Shopping Carts and eCommerce

[rusti_knight]

Well, I've given a brief hunt to this forum and a very abbreviated look over the web, but I thought I'd pose the question to see what kind of answers I might receive.

I've been tickled to build a website for a client and they're wanting a shopping cart/commerce page where they can sell some of their products. The problem is that they seem to not want to use Paypal. I have not yet extracted from them the reason why, but hopefully it will be forthcoming, and so far, Paypal's is the only cart 'system' I've set up and used.

I understand that you do need some kind of shopping cart system to use Google Checkout as well. I've also come to the fuzzy conclusion that regardless of the cart system, I'm still going to need a separate money processing system?

I have looked briefly at Shopify, but truth be told I'd rather build this site and integrate some kind of shopping cart otherwise, if at all possible. I know HTML/XHTML, CSS & Flash, but no programming like PHP.

Is there anything anyone can recommend? FYI, the client is in the UK, if it makes any difference at all.

[Drazan]

Most prebuilt shopping carts have several options for payment gateways or even taking payments themselves (requires a secured server environment).

Payment gateways are just like paypal. AuthorizeNet, ChecktoGo, and SitePoint are just a few others. Search 'payment gateways' for a list. Research which one you want to go with. All have their pros and cons.

You'll probably want to start looking at the prebuilt ecommerce carts that you can install on your server/host and customize to fit your customers needs. Especially if you don't know much about php or asp.

If you are going to go this route in your career, I would suggest that you take a look at php and at least learn to recognize it's structure. All programming applications still output HTML and you should be able to recognize PHP codes (or what I call patterns) and output(the assembly of html) even if you don't know how to program php from scratch.

Most ecommerce platforms have the output code separated from the programming language by using a template system. This can usually be found in the template or theme folders.

If you have a really good base knowledge of HTML/CSS and a dash of Javascript, you should be able to figure out the rest of the template systems to customize the ecommerce carts to your customer's liking.

The main thing to remember that if you are just starting out with these systems, to take an existing template or theme and then replace the graphics and colors with your own. It's a fast-track to get things done.

:)
Jade

[rusti_knight]

I can see the wisdom in learning some php and I've been meaning to try. Out of curiosity do you have any websites or books that you might recommend to get me started in that direction?

I also appreciate the tips on the ecommerce stuff, thanks!

[Drazan]

yep, check the top of this forum section there's sticky that has a list of website learning sites that will take you from the most basic all the way up to application development.

[holycow77]

I'm not an expert... but I've built ecommerce sites using the Joomla ecommerce edition before which is pretty east to integrate into everything - and has all the options already set up.

[rusti_knight]

I'm not an expert... but I've built ecommerce sites using the Joomla ecommerce edition before which is pretty east to integrate into everything - and has all the options already set up.

I would still need to find a payment gateway, correct?

[Drazan]

yes, you still need to sign up to a payment gateway.

Then in the administrator section of the cart there is a place where you activate which gateway you want to use. Then you'll put in the gateway credentials as needed so that the cart will 'talk' with the gateway provider and send over the requested $$ amount.

[boomskins]

If you build the site using WordPress you could use WP-Commerce, they have several payment options that the buyer can use. I used BigCartel (http://www.bigcartel.com) on my BoomSkins (http://shop.boomskins.com) site but they only allow the use of PayPal, all transactions take place within the site but the payment portion is transferred to the PayPal site.