The Wholesale Forums

[JGClifton]

I would say so. Others will likely disagree though.

[jazzman]

I have a personal interest in asking this since I am in the middle of building my own generic website and content management system. Which raises another subject, what about content management?
When using all the DIY web building tools, lets say I have 100 unique items I want to market how is this managed? How easy is it to add/remove/edit/delete Products? How can I offer a 5% discount on all products to buyers in UK, and 10% on certain items to customers in Glasgow? What about data management, Products, customers, orders, shipping,returns etc is this tracked? Can I run reports, and examine selling trends through my business?

These are all the things that flood into my mind when I think about using DIY tools. I am not trying to discredit DIY tools because they are extremely powerful and useful however I am open minded to learn more about the extent of their flexibility.

[Pete]

Yes!

And

No!

Getting a customized design / look / template / skin, etc. can never hurt. It may even help.

Paying someone to reinvent the wheel for the 48,000th time by making you a custom shopping cart - the actual "mechinism" behind the outer look, is just throwing away money and often leaves you holding the bag. There are easily 1,000 free and low cost shopping carts that will fill virtually every need. Most have a support system of some sort, as well.

Buying a totally custom cart leaves you at the advantage of one person. That person may die, retire or simply decide to punch a timeclock for a living, leaving you high and dry.

There is a continuing thread on another forum about a really nice guy who was well thought of on the forum. He did not start from scratch, but would build a semi-custom cart from OSCommerce for each client. Wonderful guy, helped many on the forum, free of charge. Many have good words to say of him.

Except, he has had several people's money for 9 months or so and they have nothing. There are others with half finished sites. He controls many of their domain names, they can't even move elsewhere, unless they get a new domain. No one has heard from him for a couple of months now.

Emails go unanswered. Phone calls do no good. "Maybe he's in an accident." "Maybe he's sick", etc. All sorts of maybes, but he has people's money and domains and unfinished sites. No contact. No notice. No nothing.

He also includes hosting. Free first year hosting when you have him build a site. So far the hosting is still working, but several people have been worried to the point they have called the server company he uses. They have said they will honor his commitment, even if he goes completely under. It's good to see a good operation. Thankfully there are a few of us left.

And to this day, now 10 months, I'm sure, there are people saying he's a great guy. Sure, he's got your money and he's got your domain, but he helped out a lot of people.

This is what happens when you get into custom stuff. A custom template for a standard cart? No problem. Just don't pay 100% up front and get shafted. (I'm not insinuating anyone here would do that.)

But, unless you really have a truly unusual situation that cannot be covered by an "out of the box" cart, do not get into a custom situation. And even with a template, make certain that you can switch back to a default design should you need to. Most carts have a separate "template" or "skins" section, where you can switch back and forth without affecting the operation of the cart at all. Make sure you can do that if you have one done special.

At the end of the day, there is only one person you can depend on to make sure you are truly independent and that is you. It's great to have people to help, but do not get too dependent on any one person.
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[Pete]

Sorry, my above post was in reply to your top post.

In regard to your next post, all of what you are asking about is what a shopping cart is designed to do. You need a shopping cart for those functions. You will never build your own. If you are using Joomla, you need Virtue Cart. Not the best, but the best Joomla contribution.

Personally, you are sort of mixing apples and oranges. You would probably be better with a seperate, but linked, cart. CMS looks like all things to all people, but many try and give up. Not all they are cracked up to be for selling, that is for sure.

Go to any small business forum and ask how many are using CMS when selling 100 or so items, let alone 1,000's.
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[jazzman]

I think for the vast majority of people, you are spot on Pete.

You will always get people like me though who can and will want to build their own. For me, surely I would be stupid to buy what I can build myself in a reasonable time. In addition, I would have all the source code, data and control over every aspect of my site. If the hosting company loses my site, I can reproduce it and all associated data anytime. There is even the option to avoid Gateway charges by passing details directly to a payment processor.

Having said all this smart stuff about doing things myself, it is clear that you have a lot of experience in what you do (and probably making a lot more money) and I have a great deal of respect for that.
As far as ecommerce goes, I am at the bottom rung of the ladder but am enjoying learning from the experiences of others. Hopefully I will be on here soon telling everyone about the fortune I'm raking in.

Thanks for your feedback.

[Pete]

In order -

You don't have to buy. There are dozens of Open Source carts out there, all of which include the source code. Even the "custom" guys use something like OSCommerce as a base.

You do not have control of your database, without downloading it daily. Everyone can have a copy of their site on their PC, it's just an ftp away. And properly done a complete site backup from the CPanel will give a complete copy of the site and database to anyone.

It seems you are misinformed on so much. There are no benefits to doing it yourself other than if you want the experience and frustrations. You will end up with nothing you can't have today, free, for only the price of a hosting account.

You will always need a gateway if you are going to have a merchant account type processing system. And if you don't have a merchant account type processor, but use PayPal / Google Checkout / Moneybookers, etc. you don't need a gateway, anyhow.

All regular card processors require a gateway. You cannot go directly to AuthorizeNet, etc. You MUST use a gateway.

You can certainly go through the enjoyment and satisfaction of doing it yourself, but you really are suffering from some misconceptions. I'm not trying to argue with you, simply tell you as it really is. I don't know where you are getting your information, but it's just not so.

Sorry.
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[jazzman]

Hi

No sorry required, I am open minded and here to learn.

Like I said I am at the bottom rung of the ladder when it comes to ecommerce and I am only too grateful for your feedback and advice. Im listening...its an eye opener for me because I have never really used any of the fast web build tools that you recommend.

[jazzman]

I would highly recommend reading this article http://www.dotnetcharge.com/overviewfaq.htm

where it describes thoroughly the credit card processing theory. According to this and some ecommerce books I have been reading you can communicate directly with a payment processor and avoid paying a gateway charge altogether. In the book I have it recommends doing this if you have the expertise, and even gives you a demonstration of the code required to set this process up. From what I have read, it looks really simple, all you do is pass the appropriate parameters to the processor and you get a return code representing a pass or a fail. Depending on the specific code that is returned you can then indicate to the user a success or failure.

It seems from what I have read, that all a gateway does is takes the bank account details and passes it onto the processor, and they charge us for this. If you don't believe me read the article in the link. So why pay for this if you don't have to. Yes its a small charge but what if I am in business for 10 years or more selling hundreds of items per month and the gateway take £1 for every transaction? Wow, its not so small when you look at it from this angle. If you use paypal its even worse, because paypal take the bank details, charge you for passing it onto their gateway, and then their gateway charge you for passing it onto the payment processor.

The book I am reading is...
Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 E-Commerce in C# 2005: From Novice to Professional

Yet, I remain open minded....

[Pete]

What a gateway does is prevent you from ever seeing the card information. They are the security between the seller and the buy, as the seller never sees the actual card information.

With ever more stingent regulations and required certifiction for even the smallest merchants you would never get approved. And the processors will not deal with you directly. All the books in the sorld will not change the facts.

What they were saying 15 years ago is no longer true. And many socalled authors simply cut and paste the same old stuff over and over.

While the coding may be possible, you will not find a processor that will deal with you.

But don't take my word for it. Just make sure you have a processor who will accept your transmission before you spend a lot of time on it. And with penalties BEGINNING at $ 10,000 be prepared for some unpleasant feedback from the actual card companies VISA, M/C, etc. They are the enforcers and they are tightening the screws every year.

That $ 15 a month to a gateway is cheap insurance that you can never be blamed for leaking cardholder information.

Get your nose out of the books and spend some time in the real world.

And I am not talking about site builders. I am talking about totally free, ready to enter your products and start selling shopping carts.

Here are 3 - totally free. Why spend months fighting code?

Same login for each - admin and password.

www.smallbusinesshoster.com/cubecart/admin Take off the /admin for the user site

www.smallbusinesshoster.com/osc/admin Same

www.smallbusinesshoster.com/zen/admin Same

All free and ready to go. I have hosting clients who are selling the next day.

Why re-invent the wheel?
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[jazzman]

I have to hand it to you Pete, you are a whizz on this forum....you don't half get about...and fast! Do you sleep?