# Setting up my first store - help and advice please!!!



## moneymark (Dec 15, 2006)

*Setting up Online store / website - help and advice please!!!*

Hello,

I'm new to this and have a lot to learn!!!

After years of talking about it, I’m finally going sell a range of T-Shirts that I have designed. I have the designs sorted, have the printer and T-shirts lined up. 

Now all I need is the Website / Online Store and this is where my dilemma starts! I’m based in the UK and have been looking at the various options for Websites / stores and quite frankly my head is bouncing round the room with the options available to me and I need advice and guidance please!!! 
As I have little experience of building Websites, I’m swaying towards the ready built sites /online designers/ template options available for my store. 

I want a cost effective Website that looks good but doesn’t cost a fortune to run or setup! As this is a fashion brand I want it to look cool and trendy, yet simple and straightforward… It would be nice if I could have the option to edit the backgrounds, change colours styles etc to give it my own look…

To start with I’m only going to have say 5 designs in 3 size options (S, M, L) and build on that if it proves a success… If I have a stock of 10 t-shirts for sale and they all sell is there a way of the site saying sold out etc and updating my stock levels accordingly…?

I also need advice on the shopping cart and payment options available. Will these already be built in or do I need to get these separately? 

I’m happy to accept Paypal, but would like to be able to accept Credit Cards as well however if I accept CC’s do I need a business bank account? What is a merchant account?

If I wanted to have a discount promotional code option is this easy to add?

Any advice and pointers / suggestions for options available would be very much appreciated. 

So far I have looked at options from the following, but am not sure which ones are good and best for me...

Homestead
Moonfruit
Yahoo
Volusion
Shopify
123 reg Instant Site
Monstercommerce

Thanks in advance.

Mark


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

> would like to be able to accept Credit Cards as well however if I accept CC’s do I need a business bank account? What is a merchant account?


Yes, you would need a merchant account which is usually provided by a bank. This lets you accept credit cards via a shopping cart without having to use PayPal.



> I want a cost effective Website that looks good but doesn’t cost a fortune to run or setup!


If you can install a script, I would suggest using cubecart. It's free and does all the things you require.

You just need a little knowledge in HTML to customize it to look the way you want.



> So far I have looked at options from the following, but am not sure which ones are good and best for me...
> 
> Homestead
> Moonfruit
> ...


The easiest way to find out if they are for you is to look at the features listing for each of those and see if they match all the features you said you need.

The ones that don't you can throw out. Then the ones that are left, you can compare costs and additional services to see which is the best value for you.


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## printpuller (Jan 25, 2008)

I'm in the same boat as MoneyMark. We need to get a store up and running but it all seems a bit overwhelming. Does anyone use a ready mad store they like? If so is it possible to be directed to it in order to see how it looks and operates? If it matches what we're wanting to do them we can decide if we want to go that direction as well


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## moneymark (Dec 15, 2006)

printpuller said:


> I'm in the same boat as MoneyMark. We need to get a store up and running but it all seems a bit overwhelming. Does anyone use a ready mad store they like? If so is it possible to be directed to it in order to see how it looks and operates? If it matches what we're wanting to do them we can decide if we want to go that direction as well


Went with Shopify in the end, probably around a year ago now. Best decision I made, can't fault it and it does everything you would need. It's very affordable and by far the best option out there.


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## treadhead (Jul 26, 2006)

For what it's worth...I got my store up and running in about 2 weeks using Yahoo Merchant Solutions. I have absolutely zero knowledge of web development or site building. It's not the best store...but it's still a woerk in progress.

The best thing is that it was easy to learn using the Store Editor without ever using html / rtml. But those options are available for those who are familiar with that.

I bought a "dummies" book on starting a Yahoo Store and took it from there.


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## gp1305 (Oct 17, 2007)

If I was creative enough to have my own line.. (Or have my own boutique of products for that matter)..

I'd use Big Cartel » Bringing the Art to the Cart

With big cartel you can choose the level of store you want.. (different options for different levels)..

You can have it route from your domain.. it does inventory (if you want it to).. you can do promo codes.. etc.. It's incredibly simple and I plan on getting an account with them (one day soon!)

Hope this helps.

=W=


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## guest29928 (Mar 30, 2008)

I use eonlinedata for my merchant and authorize.net for gateway.

They offer pretty good rates. You really want to look at the internet non swipe rate, as the swipe discount rate doesnt apply for ecommerce.

I think my rate is around 2.1% Its hard to find something lower unless they have other high fees.

also remember, if you are selling wholesale and a business buys from you and uses a business credit card, that is usually going to be at the higher rate (non qualification rate) and can be as high as 3.5%.


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## roobyroo (Mar 28, 2008)

I use bluepark.co.uk to run my store and it really is great. When I first started selling on the net i set up store with 123reg which was bloody rubbish, and then Lycos which was just as bad (very limited to your store design ect). Avoid these two like the plague! The address for my Lycos store even started off with something like http://lycosshop before my domain name which is rubbish and not very professional at all. Their customer service is practically non existent a if these guys don't know the answer to one of your queries (which is most of the time) they simply don't respond.

Unfortunately I am now tied into a year contract with both 123reg and Lycos, but hey... you learn from your mistakes don't you?


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

> I use eonlinedata for my merchant and authorize.net for gateway.


Me too. I recently switched all my merchant accounts over to eonlinedata (away from cardservice)


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## printpuller (Jan 25, 2008)

_*Money Mar*_k I went to the website for Shopify and it looks really good. Do they do everything? 
E-store, cart, collection of money, deposit into account, stats, email, order transfer, tracking etc?
I really would like a one stop shop that works and don't want to get caught with something that doesn't quite get me there and find out I need that one more thing that "costs"
I would like to know more info on how it's worked for you.
Thanks!


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## sonambulo (Sep 22, 2007)

try reading w3schools.com tutorial on html/css. its very, very easy to learn. a couple of hours literally you'll have what you need. then get cubecart and modify it. its not as hard as it may seem.


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## onesielady (May 1, 2008)

Look into Pappashop™ Web Hosting & Shopping Cart Solutions - ready made sites and they have a list of webdesigners that you can use to customizes the ready site if you'd like, or you can do it yourself - it really comes out looking nice. The site itself is really easy. You can add, change products descriptions. You can put in your inventory and when something is out of stock it will say out of stock. They have all the options and more that you asked for in your orginal post.


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## tshirtn00b (May 23, 2008)

A lot of different web hosting providers include open source software programs when you sign up. The most difficult part is not installing the software but configuring it and tweaking it to how you want it to look and act.

A few FREE (just one of the beautiful things about OSS) are osCommerce and ZenCart, two extremely popular and powerful shopping cart programs that can not only handle your catalog/database needs but can also interact with a wide variety of credit card processing solutions such as PayPal (Also free...sort of!)

These solutions have worked for me in my regular full time job (Computer lacky) Hopefully they will work for someone else too!


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