New e-Commerce website, advice needed

[JohnnyOldBoy]

To the collective,

I have an idea for a mens clothing site offering a really personalised customer experience. I have the manufacturer lined up and some basic idea of fullfillment.

I have been looking e-Commerce providers and like Magento ..... it's free and offers a grown up version if the business takes off.

I have dabbled with Dreamweaver but I don't understand the difference between Dreamweaver and the site design bit of Magento. What I am trying come up with is a workflow that is robust and is future proof.

Can anyone offer me some wisdom and the benefit of experience ?

Thanks

John

 

[Buttso]

essjay (on this site)

is a wiz at e-commerce websites... and websites in general

I will send him this thread..

 

[essjay]

Magento is good. I've used it for a few sites.

The best advice I can give, is that if you go with Mageno, buy a template. It will save you weeks and weeks of work. Modify that template to your hearts content but I wouldn't recommend designing a site from scratch using Magento.

Your next main job is to think about your transaction processing. I'd avoid using Paypal as your main payment type but by all means use it and and additional one. WorldPay is quick enough to set up but expensive. Realex is another I'd look at.

Download the Magento manual and understand how the software works.

 

[Loiq]

web design is an evolutionary process I think, each business is similar yet slightly different I might have it wrong but that what we've found...

On the whole clients either have heaps of money usually some else's in which chase they can have whatever they want. Or they're small and need to grow the business in a brick and mortar style. For some this is too slow they loose interest. Believing that they're one step away from being rich...in reality most people are probably two steps away from going bust...

my advice would be buy an off the shelf package/ template. Make sure your physical delivery and process for delivery is spot on. Measure and adjust...often. Then spend the rest of the money on advertising, not much point being in business if nobody knows your there.

have a strategy plan, measure against it and adjust it as required...the web expirience wants to be nice but... plan a redesign of the site into business growth...

best of luck...

 

[everywherevirtually]

Dreamweaver is just a the web development tool. As the others have said the best thing to do is buy a pre made template and then tweak accordingly. Dreamweaver will enable you to edit style sheets, code, upload images and organise the file structure on your server but that is where it ends. The management of the site will most likely be a web based interface.

How many products are you intending to offer initially?

 

[richie]

do it yerself with midicart, googll it. Cheap and you can make it look good too.

 

[everywherevirtually]

I'm also using wordpress + "shopp" for wordpress

 

[Gecko]

I'm using Magento - it's very good . Inventory management is easy as is order, shipping and billing management but it is not a financial management system. I have about 800+ products and use a multicurrency platform in GBP and Euro and having gone live in April reckon we made a very good choice. Unless you are very web savvy you will need some help. My son is on our team for development so if you like what you see at www.EnglishShop.be let me know and I can put you in touch.

 

[JohnnyOldBoy]

Thanks for the replies and tips. We are working up the full scope of the site but it looks like about 500+ items.

We will touch and ship everything so inventory management is key. Because it's mens clothing we expect to have to deal with returns as well.

Found a good tool for frameworks and logic called Microsoft Sketchflow which has speeded up the design without having to pay a Web Designer.

Got to say I am really enjoying it.