Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I am a graphic/web designer and have owned my own business for over 8 years. We have recently decided to focus almost completely on web design. We create informational websites in-house from start to finish. Although that is what we specialize in, lately 90% of our quote requests have been for ecommerce solutions. We have tried outsourcing this portion of the site to US based companies...but they are way too expensive.  We need to be able to mark up the project as well in order to provide project management for the client. We have even tried some India based companies, and they have been expensive also.

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I know I will not be able to solve every clients problem with one simple cart. But if I could find a solution that allows me to adapt a design, and create a straightforward cart with the ability for clients to make their own changes to products/prices/descriptions, with paypal, google checkout and authorize.net capabilities, maybe we could at least focus our efforts on clients that need this type of solution. I do not currently have a strong opinion on whether or not it should be a free cart, or something I pay for...it is more important that it is easy to use for both me and my clients.

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Diamond Designs By Valecia Brown
A Web & Graphic Design Boutique
Affordable, Professional, Exquisite Design Solutions
http://www.byvalecia.com
Contact@byvalecia.com
850.284.0060

I`ve been using PayPal Shopping Cart service for a couple of years now and I have been very pleased with the service.  And it`s free.  Sort of...  The PayPal fees are higher per transaction, but there`s no other charges or fees.  No monthly fees, no equipment fees (no equipment), just a per-transaction fee.

If you are anticipating a low-volume of transactions, then you can`t beat the PayPal system.  If your online business will be handling dozens of credit cards every day, then you should go the Merchant Account or an eCommerce solution.



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Steve Mann
Internet Videographer
MannMade Digital Video
My Email

Hi Robin:

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Frank Burmesch
When life gives you lemons, share the lemonade!
http://www.AWiseOnesGuideBooks.com
http://www.AWiseOnesGuide.com

ThinkTank,
For someone that claims to be a web designer, you`ve sure been living in a cave for the last; well, for as long as you`ve been in business. But, it is very common for some web design companies to focus on one area of web development and not the other, but by far every web designer / developer that I know have had their share of having to provide an ecommerce solution to one of their clients at one time or another.

But (Im going to echo Roland "VW") and it`s true what he is saying, there are various ecommerce solutions out there that you can use but it all depends on the features and needs of your customers. For example, some shopping carts can handle digital downloads and others can`t or maybe they could but you have to buy the modules individually.

Then you have, the Generic Shopping carts that you can modify to meet your customers needs and expand their functionality as their business grows.. For example: Multi-Payment processing, Image uploads, Client side Admin panel, and Store owner Admin Panel (to upload their own products).
My rule of thumb is, The more features the better, even if the customer doesn`t use all of them, because you never know when the customer wants to expand and the least I want to do is re-visit a web site that I`ve developed, modified, or designed 8 month down the road and try to pick up where I left off.

There are various solutions out there that you can use, but it all depends if you want to use Open Source, or if you want to pay a monthly subscription for the Shopping Cart License.

Finally, If you`re going to develop a shopping cart system... Don`t start SMALL and Grow BIG... It is COSTLY and your business can suffer if you are already ranking and indexing on the search engines. Not to mention if you have customers signing up.
Ecommerce shouldn`t be costly if it`s done correctly the first time.





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Edgar Monroy
Web Developer / Owner / Consultant
When starting your own business the need to "know-how" is greater than money!
http://www.nuevolution.net

One of my customers uses the PayPal cart/code and it`s really easy to administer but the overhead to set one up is a wee bit high.

There are tons of great carts out there and I`ve used many myself.  I would stay away from the free ones and concentrate on the paid carts.  The best place to find a good list of carts is not to look in Google search for carts but to Online credit card processing companies.  The good credit card processing companies (like Authorize.net) always have an `approved` list of shopping carts.  THIS would be the best place to start looking for cart solutions.  From there look for the companies that have online demos of their carts and good support staff that is available 24/7.

For example here`s the direct link to Authorize.net `approved` shopping cart solutions:

http://www.authorize.net/certified_solution_directory.asp?page_id=38927&type_of_solution=22673

Good luck and feel free to ping us if you need help!


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Aaron Wood
CEO
San Diego Dream Weavers
http://www.sddreamweavers.com
awood@sddreamweavers.com

New and improved! Now with blogging goodness!
http://www.sddreamweavers.com/san-diego-seo-marketing-blog/

I`ve set up eCommerce for clients using a variety of options.  It really depends on what they need.

I don`t agree that if you pay for it, that script is necessarily better.  I`ve looked at paid shopping cart comparisons and Zen Cart has them all beat on features.

However, unless you are willing to get into the code, troubleshoot and update, you probably want to go with a paid solution that provides technical support.





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If you are looking for something easy to develop look at OsCommerce!