ecommerce setup

thetourist

Hi,
Not sure if this is the right area to ask this question maybe you redirect me if it isn't ....
Trying to do some research on setting up an online shop which would be integrated into a website...was looking into the yahoo shop package which would have been perfect but discovered that its for US customers only...also looked at an ebay shop and a "buy and sell" shop but both need to be updated/restocked!
Has anyone any reccommendations?

Gordon

oscommerce is free and fairly easy to set up.

seamus

gumboots wrote:

Trying to do some research on setting up an online shop which would be integrated into a website...was looking into the yahoo shop package which would have been perfect but discovered that its for US customers only...also looked at an ebay shop and a "buy and sell" shop but both need to be updated/restocked!

I'm not sure I understand. All shops will require some degree of updating and maintenance.

Are you looking for a marketplace where people register, add their goods for sale, and others browse, or are you looking for a shop where you sell stuff to people?

thetourist

Gordon wrote:

oscommerce is free and fairly easy to set up.

my web host was saying it was a day's work for them - so a lot longer for me - i thought there was a shop that could be set up as easy as an ebay shop ( an hour or two ) - i actually was looking at the thing about a year ago - it was 40 a month and was a doddle to set up

anyway with oscommerce dont i have to setup a merchant account as a seperate entity ?

thetourist

seamus wrote:

I'm not sure I understand. All shops will require some degree of updating and maintenance.

Are you looking for a marketplace where people register, add their goods for sale, and others browse, or are you looking for a shop where you sell stuff to people?

yes i know that updating is required if i want to chang prices etc but on the ebay shop you have to relist the items every 10 days - this is not what i want

i am looking for a shop where i can sell stuff to people -

yahoo shops would be perfect where it's all one package and easy and quick to setup and only 20 -30 per month - but it's not available here - im nearly certain there was one available a year ago on the iol website but i cant find it anymore -


ps am not really a webdesigner - at least am way out of practice and not planning on getting knee deep in my sql and php to sort this out

apologies again if this is the wrong place for the discussion

seamus

Oscommerce really is your best solution then. It doesn't require much knowledge of PHP and MySQL, but you really would want someone to give you a hand customising the text of the site.

If you're looking for something that you can upload and it'll work as you want it to, out of the box, you won't find it for free. And you'll pay a hell of a lot more than if you paid someone to spend a day configuring an oscommerce setup.

evilhomer

seamus wrote:

If you're looking for something that you can upload and it'll work as you want it to, out of the box, you won't find it for free. And you'll pay a hell of a lot more than if you paid someone to spend a day configuring an oscommerce setup.

I agree with you totally.
The price of some of the commerce software is unbelievable.

Microsoft Commerce server costs €20,000 per processor license! I have also seen another commerce product that cost 50k per CPU license.
admitedly it does a lot more then you would ever need for an online shop but you get the Idea. Some of the cheaper ones are in the 2k range.

oscommerce is used by hundreds of very reputable e-businesses and for the work you put into setting it up it's as good as most of the ones you pay for.

seamus

Wow, I didn't think they cost that much! :eek:

OP, I'm assuming that this is a business that you're either setting up or expanding onto the web. If you're serious about setting up any kind of shop, be it online or on the street, you can't scrimp. By all means, look for the deal with the best quality/price ratio, but paying €50 for your shop would be taking the piss. If you're serious about using this shop as a serious means of trading, then you should be looking at spending €1,000+, minimum on setting it up.

You could pay some youngfella €250 for a day to set up an oscommerce shop for you, or a more experienced guy, say €500 to sort it, but you will have more costs, as you call them back in to change something else, upload a new skin, change that word there....etc etc. I would seriously recommend paying someone to set it up for you (if you're not happy doing it yourself), and then giving them a maintenance agreement, whereby they agree to keep the software up-to-date, and do x amount of updates to the stock/site/text per month.

Seth Brundle

Given you have web design experience albeit out of date [its liek riding a bike] why not consider setting up paypal 'add to cart' buttons? Not too much hassle.
The money can also be downloaded to your Irish bank a/c

Like other options there will be an element of updating but if you can make 1 button then you can make 100.

MartMax

i agree with seamus - osCommerce is one powerful but easy solution. i have no php/html/sql knowledge but managed to work around osCommerce. put a design on top of it, make it work as i want at the back end. loads of support and contributions to make your shop as good as you can get.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=298808

Bananna man

Hey, if your interested i could set up and oscommerce store for you similar to this one www.ijumbleonline.com/osc free of charge if you have a hosting account ready for it. Send me a PM and we can talk further. It wont take too long to set it up and them you will have full control over the content yourself.

mneylon

gumboots wrote:

my web host was saying it was a day's work for them - so a lot longer for me

To do what exactly??
Quite a few hosts offer oscommerce and similar as a preinstalled service

thetourist

thanks a lot for all the advice people - will have to do some thinking

cooper38

HI Folks
Im looking to integrate a payment gateway into my accomodation booking website. It needs to be seamless unlke paypal which looks ugly and is not completely customised, and not require siging on for membership like oscommerce as this will lose custmomers.

I have used realex who are great however i neeed to contact the bank to get new merchant ids which will take a few more weeks of filling forms etc and I was wondering if anyone had any other recommendations.

I was in contact with Euroconnex but they are a pain in the arse bunch of lemmings.

daymobrew

thetourist wrote:

Trying to do some research on setting up an online shop which would be integrated into a website

Would Buy4Now.ie work for you?

regi

ZenCart (http://www.zencart.com/) is really quite nice too. It's based on oscommerce.