Setting up an e-commerce site - advice?

ecommerce, merchant account, shopping cart

[esoteric]

I have a number of non e-commerce enabled sites (affiliates, advertising etc), and have decided to embark on my first commerce site.

I will be selling a single product - a physical product - around the 10 pound mark and predominantly in the UK, but there might be orders from other parts of the world as well.

Who should I use in terms of a merchant to take this forward. most of the US merchants I've spoken to will not deal with a UK company.

also, with a single product, do i need a shopping cart, or simply a buy now button, which takes the user through to the merchant?

i'm going to include paypal, etc, but would also like to be able to accept credit cards payments through the site.

so advice on which uk merchant provider to use would be appreciated - is there a comparitive list of them somewhere out there?

[athinktank]

I offten advise people in your situation to use something like Yahoo Stores. They have a simple user interaface, and allow you to get up and running quickly. They "nickly and dime" ( not sure of the appropriate UK phrase ) you with costs here and there, but your out of pocket costs are usually cheaper then either doing it yourself or purchasing software.

[curlykarl]

Have a look at mals-e.com for a free and very easy to use cart.

It can be set up in about 5 mins if you only have single product.

There are quite a few payment processing options available for it to, and a very good forum for assistance should you need it.

Karl :)