Starting an online store

[gerryonline]

Hey I am looking to sell some items on the internet, can anyone recommend a good place to start, or a good product to use on a web host?

[AussieTycoon]

Hey Gerry,

Welcome on board!

There are a number of good online stores you can set up 'out of the box', here are a few I have used in the past;

osCommerce - http://www.oscommerce.com/
This is quite good, free, a reasonable community for support and mods.

ZenCart - http://www.zencart.com/
This is also free, pretty good, has been quoted to be more customisable than osc, has a good support community and following.

There are lots of other out there also, you might want to look at whichever host you choose, what type of online store they support, some hosts have their own.

Another thing you might want to look into is who your banking partner is and whether the software you choose to use will work with your bank. I do suggest paypal however as most ecommerce software supports PayPal these days!

[itycoon]

Those are some very good products. What type of products will you be selling? Depending on what you are selling I can offer you some advice.

[rosshill]

I like Shopify, they have a good template system for designers and have a very solid product.

[ecomm]

i would recommend joomla and virtuemart - its an unbeatable combo which will give you the flexibility to do just about anything.

with joomla integrated the sky is the limit. plus don't forget how important to be have an SEO friendly site, with joomla added you've got blogging, forums etc etc capabilities

cheers

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[Hayley]

Oztion is another one. Anyone here use that?

[Brendan]

Isn't Oztion just like ebay? or can you set up your own store/auction and integrate it with your website?

[Hayley]

Yes, it is. I thought gerryonline might be interested in that sort of sales tool.

[crismarie]

Hello,

To choose for the right product is to try the software. You will never know if the software is good enough until you try it. So to remove all doubts, you should test a demo or download a free version if it fits the needs of your business. There are lots of shopping cart out there, the one I would highly recommend is the Avactis Shopping Cart.

[Hampers]

I really like opencart for heaps of products - it has an easy to use interface for updating and is really user friendly once online.

Have a look at some other opencart examples and see for yourself. Sometimes the e-commerce can be over complicated.