Online Shops

[eddy]

Hi all I was wondering if any one on YD had setup an online shop before and could give me some advice?

I have seen that a few YD members have business websites with shops attached and wanted to know how difficult it was to build an online shop?

I like the idea of using a paypal shop but I have no experience of creating websites with shops?

If anyone can cast a light over the subject of building an online shop I would appreciate it.

Eddy

[Woz]

Dead easy.

Paypal has a downloadable tool to create "buy now" buttons but once you see how they are written it's easy.

Otherwise there is a free shopping cart system that loads of people use www.mals-e.com but this relies on the shop having a merchant account so they can put through the transactions manually. Good for small volumes.

[Scuby]

Depends what you want from it. Easiest way is probably something like an e-bay shop, but they don't give a very professional image (in my opinion). If you look at Woz's site (kitfondle.co.uk) that is a nice looking site but all the back-end stuff is done through PayPal. I'm sure PayPal will give detailed instructions on what you need to do to link your website to their payment service. I assume you know how to build basic websites already? In which case its likely to be simply linking to the right pages that paypal tell you to link to, but i'm not certain about that.

If you want a bigger "proper" online shop then you can get software off-the-shelf that will do that kind of thing, setup fairly easily and use templates and things, but obiously there is the cost to buy and you will also need to be able to process card payments.

For a small-medium sized shop i'd probably go the PayPal way - look on their website and it'll no-doubt tell you all you need to know.

David

[DiveNow]

Hi There,

I am currently setting up a new online shop. The current one is build with Frontpage... it works but no "fancy" things like a shoping basket or anything. The new is made with OS-commerce... free program. Took me a while but I think it's making the shop 200% better..

Matter off tast I guess. Mind you the more items, sizes, brands and colors the longer it takes to fill the shop...

[eddy]

Cheers for the advice all,

I think we will have a shot at the paypal online shop option.

Eddy