Can You Explain Ecommerce To Me?

[naitsirhc26]

My dad wants me to build him a site, but he wants it to have a shopping cart. Is this easy to set up? How would I go about doing this? Please let me know. I am a web designer, but I have never had to set up a shopping cart. This is a new avenue for me. Thanks.

[shri]

A shopping cart is like any other script, it is essentially a web based application, like this forum or a blog.

A basic shopping application should be able to mimic simple brick and mortar store functions like product displays, check out, payment, inventory etc.

If you're intimidated and your father does nto want to spend too much, look for outsourced shopping carts. (Amazon.Com has just released this functionality and vendors like Yahoo, Monster Commerce etc have been allowing their clients to run large stores).

You can also look at ready to install packages like OSCommerce.

[naitsirhc26]

Thanks, that helps!

[webtress]

Try doing a search for shopping cart software using your favorite search engine. I like to use ecommerce templates for the shopping carts I design and my clients find the online admin easy to use as well.

[lorax]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

Plenty of free and paid for cart software. You can even use online services (they own and host the catalog/cart).

Pay attention to details that matter like security, product organization, customer service, customer confidence builders and shipping.

Too many threads here to list but read take a stroll through other threads here in Ecomm. A ton of great information from some really talented and successful business people.

[Mistra]

Don't waste time with creating new shopping cart. Make use of free shopping cart out there. You need not worry of bugs, because whenever bugs are found it will be be fixed. If you developed your own cart then the security of your cart is not fully tested.