Need to know how to best set up an e-store for a client

I am in the process of designing and programming a new site for a client who runs a print shop. He would like to have a store where regular clients could log in and view things they often purchase (i.e. a chicken wings store always orders cups, napkins, t-shirts, etc. that have a fixed price). My client would like his customers to be able to purchase these goods right through the site. I am not experienced with setting up the e-commerce part of the site. I see many possibilities available after performing a search, but am unsure of which of these services are my best bet. It is a necessity that I can use the design from the rest of the site for the store (or very similar). I also need to be somewhat knowledgeable about the service offered so I can pass that information to my client. Any suggestions on how I can do this best would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,

Christopher

whats your preffered platform/technolgy? PHP, ASP, JSP, PERL etc

Your host does not have something pre-installed?

Unfortunately, as embarrassed as I am to say this, I am unfamiliar with all of those platforms. I am fluent with HTML, Javascript, and some Java. That is where my problem lies. I cannot program my own store from scratch. I see there are all kinds of sites where they will provide a platform at a monthly fee - is this a good way to go, and does anyone have experience with these? I have found bCentral, Storefront.com, etc. If not, what would be my best bet? Hire an outside programmer? Any help is greatly appreciated. I'm at a loss as to what to do next.
Thanks in advance.

-Chris

If you want it up and running quickly I suppose something like the yahoo store (store.yahoo.com) or bCentral are good places to start, Storefront with the 'SFML advantage' might be more customizable, not sure, the most important thing about these are quick setup and availability of CC payment gateway. kind of like plug n play.

Since you want member login and ablility to save a member's frequently purchased items list, outsourcing might be the only option. In this case you might consider building and planning your own cart maybe with a programmer as consultant. A suggestion is to start with storyboards of your site with shopping cart and consult with the programmer if this can be done, how long and how much.

Do you already have a webhost? you'll have to find out what platform its on. For normal HTML webpages it doesn't really matter what platform sites are on, so theres really nothing to be embarassed about. But yeah shopping carts and membership systems? you'll need to know.

hope that was helpful, best o luck!

For our clients, we use OSCommerce . It's free, among other things.

It's written in PHP, but all you have to do is download it and install it. You can then customize it pretty easily even with just HTML knowledge.

On our server it's pre-installed. Customers love it. In fact I'm just about to start on a music store's web site that will use it.

Best of luck!

So now I think I have decided that I will either use OS Commerce or X-cart as they appear to do what I desire while at the same time not proving terribly difficult to learn. The pages my client would like are to be set behind a customer login page. Can I do this? For example Customer A would see store A. Customer B would see store B and related products. This is one of the last stumbling blocks I have before I can get working on this project. I really appreciate all of the help this board has offered!

Christopher

I don't know if you are still looking for a free cart but I found this one to be pretty good. It has a great support forum where you can get tons of help also. check it out at NOP Cart

In osCommerce
If your only going to modify price add contribution 1671 for Group discount and split up your customers in groups.

Looks like you want to have separate catalogs for each customer., i.e., price, product and everything is different.

To do this you would need to customize the code. First you would need to create separate Product Categories (and assume they are client-specific-catalog). Next only you can create login accounts for your clients at this time you would modify the code so that you assign a single category to that client, and hide all the categories but the clients. Finally you would need to use a redirect to prevent them from seeing other categories and doing price comparision.

There may be other methods to do this.


Your earlier question... yes osCommerces allows clients to view the history of what they bought earlier and they can simply reorder from their past order history.