UKC

Online Shop Help

New Topic
This topic has been archived, and won't accept reply postings.
 tom f 18 Nov 2011
Hoping someone can help me with this or point me in the right direction.

I'v started doing a bit of work for my dad's business over the last few weeks doing graphics work mainly, I'v set up a website for him which isn't perfect but its not to bad. Thing is now he needs to use it as an online shop, which has to be able to take vouchers from groupon and the like. Just now he's using paypal to take payments, but from what i understand theres no way to use voucher codes with paypal, you have to set up a separate shopping cart and link it to paypal.

Basically was wondering if anyone has any idea of the best shopping cart to use and/or how to actually set it up. Spent ages on this and seem to be getting nowhere.

Thanks
 rallymania 18 Nov 2011
In reply to tom f:
i've only really used things like emagento and virtuamart (for joomla)

both of those are full on webshop software and might be perfect or overkill depending on your view point

what have you built the website with? a CMS (like wordpress/ drupal / joomla) or from scratch with html editor like dreamweaver / frontpage / notepad?
OP tom f 18 Nov 2011
In reply to rallymania: Hi, I'v built it from scratch in dreamweaver, does that make it more difficult. I'v been looking at using opencart, mainly because its free, but doesn't look that straight forward to integrate. Don't mind paying up to around £50 for some software if its worth it and is easy to use.
 Route Adjuster 18 Nov 2011
In reply to tom f:

You will need to be able to install a shopping cart on your server and create a database (probably in MySQL) that the cart can use. Your hosting provider may well have some 'default' systems that can be turned on through your admin panel - have you looked.

OSCommerce is widely used and be customised to match the look of your main site using a little CSS and HTML know-how.
 EeeByGum 18 Nov 2011
In reply to tom f: I think there are at least three obvious ways you can do this:

1. Do it yourself which will be hellishly complicated, take an absolute age and you will inevitably get it wrong.
2. Buy some software to do it for you, but you will still have to handle payments and coupons yourself.
3. Sign up to a payment company that offers all this for you. Alas, most of the good ones expect a reasonable turnover from you but do offer incredible services. You just set up your products and then link to their site with your "Buy now" buttons. They handle everything else, taking a small percentage along the way.

I would recommend option 3, but only if you are turning over enough.
 mattrm 18 Nov 2011
In reply to tom f:

If you're having to ask on here, I have this sneaking suspicion that setting up a payments system for a website is beyond you. Your Dad is probably best off getting a professional to do it for him, who'll be able to do it all right.

If you're dead set on doing it yourself, then this is roughly what I'd do (especially if I had a bit of money to do it with):

* Install a popular CMS such as Drupal
* Buy/find a decent theme for the site (there are themes with integration for things like opencart)
* Install one of the popular modules for a payments system on to the CMS

It is possible to get people who can install/theme popular CMSes for a fairly reasonable fee. They'll also handle all the hosting and the like.
MrPeriPeri 18 Nov 2011
In reply to tom f: If you post the URL to the site then people may be able to offer some practical advice relevant to your site and how you could implement this, however, you may be better off effectively starting over and installing a CMS (Joomla etc) and transferring all your content to that.
 owlart 18 Nov 2011
In reply to tom f: Not sure how well it fits the bill here, but we use Mal's e-Commerce (http://www.mals-e.com/ ) for our site which does appear to allow you to integrate into PayPal & take vouchers (although I haven't tried this on our site). It's free, btw.
OP tom f 18 Nov 2011
In reply to tom f: Yeah I'm feeling like this is mostly over my head. This is my first go at this kind of thing so may aswell learn, and if it all goes belly up then i'll have to pay someone I guess.

To use a CMS do i need to redo the site from scratch or can the current one made in dreamweaver be adapted. Any tips on where i can read up this kind of thing?

owlart: Thanks for that, looks pretty much like what I'm after. Did you find it easy to integrate? Basically just want a buy now on each of the pages i'v already made, and a basket and checkout page.

And thanks for everyones help so far.
 Milesy 18 Nov 2011
It is important to know in what language you used to develop this site?

Is is pure HTML? If so then for a site which does dynamic things like holding shopping cart information you need to most likely need to work in conjunction with programming code. Something like PHP, JSP, ASP etc - pretty much all of the off-the-shelf shopping carts will have been developed in one of these. There are a couple which run in pure Javascript but I have never used them.

How are you going to host this website? Is it on free webspace? Do you have a virtual server? A dedicated server? Do you have a domain name?
 owlart 18 Nov 2011
In reply to tom f: It's only kind of semi-integrated into our website, in that you click on an 'Add to basket' lin and it takes you over to your basket held on their site. Not sure if it's possible to do it any other way, we started using them ages ago and I've never really looked at alternative ways of doing it.

Take a look at http://www.cjemicros.co.uk/prices if you want to see it in action.
OP tom f 18 Nov 2011
In reply to Milesy: It's been done in HTML, with some JS plugins for the images.

It's going to be hosted on 123-reg with their basic package, which includes a MySQL database, I assume on a virtual server. The domain has already been bought through 123.
 Milesy 18 Nov 2011
In reply to tom f:

Do you want to use Paypal only or do you want to take credit cards?

New Topic
This topic has been archived, and won't accept reply postings.
Loading Notifications...