How to construct online shopping portal

[Bean007]

How does one design a shopping mall (portal) with multiple vendors? Any help, suggestions or resources would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[Corey Bryant]

You might check out osCommerce - I think they have a contribution for that. We built something in ASP - a bit difficult, but it can be done.

Do you want to use the same merchant account, ship to different addresses etc? All of these plus more needs to also be taken into consideration

-Corey

[lorax]

Do you want to manage the individual shops or let the owners do that? Do you want each shop to have it's own checkout/fulfillment - essentially the only thing they have in common is the that they share a DN and/or storefront?

[Bean007]

In terms of online mall I am thinking of one that replicates that of a mall. The online mall would have different vendors...Overstock, Lands End, and others.

How does one go about designing such a mall?

How does one go about tracking commissions with multiple subagents?

Is it possible to integrate all of the commissions from the different vendors for easier tracking of commissions?

[lorax]

Geesh - forgot my manners...
Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

There are some carts that offer a Mall concept but you'll need to do some research to determine if they do what you want. You can always have them customized. One I know offers the mall concept is X-Cart Pro but I know of at least one person who modified osCommerce to do the same.

As for building your own. Unless you've got a good handle on scripting I'd recommend against it. The biggest reason is the need for airtight code - i.e. no security holes!

[ferhanz]

google for ZenCart and OS Commerce

[Bean007]

Thanks for the info. I will look into it.