How to build a internet store? (auto shop, what Software Need?))

[gredodenda]

OK,
My friend is thinking about a building a web store selling auto parts and many other things and I don't have much knowledge about that so I', asking you guys, here in Anandtech.com. Please help me and teach me any knowledge you know.

This is the SETUP

My friend is thinking about taking internet orders and do customer service (email, phone, no walk in) in California and orders will be sent out to the B&M Auto store in Texas. In Texas, they can take do customer service also. (email, phone, walk in service) and they have been shipping packages to across the US so shipping knowhow is covered. Their only job is to get orders from California by email and send out packages to customers. But What are the things that I must have and Need to know??

What are the steps that must be done?

Do I need a special software that collects email orders? or Is there such thing?
I heard about a Merchant Service, Do I need one? What does it do?
How about a Credit card acceptance? How can I do it on the web?
Do you know any book that tells how to build a web store step by step or at least talks about it?
How about a search engine? How can I make our store to come up in the first 10 list when people search for auto parts? I heard somewhere that to be on the first 10 list, people have to extra money to the search engine company or something? Is that correct?


Obviously, Both CA and Texas will have computers ready. Do they have to be ON all the time?? right?
I heard about some companies that takes orders and put them on the web site and shipout to the customers and it cost $4000 or above per month. Is that worth it?? I personally think my friend don't need that but I'm here to learn.

I see every sites about policy note. Return policy, shipping, oversized shipping, price changes. Are those be ruled by the seller or is that regulated by the law? I have no clue.
Please teach me anything!!! There are so many web store and I don't know how they build a web store. Where can I learn to do that?

What kind of software do I need?? when orders are placed, automatically orders will be emailed to us. How?
Is there any software that are ready to setup a store? like check out, policy, shopping cart, my account...etc.

Please give me inputs!

Thanks a million to Anandtech members.
gredodenda

 

[rh71]

Obviously you're looking for an e-commerce website. This is usually a job for the professionals but you can conceivably do it all yourself with software help like Cart32.

Without getting into too much detail (I'm sure others will add more)... you would need an SSL-enabled (Verisign.com) site to accept credit card orders so that the transmission of that information to and from your server is secure. As far as how that credit card is charged afterward, someone else will have to explain. But even more than that, you would need to develop the site to handle order requests between pages since regular HTML won't work. Many sites use ASP, JSP, ColdFusion, PHP, and CGI that connect to a back-end database (often for real-time inventory).

Hope that gives you some idea of what's involved... it isn't exactly easy to create it yourself... and I've been doing ColdFusion for 3 years now.

 

[Transition]

<< OK,
My friend is thinking about a building a web store selling auto parts and many other things and I don't have much knowledge about that so I', asking you guys, here in Anandtech.com. Please help me and teach me any knowledge you know.

This is the SETUP

My friend is thinking about taking internet orders and do customer service (email, phone, no walk in) in California and orders will be sent out to the B&M Auto store in Texas. In Texas, they can take do customer service also. (email, phone, walk in service) and they have been shipping packages to across the US so shipping knowhow is covered. Their only job is to get orders from California by email and send out packages to customers. But What are the things that I must have and Need to know??

What are the steps that must be done?

Do I need a special software that collects email orders? or Is there such thing?
I heard about a Merchant Service, Do I need one? What does it do?
How about a Credit card acceptance? How can I do it on the web?
Do you know any book that tells how to build a web store step by step or at least talks about it?
How about a search engine? How can I make our store to come up in the first 10 list when people search for auto parts? I heard somewhere that to be on the first 10 list, people have to extra money to the search engine company or something? Is that correct?


Obviously, Both CA and Texas will have computers ready. Do they have to be ON all the time?? right?
I heard about some companies that takes orders and put them on the web site and shipout to the customers and it cost $4000 or above per month. Is that worth it?? I personally think my friend don't need that but I'm here to learn.

I see every sites about policy note. Return policy, shipping, oversized shipping, price changes. Are those be ruled by the seller or is that regulated by the law? I have no clue.
Please teach me anything!!! There are so many web store and I don't know how they build a web store. Where can I learn to do that?

What kind of software do I need?? when orders are placed, automatically orders will be emailed to us. How?
Is there any software that are ready to setup a store? like check out, policy, shopping cart, my account...etc.

Please give me inputs!

Thanks a million to Anandtech members.
gredodenda >>



Do I need a special software that collects email orders? or Is there such thing?
: : : I'd recommend going with Miva Merchant. I've tried literally dozens of cart systems and found Miva to be extremely cost effective.

I heard about a Merchant Service, Do I need one? What does it do?
: : : You'll need a merchant service for processing credit cards. You will need one if you have intentions of accepting credit cards. If you use a program such as Miva Merchant (Miva Merchant) you can interact with several diffferent merchant providers. I am using Card Service International personally.

How about a Credit card acceptance? How can I do it on the web?
: : : See above question.

Do you know any book that tells how to build a web store step by step or at least talks about it?
: : : Amazon. I'm sure they carry a million books on how to setup a web store. You've got to first figure out what software you'll be using if you want to get down to the nitty gritty of operational procedures.

How about a search engine? How can I make our store to come up in the first 10 list when people search for auto parts? I heard somewhere that to be on the first 10 list, people have to extra money to the search engine company or something? Is that correct?
: : : Ahh the wonderful world of search engines. There's several ways to get listed - the quickest and most effective way typically is going with a service like Overture which operates on a pay-per-click (or pay for your search engine ranking) basis. This is a VERY expensive way of advertising typically. Mastering search engines is not easy - quite frankly you never can. Just when you think you've got all the tricks down to pull good results - someone else comes along with something that destroys your ranking. Definitely a battle in itself.

Your going to need to research everything else yourself. No ones going to do it for you - so you better start doing some intensive research.

Try the king - Google.

P.S. I own Hallusin8.com. If you're looking for a Hosting provider i'd have to suggest Hostway.

Good luck my friend,

Ryan Graf
Hallusin8.com

 

[Sophia]

As rh71 said, yes you need an ecommerce website. Well, for just the basics...

You need a domain name and a website (obviously). To that, you can write your own shopping cart/ordering system, "buy" one or "lease" one (such as Pair.com/Americart This one, for example, emails an order to an address you specify. I think you have to log in to get the credit card number and charge it on your own--don't quite recall.

You will need some sort of merchant account to process credit cards. Someone else will tell you more about this, but check with your local banks and see if you can get any kind of decent interest rate.

Search engines are a whole other can of worms. Start here: searchengineforums.com You don't have to pay for top ten ranking, though you can. However, for several search engines (such as AOL) the the first three results are indeed paid for placement. www.goto.com I think will forward you to whatever the new name for that site is. That is, you have the "top ten" but in actuality there are three "paid for" sites that are shown before them. Unless you want to wait for months (once your site is ready), search engine submissions will cost you some money. Refer to www.inktomi.com and www.looksmart.com for example.

Edit: this might help too Search Engine Watch