eCommerce Tycoon

**kustomjs** · 04-05-2007, 11:33 PM

Hey Guys
I need to know your Ideas for which way to design my small business website because I dont know which way to go. PS my small business is for automotive.

Should I go with osCommerce or making every page by design.

**damien_ls** · 01:54 PM

I presume "by design" = by hand?

How many pages/products are you likely to have?
What functionality will you need?
Will you be creating the site yourself, and do you have any previous experience of either approach?
Will you find updating the site difficult if you code it all by hand?
Since you mentioned osCommerce, I presume you are planning on selling things, in which case how will you process payments (will you need/benefit from using some cart software with payment processing integration and invoicing etc.)?

**webcosmo** · 04-06-2007, 04:17 PM

car site for e-com may not be a good choice. too much competition. you have to decide first what you wanna do with the site. you want it be the face of your company, or seriously sell cars?
for the first, just make a informational site with about us, contact, services etc.
for the second you are looking at spending quite a bit of money developing and maintaining the site. if your stock is more then 100 new arrivals every week you may consider that.
look at this site I developed for a client of mine
http://www.valetautos.com
Its semi dynamic. Meaning its programmed to take off inventory once its gone from the list, also allows user manually update the inventory.
if you wanna put your foot on ecom you have to spend quite a bit of effort.

**kustomjs** · 04-07-2007, 02:21 AM

I sell automotive parts.

**ADAM Web Design** · 04-07-2007, 04:02 AM

Personally, I'm an advocate of DIY (Do It Yourself). The shopping cart software out there is simply too rigid, inflexible and doesn't allow for customization and growth as much as a custom solution does.

As far as whether to go software or hand-code every product page, I'd recommend doing neither (depending on how good you are at web design, etc.) If you can figure it out, set yourself up an Access database and create scripts that will dynamically generate the product/order pages for you.

It's not that hard to do something half-decent if you've got the skills. If you don't, though (and there isn't a thing wrong with not knowing...we all didn't know once), start with the hand-coding and work toward the DIY cart goal from there.

**j03** · 04-07-2007, 10:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

Personally, I'm an advocate of DIY (Do It Yourself). The shopping cart software out there is simply too rigid, inflexible and doesn't allow for customization and growth as much as a custom solution does.

As far as whether to go software or hand-code every product page, I'd recommend doing neither (depending on how good you are at web design, etc.) If you can figure it out, set yourself up an Access database and create scripts that will dynamically generate the product/order pages for you.

It's not that hard to do something half-decent if you've got the skills. If you don't, though (and there isn't a thing wrong with not knowing...we all didn't know once), start with the hand-coding and work toward the DIY cart goal from there.

Agree heavily with this and also you should learn html/css first. Then worry about shopping cart backend work like php or asp.

**dougadam** · 04-08-2007, 07:50 PM

Also it would be a good idea to check out the http://www.w3.org.

**Nano** · 04-15-2007, 12:21 AM

Well, I agree that you get a lot of experience doing everything yourself, and the design can be flexible as such.... However a "template" shopping cart or OS Cart, can get you going fast. If you learn CSS afterwards and PHP you are able to customize that site a lot. Also, you need structure in the website with products you want to promote.

**ramanji** · 04-17-2007, 04:45 PM

Hello, freind of www world ,guide me through of becoming part of this unique netpath.My wish for a website to have big pocket making me sick.Who is going to be my guide,I am waiting for you. Come quickly ,Please.

**abhifrds2005** · 06-17-2007, 06:44 AM

ramanji wat exactly u want?
if u need any help plz call me

abhijeet: +919869420002 (mumbai )

**paladin2** · 06-24-2007, 10:44 AM

Hi there,

here you canb read about a few issues regarding web design:

http://www.web-articles.info/e/a/cat...et-and-online/

**adirondackwine** · 07-04-2007, 01:36 PM

If its automotive service, page by page - if its automotive sales or parts, OS Commerce