Waaaay off topic but please help a Dad look good

[Baggy]

Hi All

Sorry waaay off topic but..

My teenage daughter has started making bead and wire jewlery and has decided that she would like to sell the jewelery on-line. So she said "how do I set up a web shop dad?"

Heeeelp!!!!!

I have absolutely no idea, I do have good HTML skills and use Dreamweaver. She is good with spreadsheets and we both get by with databases.


Can anyone suggest how we get started, with a low cost webshop, pretty please, help a dad look good.

Products will be about one hundred items, we will want to be able to add info pages etc. Probably use paypal for payment.

 

[Retired Member southey]

I wouldn't know where to start, but maybe an ebay store?

 

[tobes01]

Agreed - start selling a few on eBay to see how you get on

 

[TomBartlett]

http://www.etsy.com/ is a site dedicated to that sort of thing.

 

[Samon]

first guess would be ebay mate, or find a carboot type sale and set up a little table there. or..pack up all her finished gear in a leather suit case, get on your sheepskin coat and flat cap and get down the market and make a few quid like we used too.

 

[sandbender]

http://www.etsy.com/ is a site dedicated to that sort of thing.

Etsy would be the way to go I think.

 

[Mafro]

You can setup paypal to sell things without going throug ebay, just adding the links to your website. I believe that you need to register as a seller or something on paypal, but it doesn't cost anything. Just remember that paypal takes a percentage of whatever each item sells for, but for a small business its perfect.

 

[Everything Mac]

I would have recommended ESTY too.

Andy

 

[Puddock]

I think that E-bay is the easiest with the items listed as fixed price Buy it Now. Items can then be listed for 30 days at a time. If you wait for a free listing weekend then you are on to a winner?

 

[Asa Samuel]

another vote here for etsy.

 

[Baggy]

update

Options suggested so far so loads of research to do..

Ebay = 4

http://www.etsy.com = 9
Blog plus shopping cart


Apparently there is a free facebook shop option
using Payvment E-Commerce Storefront for facebook
Free store on facebook = 1

Do it like Del boy (from a suitcase) = 1

DIY = plus paypal = 1
Blog plus shopping cart = 1
Sell through forums = 1

Great british business online, through google sites.
Free domain name and website
http://www.gbbo.co.uk

Apparently paypal do web sites, though google
and paypal site finds nowt about it.

Cube cart on a suitable host = 1

http://www.folksy.com/ = 1
Mals shopping cart

 

[mountainm]

I have used Shopify for clients in the past.
http://www.shopify.com/

 

[Badger90]

You could try moonfruit.com/, a free flash based web builder, very simple and exceptionally addictive as well, it can make your idea look amazing.

It helps with selling, google analytics, facebook, paypal etc and has a paid version as well which can help with traffic. There is no limit on traffic with the paid version ( that i was aware of ) and i've used it a few times to get things off the ground.

 

[_scorpio_]

make sure you have a good camera and you can use it properly. a picture sells the item just as much as the product itself.
and i would start with ebay too, it takes absolutely ages to get people to visit a webshop.
post us some pics of what she is selling... could be a market for them on here...

 

[Eric_Methven]

Etsy is American based (although international) and there is a LOT of competition on there. Folksy.com is UK based however, and I'd personally reccomend that one. I have a shop on there The Crafty Old Sew and Sew. It's very easy to set up (free) and you only pay a few pence to list your stuff. Check it out - http://www.folksy.com

Eric

 

[Vickyjs]

Eric, I just wondered if you get much business selling on folksy - I've been looking for a while, wondering wether to give it a go.
Thanks

 

[plastic-ninja]

You could try your local council for advice and maybe a grant.We used to have a small business help service called Made in Cumbria who were very good.Maybe you have something similar.
Good Luck
Simon

 

[Manacles]

iI dabbled in this the other year. Basically you can do it with a relatively cheap internet software package. I used Serif Webplus which I bought through amazon. This allwed me to create a website and to create payment methods etc. You then need to find someone to "host" your site, which in plain speak means they publish it to the web through their servers. This keeps you secure and gives you rights to the site name (known as domain) and they also control and filter you mail for you which keeps the spammers off your back. I used a company in Bristol called Galaxy for that that were recommended by a friend and they were pretty helpful. This is them www.galaxy-webhosting.co.uk/ and Ricky is the guy to talk to as he will give you a step by step beginners talk through how it works etc. They obviously charge for the service but it is reasonable for what you get (cist me something like £60 for the year including the domain).

You build your website (which is not that easy) load it up onto their hosting site and then publish it (more or less by pressing a button) and hey presto your in business.

If you have any questions I will do my best to answer if you pm me.

Cheers

Paul

 

[Xunil]

Most web hosts have various options for setting up a webshop with just a few mouse clicks.

When I set up hosting for clients on my servers I always include several Open Source cart systems, content management systems and similar that they can set up themselves or that I can help them with.

Take a look at 1&1 - I don't usually recommend them for hosting but they offer several very easy to use online cart systems with their hosting packages and you do all the work in your browser - no Dreamweaver or codeslinging required.

For larger shops you should look at Open Source systems like oSCommerce, but for getting started all you really need is a series of product pages with an option to buy, which can be easily achieved through static HTML and PayPal code snippets.

This is a vast topic with loads of ground to cover but without sailing off over deep waters and scaring the pants off you I would suggest you keep it simple: register a domain name, and use an off-the-peg shopping system provided by a large hosting company or spend an hour in Dreamweaver playing once you register as a seller with PayPal.

You will save time and effort and be selling in no time, once people start finding the online store.

At its simplest you could register a domain and build a series of static HTML product pages and simply add the PayPal purchase code snippet next to each of them.

Dreamweaver has product page templates built into it (where you find them depends very much on your version of Dreamweaver) and they are relatively simple to theme and style.

Several ways forward on this one, but the best could be simply to register a domain name, buy a year's hosting plan with any decent host and either home roll your system in Dreamweaver or ask your host for a 'point and click' online shop installer (or ask them to install it for you). Any good host will do this for you if you request it but the process is so simple they shouldn't have to - all they really need to do is make the installer available to you and about 4 mouse clicks later you have an empty online store to call your own

One final consideration (at this stage) is that you need to be able to get at your product database somehow so that if you ever want to upscale you can export all the input you already did and map that database to a new, bigger, meaner cart, but that assumes demand is going to go through the roof and that you will need the feature a larger system offers which, in your case, may not ever apply.

Any questions, feel free to ask

 

[Xunil]

I forgot to add that Excel (since you mentioned it) isn't directly applicable as the underlying product database in web terms. It can export to CSV and some commerce systems can read from a flat file rather than a 'proper' database, or they can import from CSV (only where the table and field names directly compare and only where the data types are consistent) but I think that's severely over egging the pudding at this point.

By all means use Excel/Access et al to look after your back end stock - unless the scale of your shop requires a fully fledged underlying database that's largely academic at this point.

As part of a small-scale requirements analysis you should establish how many products and how many product categories there are likely to be. This will help you map out the structure of the site and logically order your navigation. It is also a great aid in establishing what you need to represent the range of products - a system for 15 products in 3 categories will obviously be more modest than trying to emulate Amazon.

eBay makes more sense to many small starters due to nominal fees and the instant ability to reach a worldwide audience - you can't easily duplicate that with a home-rolled site.