Hi All,

 

I'm interested in procuring an ecommerce website and was looking for any advice to allow me to make the right decisions for my circumstances.

 

A bit about me...

I'm a retailer of mirrors and picture frames. At the moment I haven't got a website, but would like to pay for someone to design one. I have an eBay shop, which turnovers around 6k a month (120 items a month). I'm receiving around 60 unique vsitors a day. I would hope to improve on these figures when my website is running.

I'm not a web designer, but would class myself as an 'average' IT user, with some knowledge of programming.

My products will change overtime, to allow for price changes, discountinued items, new items, etc.

 

Not sure where to start really and would greatfully receive any advice, especially on what options I have on site types, maintenance considerations, associated costs, who to use, SEO, etc.

 

My thanks in advance

Roc

Hi. Your best option for flexibility and configuration would be Magento, you can test-drive its admin iterface here.

 

It's the most powerful eCommerce solution out there, is very good for SEO and can be set up to integrate with your Ebay presence for order fulfilment, stock tracking etc.

 

The only downside you'll see quoted in a lot of places is that development carries a steep learning curve. A lot of the bad press Magento gets is from hobbyist developers who are used to hacking things like OSCommerce - Magento's a different kettle of fish; you never need to touch core files because it's built on a Zend Framework MVC base, so you can override or extend core functionality, meaning you can still update the core files when a new version is released. There are a lot of quirks involved in its development so you'd be advised to hire a pro - I've worked on a couple of Magento setups, feel free to PM me for details.

You've come to the right place!

 

You can get an ecommerce site without a maintenance contract, be wary of anyone who tries to charge you for one unless you actually require changes to your website on a daily basis.

 

With your ecommerce website you can have it so that pretty much everything is editable yourself via a control panel. Products, categories, offers, banners, information page content. It all should be pretty simple for you to manage.

 

Make sure you get a one page checkout and have site elements such as your categories and some of your top navigation stripped out when a buyer is checking out as you want to push them through the checkout process with as little distraction as possible. The whole aim of the website is to get someone on and buy as quickly as possible.

 

When it comes to SEO you can start off slow and just have the site optimised (made well - seo wise) with things such as header tags, url's that include your product and category names. Especially if you have traffic from ebay already. Going on from that you can really start to drive traffic to your website once you focus on keywords (well key phrases really) that you can compete on Google for. Think like this when optimising, do I want to be on page 5 for a short key phrase (very few people will find you) or do I want to be page 1 for a few niche or longer phrases which could direct more buyer specific traffic. Even if the number of searches for this phrase aren't as many you'll be much more likely to sell that way.

 

Hope this helped.

Thanks gents for the replies.

 

How does Magento work...does the web site have to be designed using this software or can a website be linked to this so that it can act as a control panel for it?

 

As far as SEO goes, shouldn't a professional design a website with SEO in mind.

 

My concern is this...if I get a professional to design my website, how can ensure that they are using the best software, designing with SEO in mind and offering the best price; especially as this is all new to me.

 

HOW MUCH DO YOU THINK I SHOULD BE LOOKING TO PAY FOR A SITE AND WHERE SHOULD I LOOK TO GET THIS DONE?

 

Thanks

With Magento (and most other dedicated ecommerce setups) you'd need to have a design completed that covers all functionality of the shopping process. You can run the rest of a website (stuff like About and contact pages) outside of the application, but in order to keep everything as maintainable as possible, it makes more sense to keep them inside so that a change to a common element (like a header graphic) only has to be applied once.

 

You'll also find that Magento (can't speak much for other packages, Magento's my area of expertise) can change the appearance of your site on a seasonal basis, so you could have a snow-covered header graphic automatically applied in December for example.

 

Beware anyone charging less than £2k for a professional ecommerce setup, especially one with custom functionality like this.

 

You're right, a pro should design with SEO in mind, and should deliver the best possible website for the budget. A good way to find someone is to use this website - find a user and check out what they've said in the forums. Do they mostly ask questions or answer them? Do they sound knowledgeable? Check out their profile, get a link to their website. Look through their portfolio and get a feel for the quality of their work, then get in touch.