Hey all

 

I'm thinking of setting up a very simple shop on my site...I'd like to sell off the shelf animated e-cards, invites and the like and have no idea what's the best way of going about this. I initially thought of using paypal 'buy now' buttons in that the 'products' would be listed on a page on my site and people would select what they wanted and use paypal to pay for the stuff...then I would send them everything they needed in a zip file...not a very elegant solution really. Also not sure I would get notification from paypal that something had been bought and so would have to spend a lot of time checking and keep ing on top of things.

 

All I want to do is offer a few e-cards and invites for sale and want a really easy process for selling them.

 

Any ideas would be most welcome as I've never done e-commerce of any sort and so completely naive in this area.

 

E

you could use paypal... take a look at e-junkie.com they specialise in delivering downloadable/online based items.

That sounds quite good - I like the fact that the buying process is all automatic and they deal with the delivery of download links etc...work out at around £30 a year and so it might be worth a go as that cost will easily be covered by what I'm selling...just got to decide if there is a market for what I want to sell for the price I want to sell stuff at. Going to do some research with current clients and see what they think.

 

Thanks for the info.

sounds great and good luck !

Another solution of course is to use an off the shelf shopping cart that's able to handle digital products - this will handle everything for you from display to purchase to delivery. I don't know what budget you have for this but have a look at these carts...

 

Cubecart - http://www.cubecart.com

- has free and commercial version

- handles tangible and digital products

- valid xhtml/css templates, easy to modify however you want

 

Avactis - http://www.avactis.com

- validated webmasters get a free copy then extra licences at half price

- handles tangible and digital products

- table based layouts but flexible enough to convert to CSS apart from product listings and some issues formatting form labels properly though they have said they will improve the templates in a future release

Avactis - http://www.avactis.com

- validated webmasters get a free copy then extra licences at half price

- handles tangible and digital products

- table based layouts but flexible enough to convert to CSS apart from product listings and some issues formatting form labels properly though they have said they will improve the templates in a future release

 

If your company specializes in web development or web design, you are entitled to receive 1 (one) free copy of Avactis Shopping Cart. You can buy additional copies at a 50% discount at any time*. To take advantage of this offer, please submit your request by filling out the form above. The only requirement for receiving the free coupon and the 50% discount is having a web site where it states that you or your company are a web developer or web designer. We will review your application and send you the coupon to the e-mail address you've provided.

 

I can understand the rational.. but it's still a little bizarre - who else would be getting this script but web developers?!

If you can afford it then Actinic is a pretty good piece of kit... the initial "making it look right" is a PITA but once it is up and running it is 100% functionality, with 100's of features to play with... Doesn't look too pretty though

I can understand the rational.. but it's still a little bizarre - who else would be getting this script but web developers?!

 

Probably because developers sell scripts to non web developers as well?

yeah... i can vouch for Actinic... very nice piece of kit... but maybe overkill in this situation.. i would only use Actinic if you were very serious about e-commerce as it works out delivery rates etc

I just want something simple...but it would be good if it was done to web standards...I found this: Free CSS Cart - can't find a download anywhere on the site or how to install it or anything which is a bit weird.

 

I like the e-junkie option, but it's not really standards compliant.

http://www.zencart.com/ maybe?

 

 

 

EDIT:

its free, and its to web standards, and it has a pay pal feature. I haven't had much to do with ecommerce sites I normally design them and someone else does all of that stuff. But I have heard that its quite good

Probably because developers sell scripts to non web developers as well?

 

But in the end, surely they will be a web developer to install/configure/design it? So, in my logic the only people buying the script would be .. web developers?

 

It's a bit like Toysrus saying "if you buying for a child then you can have 50% off... but if your buying for an adult, it's full price."

 

You know what I'm meaning?

But in the end, surely they will be a web developer to install/configure/design it? So, in my logic the only people buying the script would be .. web developers?

 

It's a bit like Toysrus saying "if you buying for a child then you can have 50% off... but if your buying for an adult, it's full price."

 

You know what I'm meaning?

 

so everyone who does an e-commerce site now has to be a developer? People who design for one e-commerce site for their company as its a good way to have buisness would use a product like this to make it easier. They wouldn't really be a web developer, they would just be a maintainer of a site. I think by web developer they assume that you would be developing more than one site and as such would need that script for more than one site, so they are giving that deal to people who would come back and would use the script possibly multiple times, compared to the person who would be using it for just their companies site.

 

I do sort of see where you are coming from, but I understand why they say you have to prove that you are a web developer and not just a one off site guy.

I think I'm going to try e-junkie as I just asked them a load of questions via email and the responses I got were what i wanted to here. I don't want to have to install, set up and manage a database on my own site and so e-junkie seems to have all the answers. i did have my reservations, but as they've answered all my queries...very quickly and personally...I'm going to run the trial version and see how I go with it.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions and help.

your welcome.. and good luck !

 

shout me if you need anything else

But in the end, surely they will be a web developer to install/configure/design it? So, in my logic the only people buying the script would be .. web developers?

 

It's a bit like Toysrus saying "if you buying for a child then you can have 50% off... but if your buying for an adult, it's full price."

 

You know what I'm meaning?

 

Yep I know where you're coming from and probably for the most part that's probably the way it pans out. However there are always exceptions and companies like these also offer an installation service and premade templates, this then allows Joe Bloggs to order a complete package with no intervention from a designer.

so everyone who does an e-commerce site now has to be a developer? People who design for one e-commerce site for their company as its a good way to have buisness would use a product like this to make it easier. They wouldn't really be a web developer, they would just be a maintainer of a site. I think by web developer they assume that you would be developing more than one site and as such would need that script for more than one site, so they are giving that deal to people who would come back and would use the script possibly multiple times, compared to the person who would be using it for just their companies site.

 

I do sort of see where you are coming from, but I understand why they say you have to prove that you are a web developer and not just a one off site guy.

 

Yup, I totally understand why they offer this incentive (repeat sales) but I would be surprised as you say that a person who isn't a developer "does an e-commerence site" as surely it requires a degree of knowledge and Joe Bloggs couldn't easily just decide to add a e-commernce option to their website on a whim.

 

You see what I mean? It's like them offering a discount on cars to drivers but people without a license have to pay a premium.. but people without a license are less likely to be buying the car (they can't drive them), and would also be put off by the premium.

 

I'm beginning to confused myself

Zen cart is good and has an 'online product feature' that allows people to purchase and submit payments to your site, then it automatically emails them the product in question... ebook.. ecard.. etc

 

Makes a lot less work for the administrator, and also means you can accept multiple forms of payment.