Website Design

pastasolo

I posted this over in development but I'm not sure is my questoin design or development but I think it's kinda both!!
I have a website for my shop at the moment I have about 2500 procucts on it at the moment. It's a wool shop amongst other things.

It is on os commerce. I got the website designed in 2008 via a website called scriptlance, it has been functioning okish. But i have a number of issues with it:

1. I would often put together a pattern and people would buy all or some the items needed to purchase that pattern. But lets say they need yellow wool I can add it to the list of items they need but it would be taken away from general sale.
2. Also if they have purchased a pattern they then can't purchase a 2nd pattern, they have to do a seperate transaction.
3. It takes a long time to take on and off products. To sub catagorise them can be tricky.
4. I don't know how to change the picture on my homepage!!
5. I am taking credit cards but I have to type the persons credit card number in my own terminal manually. We are very careful with peoples credit card details, but I'd like to change this as I know it's not the most secure. I can use paypal on my account but they take waay too much of a percentage so I'm not going to go that route.
6. I have a lot of catagories and sub catagories and the items aren't able to move around that readily.

I am prepared to invest my time and money into this website but I just don't know where to start. And I want to get it spot on this time. I got a bit of advice from a few companies and they were telling me that I need them to custom build a site for me. I am worried about this for example, If I forget somthing or wish to make a change at the start then it will have to be coded again and I'd have to pay.

Is there something off the shelf they could use and they could teach me how to us e it? Or is there something off the shelf I could buy myself and figure out perhaps with the help a professional. I figure the more I know about the site the better able I will be to manage it!!

I know this is long, but I would really appreciate your help.

Feathers

pastasolo wrote: »

I posted this over in development but I'm not sure is my questoin design or development but I think it's kinda both!!
I have a website for my shop at the moment I have about 2500 procucts on it at the moment. It's a wool shop amongst other things.

It is on os commerce. I got the website designed in 2008 via a website called scriptlance, it has been functioning okish. But i have a number of issues with it:

1. I would often put together a pattern and people would buy all or some the items needed to purchase that pattern. But lets say they need yellow wool I can add it to the list of items they need but it would be taken away from general sale.
2. Also if they have purchased a pattern they then can't purchase a 2nd pattern, they have to do a seperate transaction.
3. It takes a long time to take on and off products. To sub catagorise them can be tricky.
4. I don't know how to change the picture on my homepage!!
5. I am taking credit cards but I have to type the persons credit card number in my own terminal manually. We are very careful with peoples credit card details, but I'd like to change this as I know it's not the most secure. I can use paypal on my account but they take waay too much of a percentage so I'm not going to go that route.
6. I have a lot of catagories and sub catagories and the items aren't able to move around that readily.

I am prepared to invest my time and money into this website but I just don't know where to start. And I want to get it spot on this time. I got a bit of advice from a few companies and they were telling me that I need them to custom build a site for me. I am worried about this for example, If I forget somthing or wish to make a change at the start then it will have to be coded again and I'd have to pay.

Is there something off the shelf they could use and they could teach me how to us e it? Or is there something off the shelf I could buy myself and figure out perhaps with the help a professional. I figure the more I know about the site the better able I will be to manage it!!

I know this is long, but I would really appreciate your help.

You're happy getting the site redone to not use osCommerce? In terms of usability, Shopify is meant to be good, but you will need a licence rather than it being free to use (I.e. yearly charge) - you could get a demo of this up to see if you'd like it & then could surface some questions you'd have for your developer.

Sorry, just a brief answer - on the phone here