On line store

[SantasWorkshop]

If I am not at the right place I hope someone will tell me where to go. I have a website but I would like to put a store on it. I would like information on a shopping cart. I am new at this and not sure what I should be looking for. I have a store, real one not on line, and I would like to sell some of the merchandise on line. I hope that will help with the total sales, especially in my off season.

So any advise about shopping carts would be very welcome. I am very green at this.

Thank you

[dm01]

Do you have a website set up? If so, may we have a link?

What business are you in?

What is your target market?

What is your preferred method of payment?

[DonaldG]

You mention that you already have a real life store selling merchandise. You must make a serious commercial decision before you go any further.

Set a budget for your online store. Do not set it too low. Do not do one 'on the cheap'. (see below) I give some approximate costings of stores that I am doing at the moment. An on line store has the potential of outstripping the sales of your real life store many times if it is done properly.

You must also invest time in getting it up and maintaining it. You do not have to be an expert in design or in web creation to put up a professional looking and working online shop.

I recommend that you consider using ready built on-line shop software. There are many packages available. Most of them work on a 'Template' system where you enter product information, price, sales tax info, shipping costs, handling fees etc.

Personally, I use 'Actinic Catalog V8' which is available for a 30 day trial. There are other ecommerce packages but I settled with Actinic because of the excellent Ecommerce forum they run and that the package comes with an example shop that you can experiment with.

The creation of an online shop takes several steps:
* Acquire the appropriate ecommerce software. Make sure that it is able to handle secure online credit card transactions etc...
* Select a template design that suits your product range.
* Experiment with it - it will not take long to be able to learn enough to go 'live'. As you grow in skill & confidence, you can always upload variations/modifications to the designs at a later date.

* You will need to get a web name (domain name) that suits your business. Keep it as simple as possible.

* Once you have the domain name, You will need to have the website hosted somewhere. Again, be careful to find the right place who can offer the facilities that the ecommerce software uses... (I also use Actinic to host my sites)

The most important aspect of any on line store is to MARKET THE WEB ADDRESS. I cannot over stress this point. Paint the address on your real life shop window. Have splash notices dotted around your store. Every piece of paper, invoice, compliments slips, payment slips, letter heading, note pads, business cards etc that you use you use MUST have the web address on it. "Shop online 24/7 at www.[yourdomain].com"

One client that I have has just had 20,000 carrier bags printed with the web address on it. Their site has been running 18 months and targeting for the next year at £1M from the web!!!!! I wish I could take the full credit for it but in reality, it was selecting the right software for the job an not doing it on the cheap!

rough costings:
Software - £100 ~ £1000 (Actinic = c£400 or £800 depending on your needs)
Domain name - a few dollars a year - pittance...
Hosting: a few dollars to hundreds... I use Actinic because their secure servers are totally dedicated & configured to run their software & the back up facilities offered. C£200 ~£300 a year. I am sure there are other places out there that will do as good a job. You need to do some background research on that.

If you do the data entry yourself, design costs are your own time. If you employ a designer/data enterer, then the costs will be probably on a per hour basis.

Once you have decided on all of the above, running it is a relatively simple procedure of adding products, images, and pricing into the product template...

[SantasWorkshop]

My website is santas-workshop-christmas.com.

I have a Christmas House. I sell mostly Christmas related items.

In most cases my customers would be mainly women between 25 and 45-59. Older women usually have decorations, but they do look for gifts.

[SantasWorkshop]

My prefered method of payment on line would probably be credit card.

thank you both for your response... it has helped

[gistek]

Nice site.

Some web hosts offer shopping cart applications as part of their package, but check carefully because they may also have limits. It is possible to change shopping cart software, but the fewer changes you have to make (other than catalog updates) the better. Folks get used to the way something looks, and frequent data entry pattern changes can throw your repeat customers off.

Also, remember you can put your shopping cart on a different host than your main site. This could be important if you run into bandwidth issues or if your current host doesn't support the shopping software.

DonaldG also mentioned Secure Server when he described Actinic. This is a very important consideration. Very few people will make credit card purchases via an unsecured server.

[sobeit]

I agree with the advise about checking out hosting services that have shopping carts and other software that supports ecommerce. It would make things easier to help get you started. Then as you learn the tricks of the trade, you can start doing things your way with your own software.