Hi,

I know this info is probably easy to find but I've only got today off from work and am trying to get some info together for my wife who is starting her own business.

Her web site is almost ready to go live and although it's not the main focus of her business I'm wandering whether she should sell her products online.

So basically what I'm wanting to know is does anybody have ecommerce experience and how do you find it works for you. What sort of fees are involved if somebody buys an item online?

Thank's
John

Paypal fees vary on the amount sold per month from 3.4 to 1.5% I think it is now + 20p per transaction. No set up fees and no monthly fees using PP standard edition, and quick to implement into a website.

Thanks for that Sandra, thought there might be more to it. So cost wise apart from the paypal fees that's more or less it then? Are ecommerce shops easy enough to set up and run?
Cheers
John

I'd start with an Ebay store if it's appropriate, although you'll eventually want that to be supplementary.

It's worth pointing out that a store is useless without traffic, and stores are very difficult to get ranked highly in their respective niche if you're competing against hard content sites.

I'd recommend a host called Site Build It for building a content rich site around your niche and then using their Store Build It module (http://hardgoods.sitesell.com) to integrate the shopfront and checkout system.

There are many other shopfront builders out there, but as far as getting traffic and seeing the big picture, SBI is probably the most integrated package out there.

Total cost about £200 per year.

Good luck!

My first thoughts are what business is your wife in? She may well do better using the Internet to direct people to a shop or to telephone. But if it's a product a lot of people are searching for you should have a website that is transactional.

Check how many people are searching for what your wife sells on the google keyword tool.
http://www.google.com/sktool/#keywords

and check the competition for that keyword to see if you can compete with them.

I'd start with an Ebay store if it's appropriate, although you'll eventually want that to be supplementary.

It's worth pointing out that a store is useless without traffic, and stores are very difficult to get ranked highly in their respective niche if you're competing against hard content sites.

I'd recommend a host called Site Build It for building a content rich site around your niche and then using their Store Build It module (http://hardgoods.sitesell.com) to integrate the shopfront and checkout system.

There are many other shopfront builders out there, but as far as getting traffic and seeing the big picture, SBI is probably the most integrated package out there.

Total cost about £200 per year.

Good luck!
No, no and more no! Terrible advice. (In my opinion of course)

Dont start with an Ebay store - buy all means sell on ebay including a link to your website which can help build traffic to your site.

Dont just buy an off the shelf package unless you know what you're doing, and even then dont go for something like Site Build It. Total cost £200, only if you dont include your time to make this suck ass package do a half decent job.

Get a professional to provide a solution tailored to your needs, or pick a product based on your requirements, and what it can deliver.

Again - just my opinion.

These self build kits are just a no no when you want to build a serious website that earns a decent income. Fine if you wanna play at it, dabble a bit, hobby horse, etc, but it's not for real businesses.

No, no and more no! Terrible advice. (In my opinion of course)

Dont start with an Ebay store - buy all means sell on ebay including a link to your website which can help build traffic to your site.

Dont just buy an off the shelf package unless you know what you're doing, and even then dont go for something like Site Build It. Total cost £200, only if you dont include your time to make this suck ass package do a half decent job.

Get a professional to provide a solution tailored to your needs, or pick a product based on your requirements, and what it can deliver.

Again - just my opinion.

I and many others have done very well with Site Build It. It is a solution based on your requirements, that's the point. It doesn't just leave you sat on a web server with little to no traffic.

Calling it a "suck ass package" is wholly ignorant of what you get with SBI, i.e. not just a web space and store facilities, but a step by step process to build traffic and build your business. It's an education in building your business online, which is what everyone moving their business online needs.

Good luck with the "tailored solution" if you have no idea how to drive organic, targeted traffic to that wonderful site. There is so much wasted money thrown at agencies that can build these beautiful, flashy sites, but leave you completely stagnant and having to fork out for expensive PPC campaigns and banner advertising.

One owner of a trophy shop told me that customers like to look at and feel the cup and figures before they buy, I have found out otherwise with online sales every day.

Most people today don't have time to wonder around shops. Bosses give jobs to junior staff to get this and get that who are internet savvy and know how to search for exactly what they want.

Mums at home get the shopping in from Tesco and Asda online. Its big business now with online sales increasing all the time whilst high street shops have seen a decline.

More and more people are getting broadband free with everything from sky to mobile phones. If you are not selling online then you are missing out on a large part of the market.

Depending on your plan you can go for a budget setup and get peanuts or you can go for a corporate system and turn over millions. eBay and Amazon are easy to set up and work well although the fees do cut into profits considerably.

The next option is your own store like the ones mentioned or cubecart, os commerce, actinic, magenta or top of the range venda.

Marketing the site it essential as it would be like creating a TV advert and not showing it.

There is always a for and against on everything to be fair, its a horses for courses scenario once again. That said, unless you have tried everything available, we are not in a position to judge what is best to make that comparison and even then, what one likes, another will not.

I and many others have done very well with Site Build It. It is a solution based on your requirements, that's the point. It doesn't just leave you sat on a web server with little to no traffic.

Calling it a "suck ass package" is wholly ignorant of what you get with SBI, i.e. not just a web space and store facilities, but a step by step process to build traffic and build your business. It's an education in building your business online, which is what everyone moving their business online needs.

Good luck with the "tailored solution" if you have no idea how to drive organic, targeted traffic to that wonderful site. There is so much wasted money thrown at agencies that can build these beautiful, flashy sites, but leave you completely stagnant and having to fork out for expensive PPC campaigns and banner advertising.

It's not 'wholly ignorant' at all - i know the package very well, and think it's terrible, and if you factor in the time it takes to wade through all their mostly useless and inaccurate guff to give you a decent product, it's not even very cheap!
If you dont know what you're doing, you employ somone who does to do it for you. This is the best course of action in most cases.

It's not 'wholly ignorant' at all - i know the package very well, and think it's terrible, and if you factor in the time it takes to wade through all their mostly useless and inaccurate guff to give you a decent product, it's not even very cheap!
If you dont know what you're doing, you employ somone who does to do it for you. This is the best course of action in most cases.

How is it inaccurate? Since without SBI I wouldn't be in the position I am today, to finally go self employed full time, it's hardly useless in my eyes. It has been such a huge part of my education in growing a business online.

It's all very well employing a development team for your site (which of course you can still do with SBI) but that's about 1/3 of the task. Sites are useless without targeted traffic, and we're talking thousands of pounds per month to hire an ongoing traffic building service.

Not everyone has thousands per month to throw at agencies (I didn't), but why should that hold them back if they have a good business idea?

There's an open source E-commerce platform called Magento which I have personally found to be very good and one of the most SEO friendly. It's got a hell of a lot of features, which can be a bit overwhelming at first. But once you get used to it, it's brilliant. Easy to sync up to Paypal accounts as well :)

Well done you - you have made a success despite using SBI. I maintain that it's a rubbish product because...

You can learn everything you want to know (or at least anything you could get from SBI) for free.
When I looked at it the information they had was obsolete / outdated, and in some cases just plain wrong.
The effort / reward ratio was in my view, astronimically bad.

The equivalent option if you dont go with SBI is not start employing a development team paying them thousands per month! This is just another example of crap information.

If it works for you, thats what counts. Maybe it's not as bad as i'm making out, but its also not as good as you are.

Adding Paypal buy now buttons is dead easy, setting up an ecommerce store involves a lot more.

I'm sure everyone has their favourites, and we have ours, though that is something we discuss with our clients.

Whoever quotes should put forth their reasons, and give and show examples, why the cart solution they propose is a good one to use, and let you see if you like the look and sound of it.

It's no good telling someone what WE persoanlly like using; we are supposed to be identifying a customers needs and proposing something that will suit them and their budget.

I would ask when you last looked at SBI to give you that impression, since over the past 6 months it has changed more than it has in the past 6 years. Also, looking at it is not the same as implementing and working closely with it every day.

I can't think of any other package that offers a web 2.0 solution on the scale that SBI does, and for so cheap. They really don't have any competition.

The key point is integration. Everything in one place - the education, tools and hosting platform to get things done. Most hosting companies just don't provide the same level of integration or support and if they do they punish you for it with extortionate monthly fees.

Is it perfect? No. But the rate at which it is improving it will be damn near given a year or so. I just hope they keep the price the same it's been since 2002!

As far as traffic to client's sites, it is without a doubt the most successful hosting solution there is, although granted there are only a few competing hosting companies that would dare measure their clients' success rate based on traffic (the lifeblood of a web business), rather than "look at the pretty sites we help our clients create".

Sorry indizine I will shut up now!

P.S. I don't work for SiteSell :hihi:. Just a very very satisfied customer.

I bow to your superior knowledge on the subject.

The fact you think hosting companies have anything to do with traffic generation for your website doesn't in the slightest make me think you don't know what you're talking about and dont think for a minute your defensive tone sounds suspiciously like someone who has paid through the nose in terms of time and money but refeuses to accept there's a possiblity that other solutions work as well if not better.

I'm not saying you cant use it and make it work for you - I am saying that by using it and making it work, you will spend more time and money than you need to to acheive the same result.

As always though, the best solution is one that works for you. If that is SBI then well done for finding the thing that works for you.

Some (not so nice) reviews (http://www.ezmoneyon.net/the-soap-opera-of-sbi-scam-review/)

I bow to your superior knowledge on the subject.

The fact you think hosting companies have anything to do with traffic generation for your website doesn't in the slightest make me think you don't know what you're talking about and dont think for a minute your defensive tone sounds suspiciously like someone who has paid through the nose in terms of time and money but refeuses to accept there's a possiblity that other solutions work as well if not better.

I'm not saying you cant use it and make it work for you - I am saying that by using it and making it work, you will spend more time and money than you need to to acheive the same result.

As always though, the best solution is one that works for you. If that is SBI then well done for finding the thing that works for you.

Some (not so nice) reviews (http://www.ezmoneyon.net/the-soap-opera-of-sbi-scam-review/)

Traditional hosting companies aren't concerned with traffic no. That's the point. I think you are misunderstanding the role a host CAN play in providing someone with the resources necessary to build long term, presold traffic.

I've already seen that link you provided, and it's funny the number of comments that condemn SBI assume, much like you have done, what SBI delivers vs what other self-startup packages deliver, rather than spending time implementing it.

There were completely false accusations like "SBI owns your domain" and "once you build a site with SBI you can't change hosts", and other such rubbish. Even "SBI is a cult" :rolleyes:

So excuse me if I take about as much notice of that "review" as I would a straight-plugged affiliate review.

I could name several genuine flaws with SBI without having to resort to such idiotic assumptions that litter the comments sections of these link-wheeled (a finite SEO tactic) "reviews".

Hand on heart, as someone who has used (and currently uses) other web building platforms and lives and breathes IM, $299 a year for everything SBI provides is very reasonable. If it wasn't, I would simply move my site to another host... which apparently I'm not supposed to be able to do with the evil SBI entrapment cult!! :o

Of course you're entitled to your opinion, but some people may consider it misleading when you claim you can obtain everything SBI offers for free, which is beyond mere opinion.

Edit: Just been reading one review which is basically "Blogger.com is free therefore SBI is a scam!!!" - this is typical of the kind of inability some people have of differentiating a site with an online business.

Wordpress/Blogger will not build a business. It may support it.

SBI are not a hosting company - traditional or otherwise! Comparing them to such makes no sense. They sell a package - one which you could put together yourself at a fraction of the cost.

Obviously the reviews there have their crazy elements too, there are plenty of valid points I noticed you didn't pick up on!

SBI sells packages, they don't sell websites - it's up to you how well your site does. You can use the information and setup assistance built into the package they provide to help you, but ultimately it's down to you to make it work.

As I've said many times now - if you like it, that's what counts. Show me a professional with the same opinion and I'll eat my keyboard though. Any designer worth their salt will give you a better tailored solution for a far less overall cost in 99% of cases.

And the information is out there for free - google is your friend.

Any designer worth their salt will give you a better tailored solution for a far less overall cost in 99% of cases.

Proof? Even if they could knock up a site for $300 (I actually would expect to pay a lot more for a professionally designed site), what functionality will it provide me post-design? What ongoing support will I have? What plugins will be available for no extra cost?

I'd love to see a package/host (they are a host because they provide a domain, space and bandwidth to host your site) that offers what SBI does for less, or offer more for the same price or less.

When I bought SBI I knew I wasn't getting a designer, but it turned out design wasn't as big an issue as I initially thought, since traffic has increased month on month with a simple, clean and accessible design.

Wordpress can design flashier sites than SBI, and web design specialists can design flashier sites than Wordpress, but that's not the point.

Like I said, there are genuine flaws with SBI, one being the clunky FTP functionality (although I do believe they are working on that after releasing about 10 major modules in the past year), but these reviews never seem to focus on specifics like that, especially that Sowerbutts one, out of which I lost count how many holes were poked.