Things to consider when opening an online store website ?

[ahmadka]

Hi guys ... I have small offline business in which I sell small computer equipment.

What things should I consider in setting up a website for this ?

Some questions that comes to my mind are:

1) Should I host the website on a VPS, or should I purchase hosting on a site ?

2) What 'Shopping Cart' Management system should I use ? E.g. OpenCart is one I know .. Any others ? I would prefer free/open source ones, but can pay a little if needed.

3) How much HTML5/PHP/Javascript coding would be required ? Or can things be just installed in or something and then configured ? I have experience in C#/Java/C/C++ coding, but webbased coding is something I lack ..

 

[streambox]

I've made a few e-commerce sites for clients in the past, I used osCommerce.com . Now it's quite outdated and there are more modern ones like Magento, but I find it slow and clunk, osC is pretty lightweight, and easy to modify (and you'll need to modify a LOT to have it production-ready)

Anyway if you want less hassles and headaches, you can try some hosted service like shopify.com, they handle most of the heavy lifting so you can concentrate on selling

 

[wedge1001]

for 1) This depends on what you want to do an how big your business is. A good shared-hosting-plan with ssl-support is normally enough. The checkout and login, billing-informations etc. should always go via SSL-Cert. And not via a self-signed cert. Buy one. The cheapest aren't this expensive.

for 2) virtuemart (for joomla) but i don't like the new version.
I now use Prestashop since it has a good database-structrue (which is necessary for me, since most of the shops don't have a good api, which can handle the massive ammount of changes i normally will send) and looks nice, has good SEO-options and is fast - after the cache has been build up (normally takes only a few seconds)
i've also tried many others. opencard, magento, zen card, oscommerce, tomato, etc.
there are some i haven't testet: spree commerce, ubercart, zeuscard, afcommerce, cubecart, and so on.

just google the links for the shops

the only thing that's a bit strange in prestashop is the Layoutmanager, since your layout is controlled via containers (which is a nice thing), but i haven'T really understand why there are containers on a position that will show up on other positions.

for 3) most of the shops will work out of the box. You have to change the logo of course, and add your products and conatct details. Eventually configure which processes have to go via ssl.
if you won't change anything within design or description etc. you won't need to rewrite the code of the shops.

 

[Whoo]

1) VPS is good enough
2) Go for Magento, market leader. I have been working with it on a daily basis for over 2 years now
3) This depends on the level of custimization you require. There are a lot of modules available for Magento. If you would code it would require PHP, HTML, CSS and optionally Prototype. (Or jQuery/Javascript)

 

[todaydownload]

1) Should I host the website on a VPS, or should I purchase hosting on a site ?

Go for "cloud web hosting" you can pay only for what you are utilizing.

2) What 'Shopping Cart' Management system should I use ? E.g. OpenCart is one I know .. Any others ? I would prefer free/open source ones, but can pay a little if needed.

I am using Free word press eCommerce theme, which is more flexible and easy to manage it.

3) How much HTML5/PHP/Javascript coding would be required ? Or can things be just installed in or something and then configured ? I have experience in C#/Java/C/C++ coding, but webbased coding is something I lack ..

Less knowledge of PHP is enough for more customization, or else no code knowledge is required.

Hope this will help you....

 

[Nodeology]

1 - A VPS should be fine, I would suggest looking in the advertising forums here to find some good offers.

2 - Magneto is the best eCommerce software I have used so highly recommended

3 - Unless your looking to make your own theme for Magneto then you shouldn't need much coding knowledge