The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5) - Starting up an E-Commerce website

Starting up an E-Commerce website

Hi,

Can anyone offer personal recommendations for scripts / companies / service providers for setting up a small e-commerce website.

I'm interested in:
- shopping cart
- credit card validation
- payment processing
- scripts for interfacing with shipping companies

Site would run on *nix using Apache.

Rory
Wednesday, October 15, 2003

I should clarify.

I'm not looking for developers. Just some software and service providers to automate things.

Rory
Wednesday, October 15, 2003

How about Yahoo store?

http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/merchant/

J. D. Trollinger
Wednesday, October 15, 2003

I host my consulting site on http://www.readyhosting.com Although I don't use their shopping cart, they do have one. I've been happy with the service and the price was very cheap.

At work, we use Interland, which initially sounded great, but after 2 months, we're making plans to leave. YMMV

(I don't work for either)

Lee
Wednesday, October 15, 2003

Hi J.D.,

I've looked at Yahoo Stores before, but am afraid to leap into anything before knowing how easily and how comprehensively I can modify their standard "look".

I don't want to use any of their pre-existing templates.

Does anyone have experience with Yahoo Stores?

Rory
Wednesday, October 15, 2003

I use eSellerate and have modified the look and feel quite easily. The shopping cart stuff is there and works fine. I've only been with them for a few months but no complaints so far.

http://www.esellerate.net

sedwo
Wednesday, October 15, 2003

How many items do you have?

If not too many items, the quickest way to start is PayPal. They get a bum rap, but maintaining a merchant account is not as easy as you might think.

I built my own ASP pages, then you can swap out any type of shopping cart you want. When you outgrow PayPal, then you just build another cart into your ASP pages. That way you're not locked into any ecommerce prebuilt site, and you control your own look and feel.

The problem with merchant accounts can be getting your money out of them. Once you have a track record, then getting money out is easier.

upallnight
Saturday, October 18, 2003

Have a glance at http://www.erol.co.uk (disclaimer: i used to work there) Still worth a look though, they're doing quite nicely and not without some reason...

Andrew Cherry
Monday, October 20, 2003