Setting up shop on the internet

[desura]

First off, apologies if this is the wrong forum.

Okay, I'm looking to setup ecommerce. I'm pretty bad at programming, but I'm hoping to use Serif X6 for most design work, saving me from having to spend any time in code.

Now, I'm considering just using ebay also. An ebay store costs $20/mo plus 9% of any sales.

Your own website from like A Tiny Orange would be around $20/month and only the paypal fees.

So is it better to go with ebay or your own?

Other thing is that I keep on hearing about like how hackers manage to exploit tiny obscure little bugs in services, or DDOS attacks, and that all scares me to death because I'd be completely helpless, while if I went with eBay, they would take care of that. And if business grew in size, I wouldn't have to pay more for bandwidth.

So, basically, my questions boil down to...

1. is it okay to do an ecommerce site with just HTML? All respectable sites I see use PHP, which looks beyond me...

2. are my fears about hosting your own ecommerce site overblown? I'm thinking that at some point it would make sense for me to do hosting myself instead of through a 3rd party, and so cybersecurity would be a problem.

 

[Aldon]

Do you have a plan setup for how long you want to run your shop? I've never heard of Serif X6, but if that's a website builder, you'd have to look at your audience: Would you be at a disadvantage for not hiring a professional web designer? There are many things you have to think about.

The next thing I don't understand is why a website will cost you $20/month. If I choose hostgator, I can receive the largest "package" with unlimited domains, hosting space etc. for less than $15/month.

The advantages of having your own shop is the revenue you can receive from having advertisement on your website. I'm not sure about eBay. Yes, having your own shop comes with an expense when you run into serious issues such as DDOS or when your hosting provider is being attacked (usually that's the case). PHP is the 2nd most popular and most-demanded programming language out there after Java, so there is obviously a large community with expert "hackers" that have been exploiting stuff all the time. One thing I'd suggest is hiding file extension names, which makes it look like it's coded in Ruby or it's a Java servlet. Other than that, every third site out there uses PHP, so nothing to be afraid of if you're hiring professionals.

1. Since you don't know whether your e-commerce business will grow in size (yet), and if you don't have about 1,000 items in your shop, I don't think you need a well-built shop with with server-side backend (PHP, Java servlet, Ruby, etc.)

2. eBay is a safe way, but your own e-commerce site could generate a lot more money, so there's this potential. Plus, if you hire professionals to design and build your website, there's a lot more potential for revenue instead of using eBay.

 

[Leros]

1. is it okay to do an ecommerce site with just HTML? All respectable sites I see use PHP, which looks beyond me...

The fact that you're asking this question tells me that programming your own ecommerce site is beyond your skill.

Another option to something like eBay is SquareSpace. SquareSpace is hosting plus a website editor. Their ecommerce package is $24/mo.
http://www.squarespace.com/pricing/

Reasons I like SquareSpace
- You don't have to program, but you can still get into the HTML/CSS/JS if you want to.
- It's a custom website, not some third party service like eBay. You can make it look totally your own and their website builder stuff is fantastic. Also, they'll generate a mobile optimized version of your site with no extra work on your part.
- It's more than just a store, its a full blown website, so you can have more than just product listings.
- The software is maintained and kept up to date for you. You don't have to worry about security, updating software, etc.

I don't use SquareSpace personally, but I think it's a great product and get's what you need pretty easily. I recommend it to a lot of people.

Not to sound more like an advertisement, but they offer free trials, so check it out.

 

[desura]

So I take it that...when I say "PHP" that's basically the website protecting itself from image thieves?

http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/protectimages.shtml

among other functions.

Yeah, serif is kind of like the builder in squarespace only it's a native client. I always find web-based clients to be really clunky. Like, you can get photo editing done in a web client, but it's nicer to use a local one.

 

[Leros]

HTML is just the presentation layer for the front-end UI component. Your UI is going to be composed of HTML for layout, CSS for presentation, and JS for interactivity.

The UI for an ecommerce site is likely to be less than 25% of your codebase. For the websites I work on, the HTML/JS/CSS for the UI is only about 5-10% of the overall code for the site. The other 90-95% is code that runs on the back-end server.

The back-end is where you manage your inventory, interact with databases, process payments, keep track of shopping cart contents, generate HTML when a page is requested, etc. The back-end is written in languages like PHP, Ruby, Java, etc.

Basically: HTML/CSS/JS is just for the UI-layer (which is all you need for a simple static site). A dynamic site like an ecommerce site is going to have an extensive back-end codebase as well.

Does that help?

 

[desura]

HTML is just the presentation layer for the front-end UI component. Your UI is going to be composed of HTML for layout, CSS for presentation, and JS for interactivity.

The UI for an ecommerce site is likely to be less than 25% of your codebase. For the websites I work on, the HTML/JS/CSS for the UI is only about 5-10% of the overall code for the site. The other 90-95% is code that runs on the back-end server.

The back-end is where you manage your inventory, interact with databases, process payments, keep track of shopping cart contents, generate HTML when a page is requested, etc. The back-end is written in languages like PHP, Ruby, Java, etc.

Basically: HTML/CSS/JS is just for the UI-layer (which is all you need for a simple static site). A dynamic site like an ecommerce site is going to have an extensive back-end codebase as well.

Does that help?

very much. I was going to just use some of the cart solutions out there, like paypal or romancart.

 

[Leros]

I know you can certainly create a simple site by just plopping some Paypal buttons into a static site. I think clicking one of those buttons takes you over to paypal where it adds the item to a cart managed by paypal. I don't think you get inventory management or anything like that though. Not sure how you prevent people from ordering 10,000 widgets when you only have 5.

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_shoppingcart-intro-outside

 

[desura]

Eh, one business that I've frequented is bikesdirect.com and they use paypal cart it looks like.

I'm thinking actually of trying to implement zencart or opencart into it. Basically...I'm thinking that long-term it would be best if I had a cart that had a sort of form which automatically generated the catalogue, instead of me going by hand to every page of it. So I could insert and remove items as I pleased without shuffling up the order of the entire thing.

 

[Aldon]

Basically...I'm thinking that long-term it would be best if I had a cart that had a sort of form which automatically generated the catalogue, instead of me going by hand to every page of it. So I could insert and remove items as I pleased without shuffling up the order of the entire thing.

Can you elaborate on that or give an example?

 

[Leros]

Can you elaborate on that or give an example?

It sounds like he wants an inventory management system with an application that will generate pages for each product. As opposes to his earlier solution where he would manually create a page per product and stuck a Paypal button on it.

 

[desura]

It sounds like he wants an inventory management system with an application that will generate pages for each product. As opposes to his earlier solution where he would manually create a page per product and stuck a Paypal button on it.

Pretty much.

Right now I'm thinking I'll do Zencart, which actually looks fairly simple once you jump through all of the hoops.

 

[Scarinx]

With html alone it would not look very pleasing would you be adding css
Ebay would get a wider audience of people so you have to think about your customer look threw their eyes how would they find the site
the age group affects this situation because younger people are more tech literate while older not tech literate
How will the customer find your site will they be actively looking for it or will they stumble upon it
Also people might search on ebay before the internet because they might trust ebay more than some random person with a ugly html document