Creating/Running an online store

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Grant29

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Jul 29, 2006
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Slightly off topic for affiliate marketing...

I've got a friend that has an offline store. He's looking to get a website developed and sell his products online. He wants to have an online shopping cart and let people order online. He'll take care of all the billing and shipping himself.

He's also looking for someone (preferbly the same person) to maintain the site. Basically adding new pictures, product descriptions, price changes etc to the site. I assume this is going to be through a backend interface to the database.

Can anyone recommend a service that he might be able to contact that would handle something like this?

Thanks.
 


Yahoo shop of course would be one suggestion. The other would be to use oscommerce or another open source ecommerce backend.
 
Deliguy said:
Yahoo shop of course would be one suggestion. The other would be to use oscommerce or another open source ecommerce backend.
Click to expand...

Can the Yahoo shop be branded so that it wouldn't look like a yahoo store? The guy is looking to establishing an online presence.
 
hell yes. they have generic templates but you can do whatever with cutom logos and colors. Yahoo is a trusted name to. He will have his own domain that he will own.

Grant29 said:
Can the Yahoo shop be branded so that it wouldn't look like a yahoo store? The guy is looking to establishing an online presence.
Click to expand...
 
I'll also recommend Zen Cart, it's an osCommerce fork (i.e. open source)

It's a robust PHP/MySQL cart, ongoing development, plenty of mods for little tweaks, bells & whistles.
 
I like osCommerce just because there are so many amazing templates out there for it. It's also pretty easy to customize yourself.
 
It depends if cost is a concern or not. The easiest, but most expensive method is to hire a local firm to do the shop online. This is also the only method that will accommodate your friends desire to have all of the updating of the site done by someone else. Unless he hires an employee to do either of the options below.

Next is yahoo stores, I have not used them because of the cost 39.95 a month, plus processor fees (only if they process your payments). I assume--probably wrongly--that they are easier to setup then oscommerce.

I personally set up my shop on my own domain with oscommerce--there is a learning curve if you want your site to look unique and handle all of your products attributes. But, I only pay hosting fees (less then 10 a month) and I use my old processor.

Do not assume though that just because you set-up your shop online it will succeed. Pricing online is totally different then pricing in a retail shop usually.

Joel
 
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