PayPal/Moneybookers or take cash directly. The sort of volume most of us are doing, PayPal is the sensible way to go...if the customer doesn't have a paypal account they can pay by credit card. Taking cash directly requires a merchant bank account (monthly charge, initial hoops to jump through, need for beefed-up site security). It's more complicated and much more expensive, unless you're doing SERIOUS monthly sales. The paypal button is a bit lame. Not to mention hard work for multiple products. The paypal IPN is free, smooth and does the job.

7) Fill your site up with products. This requires a photo, description, weight and price, for each item. With a page refresh between each item. Well, there are ways of directly stuffing the database from a spreadsheet; but that's definitely not for the faint of heart.

8) Market your site. This bit's a whole career right here. You have to be active about marketing your site: adverts; adding it to your sig in forums (except SMC); putting it on flyers and business cards at least. MANUALLY submitting your site to google and other search engines. On this note, don't be tempted to copy and paste stuff from other sites. You'll be caught and marked down for it.

9) Sit back and deal with orders. Except that it's very important that you keep your webshop current. New versions with bugfixes and security updates come out periodically and you HAVE to keep current to try and stay abreast of the villains. Updating applies to the shop and EVERY SINGLE PLUGIN/TOY that you decided you must have when building it.

10) OK, now you can sit back and deal with orders. Until another update comes out. And marketing, of course, is a continuous process.

All of the above can range from $10 (for the domain name- the rest being free) to amazingly unbelievable amounts of money. And you don't necessarily get more by paying more. You can farm any or all of the above out and it'll all cost you. Because it's all big scary technological stuff; you can also easily get stitched right up because you don't know enough.

The one thing you have to make sure of- get all the access passwords for everything. And if you do have to get somebody in to fix stuff, make sure you change the passwords afterwards.

The charge right now would be $150 per page to build, $35 per month to host.
:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek: You are being done up like a kipper, as the saying goes. Do you want to buy this bridge? Only one careful lady owner...

A web designer CANNOT design your web site, they CANNOT organize your website. They CANNOT put content on your website.
I agree with the last bit. I AM in the laser business and I can't write your content for you. I don't have your detailed knowledge of your particular materials, finishes, techniques and applications. I'm not qualified to make promises on your behalf and I don't love your products. This will show.

As a webdesigner, I am perfectly capable of designing the website and organising it though. Data is data.

It is secure so you don't have to pay extra for the ssl cert and such.
How does that work then? Ah! It's a 3rd party service who offer a free hosted cart in the hope that you'll buy the paid service (plus adverts?). This is certainly an option to consider. I wouldn't do it myself, mind. Too much dependency on a 3rd party for me. I like a 'Plan B' in place.

A good web designer is more than just that. A good web designer is also a programmer that will deliver a CMS for you to manage your site yourself. For a web designer to get to know or learn the market the website targets is going to take time. Time that must be paid for. You are looking for a well designed skeleton of a website with a CMS that allows you to modify and evolve it in a manner that increases sales. That is it's main purpose.
Yes! Exactly.

As for shopping carts, you get what you pay for.
There are some outstanding free ones. There are some awful free ones too.

Regarding SEO, take what they say with a grain of salt.
Amen. Particularly don't listen to black hat marketers. They can get you delisted from google.

[Doug Griffith]

The one thing you have to make sure of- get all the access passwords for everything. And if you do have to get somebody in to fix stuff, make sure you change the passwords afterwards.

Very True. Also get the source files that were use to develop the site. If Flash is used, get the .fla files. For the design elements, try to get the fonts and working vector/bitmap files. Then, when your webmaster goes missing, which happens more often than you'd think, you'll have what you need to keep the existing design online and not have to start from scratch for a simple change.

For the same reason as above, I also suggest using a programming language that is common. I've had to fix more than one Cold Fusion site gone bad because nobody in town could work on it. PHP guys are easy to find so use that if you can.

[Darren Null]

It's also not rocket science to get the site to back itself up and email itself to you once every week or so. Most hosts these days allow for cron jobs. And a backup will allow you to get back in the game quickly even if several things go wrong at once.

And never believe "99.9% uptime". Everybody says that. If your host HAS managed 99.9 uptime, that just means it's your turn next...

Also don't let ANYONE have the password for your domain. That is your trump card. Even if you get simultaneously stuffed at every point in the chain; you'll be able to flick your domain to point somewhere else and rebuild. Your website hiccups, but you retain control. Buy the domain separately and keep the login as secure as humanly possible. You will probably have to fill in the DNS server names for your host, (so the domain goes to the right place...the host catches it and points it to your specific area of internet space). Do that yourself and nobody has any reason to see it.

[Doug Griffith]

Also don't let ANYONE have the password for your domain.

I've seen too many problems related to this than I can remember. Note to anyone with a website reading this: contact your webmaster now and ask for your registrar log-in information. Then log in and make sure the domain is in your name and that you are the administrative contact. If not, do what it takes to make that happen. Do it now because it takes time to transfer information and you don't want to do it last minute if things get ugly.

I hate to admit it but I have log in information to MANY domains that are not mine. The big problem is when webmasters put themselves as the administrator/owner. That is when the domain can be held hostage.

[Darren Null]

...or hosting companies. They're sods for that. Better nowadays, but I remember a few cases when t'internet was steam-powered where hosting companies jacked up the fees because they had you by the domain name.

Or went bust.

EDIT: Your domain is not just a cheap $10 easy to type thing, you see. In it is the accrued value of your site (that can be replaced); and all the time and money that you've spent marketing it (that can't).

[Dave Wagner]

Putting up Paypal Shopping buttons and Shopping Cart is very easy via Paypal. There is a plug in for Frontpage (if you use that) and it creates the code for you, there are only about 10 lines of code for each item and you can just duplicate it for other items or use the menu plug-in.

I have been selling stuff on my site for 5-6 years now, only accept Paypal Online (checks/MO) offline. And have never had a problem.

PM me if you need info or help. (no charge).

[Mitchell Andrus]

One big difference between the 'add-on' type and a purpose-built cart engine is the complexity of the product shown on the screen. Have a look at recessed cabinets on my site. The amount of work involved in this is incredible and way beyond an add-on website's abilities.

If you don't need specials/sales, choice of shipping methods, real-time shipping quotes, Quick Books integration, etc., you'll do well with a quickie website. Just make it look like a professional designed it.

I'll add:

Take the time to get hooked up with a cart engine that you can grow into. It's one thing to set up 10 products with no wood/stain choices. It's very annoying to re-build 100 products in a new engine because you now want to offer choices for each product.

And... get good at processing images. Pictures sell products. I've been selling on the web for 12 years and I still don't like my meager efforts at photography.
.

[Frank Hagan]

And never believe "99.9% uptime". Everybody says that. If your host HAS managed 99.9 uptime, that just means it's your turn next...


I have never had less than 99.9% uptime on my server over the past 6 years, including planned downtime for updates and maintenance (I'm on a shared server too, but with a very good webhost).

In the last 140 days, my 99.975% still means the site was down for 2 hours, 9 minutes and 53 seconds (combined time) over that period. The uptime is independently monitored by Wormly now (previously it was by Alerta).

If the host doesn't publish links to an independent uptime monitor, don't believe the claim. But it is possible to get a good host that provides that kind of uptime.