[zaub]

Hello,

I am new to web design and a friend has asked me to build them a e-commerce site for their handmade jewelery and artwork. However, they ideally do not want to have to pay for anything (i.e.web hosting etc) or at least a very small fee.

What is the best value I can offer them? And what open carts (open cart etc?) and CMS (wordpress, joomla, etc?) should I use? (I am doing this to learn and to add to my portfolio so I am not getting paid of course.)

Any other advice would be appreciated!

[the wanderer]

zaub, on 10 May 2011 - 08:03 AM, said:

Hello,

I am new to web design and a friend has asked me to build them a e-commerce site for their handmade jewelery and artwork. However, they ideally do not want to have to pay for anything (i.e.web hosting etc) or at least a very small fee.

What is the best value I can offer them? And what open carts (open cart etc?) and CMS (wordpress, joomla, etc?) should I use? (I am doing this to learn and to add to my portfolio so I am not getting paid of course.)

Any other advice would be appreciated!

Hi
Opencart is a pretty good cart to use though their support forum is a tad on the slow side sometimes, i found it to be quite easy to configure and mod and that was with very basic php knowledge.

[Renaissance-Design]

A good, solid professional ecommerce platform is an investment. If they're not serious about it, point them in the direction of Etsy or something.

If they don't accept that you have to spend money on overheads in order to make money they'll be a nightmare client and will make your life hell.

[chtyrone]

Paypal cart. client only pays if they make sales.
It also allows debit and credit card sales.
Simple and cheap for the creator.

If client doesn't can't spend money now, the trade off is they lose a cut of their sales to Paypal.

[David Ross]

For something that small WP e-commerce might be a good fit, it's free and straight forward and has the added extra of being wordpress driven which means you have the added functionality of plugins will make your job a lot easier. Especially when it comes to SEO.

[Renaissance-Design]

David Ross, on 10 May 2011 - 11:15 AM, said:

Especially when it comes to SEO.

Oh god yes. Joost de Valk rocks my world.

[mstopford-webdesign]

From experience, Opencart is excellent.
It can be fully designed to any specification your client gives you with next to no limits from what I've managed, as long as you know CSS and a bit of PHP and HTML.

It is free to use and there are loads of extensions and themes available (If you don't want to get your hands dirty) but most of these come with costs.

Check it out, I would recommend it.

[ZetaPrints]

These are either free or really cheap to set-up, but I haven't tried them so I wouldn't know if they're any good. But you may want options, so here goes --

sitesell
eCrater
OnlineBusinessClassifieds
InternetBusinessClassifieds
tucktail

[Gibson]

Another one for OpenCart here. Good lightweight solution.

[pandadoodle]

So your friend is in business, wants you to create something for free and in return your friend profits and makes money leaving you out of pocket?

Walk away or follow advice here http://www.shouldiworkforfree.com/

[allyson_gss]

Try to checkout magento, it has lot of options and it's open source.

[DesignMyTemplate.com]

i will suggest www.magentocommerce.com , this is really cool. it has got different version from open source to hosted model.


i am running my own website in Magento commerce

[rallport]

zaub, on 10 May 2011 - 08:03 AM, said:

I am new to web design and a friend has asked me to build them a e-commerce site

*facepalm*

[Gibson]

In my opinion magento is too difficult for a complete beginner.

Take a lightweight cart and have them buy a template - install the template. And leave it at that until they give you some money.

[rallport]

Gibson, on 20 July 2011 - 12:56 PM, said:

In my opinion magento is too difficult for a complete beginner.

The Magento front facing admin area is too difficult for most clients I know. I did inherit several magento stores in my old job - I literally had clients overwhelmed and confused at how vast and daunting the admin was.

[leepaulkennedy]

If your a beginner I would stay away from Magento. My friend has a T-shirt business on software called http://bigcartel.com/ which has a free version with 5 products and hosting, from there you can upgrade for more products and your own domain.

Check out a few websites using the software:
http://www.madebyparachute.com/
http://rappingpaper.co.uk/

Good luck

Lee

[OwenONeill]

Big-cartel stores all the look the same, this makes me reluctant to buy from them.

[Gibson]

rallport, on 20 July 2011 - 01:15 PM, said:

The Magento front facing admin area is too difficult for most clients I know. I did inherit several magento stores in my old job - I literally had clients overwhelmed and confused at how vast and daunting the admin was.

For sure - I think it's one of the important things that are overlooked sometimes when building out systems for clients and deciding which CMS to use - how techy the client is, and whether they'll understand it.

I believe that's one of the reasons I like OpenCart - although I can't remember cos haven't used it in a while now

[rallport]

Gibson, on 21 July 2011 - 02:09 PM, said:

For sure - I think it's one of the important things that are overlooked sometimes when building out systems for clients and deciding which CMS to use - how techy the client is, and whether they'll understand it.

I believe that's one of the reasons I like OpenCart - although I can't remember cos haven't used it in a while now

Well it's definately a major factor if using pre made software - and one where a lof of them fall down for me (9 times out of 10 I use my own solution that is easy to use).

It's a given Magento is a truely great piece of software, but the admin area is a total beast and noty for the faint hearted. Yes, it has everything you could ever want from a store but people forget a few things when instinctively jumping for Magento et al.

• Does every shop need all the features Magento has?
• Is your client savvy enough to use the admin area and do they honestly have the time to learn? For the range of people I come across, the answer is an overwhelming no

This is another reason why I hate how a lot of designers instinctively jump to Wordpress for websites. Yes, it's easy to template in - but, like Magento, the admin has a plethora of features that the majority of people either will never need or don't understand.

In my opinion, this is definately a pretty big area that is overlooked on this forum.