The perplexing nature of E-Commerce to a Neophyte

Ecommerce site start up help.

[hippie]

For a neophyte first wetting his feet in the world of ecommerce the current endless options are quite overwhelming when concerning host, shopping cart, and merchant account, etc. Then, when factoring in the need for custom-ability and limited start up resources, the lack of confidence on making choices begin to emerge. Quite frankly, I do not want to make a choice that exhumes massive amounts of time in modification to find out that the choice will limit my profitability in the future. Then factor in the element of insecurity of the concept, something that is always natural especially my idea which is truly unique to the web, and you begin to have a queasy feeling all over. :-)

From the research I have done, the endless circles, I have secured a base list of the steps of pre-development.

1.Settle on Shopping Cart
2.Review rated Merchant accounts compatible with 1.
3.Find host compatible with 1 and 2.

Getting to the questions:

1) I am looking for a reasonable shopping cart that allows full customization in layout (of course) and specifically, the ordering process. My business proposal requires extra fields, double checks and per item customization – all of which are necessities. I would prefer something written in perl, I have a base knowledge of it, but this is not the limiting factor as I will trade easy to read code in “new” language for spaghetti code any day.

2) Though I am confident in my idea, the nature of it presents a duality of possibility. It could be a flash pan explosion of sales or never be anything more than curiosity to web travelers. Thus the need to have low costs and incredible flexibility in host, merchant account, etc. What merchant accounts provide reasonable services while still providing descent support? A note on my requirements, the site will be selling primarily inexpensive items (3-5 dollars, shipping included) thus having a 2checkout setup of .45 cents and 5.5% real bites into the profit margin. So what would recommend?

3) That’s enough for now, though I still have more questions that a 4 year old clinging onto his mothers dress.

Thanks, and this website has been a huge help already.

hippie

[sun818]

Unless you can sell through in volume, $3 to $5 items will not leave you much of a margin - and doubt you could pay yourself even minimum wage. For a $5 item you are paying 14.5% on just fees. PayPal is a little better, but the fees cut heavily into your profit margin. I don't want to discourage you but have you considered wholesale or setting a minimum order requirement so you're bothered with anything say $10 or $15 transactions? The other option is to take money order and checks.

Shopping cart I recommend is Mal's eCommerce. It is free for MO/Checks, Paypal, and manual credit card processing. Knowing HTML is the only requirement as the cart is remotely hosted.

[Essex_boy]

I use oscommerce - its free, 2checkout I know you said it was expensive but.... It fits with oscommerce. Try Hostica.com for the hosting very cheap indeed

[quiet_man]

Hi Hippie, and welcome! I would agree with sun1818 - those prices sound low for online trading unless you are selling in volume (per customer). Would it really be worth the trouble for a customer to go online and go through the whole checkout palaver for the sake of a $3 purchase?

That said, I don't want to put you off. Here are a few links to previous discussions on shopping carts (tip - look out for any comments from Crazy_Fool. He always seems to have good advice):

Shopping cart - which to go for? [webmasterworld.com]

Best shopping cart? [webmasterworld.com]

A shopping cart plus a database? Or What? [webmasterworld.com]

Also some other threads of interest:

New to e-commerce and I have questions [webmasterworld.com] (some excellent links)

New to e-commerce [webmasterworld.com]

E-commerce homepage design [webmasterworld.com]

Starting from scratch [webmasterworld.com]

UK e-commerce site, what to have [webmasterworld.com] (especially msg 5)

What do I need to do to start to biz? [webmasterworld.com]

Understanding e-commerce start-up needs [webmasterworld.com]

[pshea]

quiet man, kudos for the taking the time to develop that list!

[hippie]

Thanks for the replys! Really good information. Quiet thats a hell of a list right there!

I agree as to the cost of the items, it would purely be volume base business. There is another alternative which include bundling for value to get the price between the 10-15$ mark. The product is conducive for this, and judging from my own research of cost this seems to be the way to go.

As for the different shopping cart/merchant/payment gateways, I have learned more in the last 48 hours than I thought was possible.

Mal's Ecommerce is a viable alternative for many buisness, however, it, unfortunately, has no where near the customizing ability that this product needs as I will have to edit the check out process severely. Stating this, I am leaning towards OScommerce and ClickCartPro. OScommerce is nice not only because of the fact its free but also the community around it. ClickCartPro is also appealing as I have only heard good things about it, written in perl (my best language) and low price.

As for gateway, I am leaning towards a paypal or 2checkout solution. The latter seems to be the more professional way to work as paypal just seems - cheezy. However, I am still not a fan of the high 5.5% fee but am begining to get over it.

Once again, thanks to everyone. I am going to do a bit more research on each of these solutions and start a test server to get the feel of them. Trust me, I will have more questions soon. :)

Hippie