Thread: ecommerce, worth the hassle ??

Hi All, need some advice so hope I came to the right place.

A potential client has requested an e-commerce site for a new online business and I am debating whether or not I should take or pass.
Without giving too much away there would be perhaps 3-4 categories of products and 30+ items per category. Seems fairly straightforward.
So I have looked at osCommerce, ZenCart, magento and Prestashop (perhaps use Realex for payments) which all I am sure would do the job but before I give an answer to him there are a couple of reasons I am hesitant:

• Not sure what to charge as it would be the first one I have setup.
• How much effort would be required during a year to maintain.
• I am fairly comfortable with html/css but I don't like the idea of having to support a complicated package like a shopping system without being an expert at PHP and mysql databases.

So what do you think ?, maybe you gotta start somewhere ?

I have used OsCommerce for a couple of sites. The trickiest part is the html & css - you don't really have to touch any php, and the database setup is very straightforward.

Regarding maintenance, again very easy. I spent 1/2 hour with one client and he now updates the site himself.

The basic setup of OSCommerce is easy - however, if the client want additional items, or a non-standard setup, this is where the work is! On the plus side, if you do an ecommerce website even if time consuming the first time, you will learn a lot, and then be able to add this as one of your services for the future.

thanks for the reply !
you are quite right regarding it being a learning experience, and one which can be used again.

osCommerce looks like a good solution and a tried and trusted one too.
From reading around people seem to prefer Zen cart after doing a few of the sites and to confuse matters more I installed prestahop on localhost and am really impressed with it. Themes can be changed easily and its fairly configurable like a CMS. Has anyone used this with Realex ?, is there a module available ? , only caveat I have with this solution is that the support seems to be mainly French.

Perhaps osCommerce is the best solution for starting off.

There is a realex payment module for oscommerce. It has not been updated since 2007 so does not support 3D secure but this may not be an issue for you.

osCommerce: Realex Payments

Dave

thanks Dave,
I reckon I'll give it a go. Should be an interesting experience and one to add to the can-do list.

Ecommerce isn't that hard so long as you have done it before. If this is your first time be prepared for pain. Prestashop is the best option of the ones you mentioned, it's way easier then magento and better than the others in my opinion. But ultimately its up to you

Yes, your ecommerce site will be extremely hard the first time, but you will learn so much valuable experience from it that it will make things so much easier in the future... I'm dabbling with Magento at the moment, and even though it's extremely time consuming, i'm enjoying it.

Just make sure you check out all the merchant fees and rates before you start giving quotations to your clients...

I would say give it a go, more than likely more customers will want that functionality down the road. Its not terribly difficult and once you sort it out it will be an additional service you can offer.

e-commerce is tough to hold onto customers

Originally Posted by backfull01

e-commerce is tough to hold onto customers

Agreed, many sites fail because customers think they are going to be the next dot com millionare with no work input dream on