The Wholesale Forums

[lil_emmz]

Hi all,
my name is Emma and I am hoping to put an online shop together to sell some of my clothing etc.I currently sell on ebay and get a lot of repeat customers.Some of them simply message my private email addy and let me know what they want and they either send postal order or paypal.I want to set up a simple shop to save me some fees and try to attract new customers as well as existing ones.Im not too clever with understanding websites,so I am looking for something that looks effective and only needs me to put images and prices up.(I know that it probably wont be that simple,but it has to be pretty simple for me to be able to use it
Is it also possible to get this as a monthly basis rather than a set contract?
Many thanks to anyone that can help and Warmest wishes to all
Emmz..x

[Pete]

Hi emmz,

I can help you out. And a monthly basis is no problem at all. $ 5.99 per month and you're in business.

Many here use and recommend CubeCart. It is a free shopping cart site that is well suited to most products, including clothing. It has the capability to handle size / color options for clothes and shoes.

Here is a breakdown of costs -

Hosting is available in the $ 5 per month range. Included with most hosting is a package called Fantastico which includes a free version of CubeCart. With my hosting plans I will do the install of CubeCart at no charge, but frankly, it's just a couple of clicks and blanks to fill in.

Then there is the cost of the domain. This you get on your own. Although I'll do it for my clients, I suggest they do it themselves. Cost is about $ 10 to $ 12 per year. .com domains can be piad for year to year, but .co.uk domains have a two year minimum. So, from $ 10 to $ 24 or so for your startup domain purchase.

Hard to believe, but that's it. That will get you on the way to a very capable online store.

Many don't want a "plain jane, out of the box" look to their store, so there are templates or "skins" available. These run from free to in the $ 50 to $ 100 range for a large variety of pre-designed skins, and up to a few hundred dollars for a truly custom design.

Again, this is optional and you can set up and get your store running with the base design. And then you can have a number of skins as you grow your business. I once had an online store with a skin for New Years, Valentines, St. Paddy's, Mother's Day, etc., right through to Christmas.

To give you an idea of what the skins can do, here is a basic store that I use for a play around place for folks like you who are interested (I'll give you a link to the back office in a bit). Don't go by what shows, there is all kinds of junk added. Just pay attention to the design itself - the header at the top, the side menus and the footer at the bottom.

Here goes - http://smallbusinesshoster.com/cubecart/

As you can see. we are selling everything from skateboard ramps to kitchen goods. But you get the idea. And you could just put a logo in the top left and be in business.

Now, for some sites that will give you some examples of what can be done with this free site and a bit of design work -

http://www.store.jowestcorp.com/
http://www.mediacroc.co.uk/
http://boxhog-boutique.co.uk/cart/
http://www.istockbargains.com/
http://leadingav.com/

So, you can see that the basic cart can look anything but basic. This is something that many find hard to believe and they get told they need a site built from the ground up. Nothing could be further from the truth. You can have a store up within a couple of days for $ 16 to $ 30, or thereabouts.

Here's what the "office" looks like. This is where you set up your shipping and payment types and add your items for sale. You can even try a few, if you'd like. Others sure have.

Here's the link. The username is - admin and the password is - password

Go and check it out - http://smallbusinesshoster.com/cubecart/admin/

For more about what you can expect from me, give this a read -

http://www.affordablehoster.com/carts.html

And, if you'd like to take the plunge, you can do so here -

http://www.affordablehoster.com/minipp.html

As I said. a number of TWF members host with me, many with CubeCart, some with others. If you have any questions, PM me and I'll be glad to help you out.

I usually don't get into the cart itself, just do the install, but if you would like for me to set up the shipping and such, I could do that for a small fee. I do encourage folks to do it for themselves, since there will be times they need to do a tweak here or there. But I will do it if you are truly uncomfortable with it all.

Then all you would need to do it enter the products. You'll notice by checking out the demo stores, it's not much different than using a PC program.
.

[discount-store]

But if you are based in England better to get British based service as some times US servers and support are too slow & unreachable...

[Andy777]

I am a big fan of 3dcart.com

They have a lot of great features every
Internet Marketer dreams of.

Only draw back could be pricing, they start
from $30 and goes all way up to $100 per month, depending on
product count and plugin options.

[discount-store]

I am big fun of WebPro Shop (based on oscommerce with a lot of modules) & also looking at the Magento commerce cart for the second shop.

[consultant]

But if you are based in England better to get British based service as some times US servers and support are too slow & unreachable...

Yes, some are, but many are not! I use servers in the UK and the US and, for serving pages, they are both about the same! There is a difference when uploading files to the server, but this is operational, tnot affecting customers!

[Pete]

Originally Posted by discount-store

But if you are based in England better to get British based service as some times US servers and support are too slow & unreachable...

I've got 40 or more clients in the UK, using both .com and .co.uk domains, as well as others around the world, including some in OZ with and without the .au and have not one time had a complaint about loading times. Never.

Many are from here and knowing the folks here, if there were problems of that sort they would not mind sharing with others.

Quite frankly, there is one area of the Internet in the UK that sort of mystifies me. When setting up a new account, or changing name servers there is a significant difference in the propagation times in the UK. In fact, during Anthony's recent downtime problems one of his laments was others were viewing this forum and he could not.

I have had clients tell me it's as much as 24 hours or more difference in their sites coming up for the first time between their at work computer and their home computer. One even mentioned his neighbor could get it nearly a day before he could at home, but that it came up at work within a couple of hours.

I've been told there are 13 "name server servers" in the US and 13 more around the rest of the world. I have no proof of this, it may be BS. Even so, how there can be a differemce of over a day between two computers in the same neighborhood is hard to understand. It must have to do with the ISP's, I imagine.

Anyhow, once that first time the site comes up, never any complaints. And just recently I had one UK guy tell me his was up within an hour or so. Just no telling.

Over the last few years I'v had servers based in Australia and the UK, in addition to the US. I've never been able to tell any difference. I believe loading speed is much more a local ISP / network issue that it is country related.

Frankly, the only valid point for not doing business with me is I'm not going to reply to you at 8 AM your time. During the week it's more like 10 AM your time before I'm at the keyboard, taking care of immediate concerns, then maybe noon before I'm into the day to day stuff. But, I'm also still working on things after you've gone to bed.
.

[Andy777]

I also use US based hosting company and have never
had any support issues.

Even more, unlike many UK based hosting companies,
they offer 24/7 LIVE tech support.

So yeah - I think if it's a good company, it doesn't
matter whatever it's based in UK or US.

[missmushroom]

Hi all,
my name is Emma and I am hoping to put an online shop together to sell some of my clothing etc.I currently sell on ebay and get a lot of repeat customers.Some of them simply message my private email addy and let me know what they want and they either send postal order or paypal.I want to set up a simple shop to save me some fees and try to attract new customers as well as existing ones.Im not too clever with understanding websites,so I am looking for something that looks effective and only needs me to put images and prices up.(I know that it probably wont be that simple,but it has to be pretty simple for me to be able to use it
Is it also possible to get this as a monthly basis rather than a set contract?
Many thanks to anyone that can help and Warmest wishes to all
Emmz..x

Hi Emma,

For shopping cart I use shop script (http://www.shop-script.com/) for my online store. I believe they have a basic shopping cart system for free. I currently use their premium service (US$299) as I needed advanced functionality for my store. I've browsed many other shopping cart softwares and I found theirs to be the best and as there are no recurring charges I definitely recommend them.

If you are not very sure about websites and stuff, perhaps you can download the free version of their shopping cart and get a feel of their functionality first. You can also take a look at their demo store-front and backend on their website to see if it suits your needs. If you have any problems just email them. Their customer service is really good. I normally email them for all my tiny problems and I usually receive a reply within 24 hours. They are a bunch of really friendly people and I am really happy with their service.

For hosting and domain, the charges are normally recurring (should cost around US$70 yearly depending on your hosting plan) but since there are many hosting companies you should not find much difficulty finding a good one. I use godaddy, they have one of the most affordable hosting services. Some complain that they are not reliable but I've been with them for 3 years and so far had no problems with customer service. They reply to my emails normally within 24 hours.

Hope all goes well with your clothing store Cheers.

[shanz32]

thanks for this, i was going to post the exact same thing, what software can a website be built on, can flash be used, for quality graphics? im going to have my own online shop this year hopefully.