HI, I'm building a site that sells a few items like t-shirts, hoodies, hats. That is about all I will sell for now, until the brand expands and builds a following. I'm kind of new to web and graphic design, but I'm past the beginner stage. I know how to write HTML and CSS, all of my web design is done with a text editor and Photoshop mostly. I sometimes use Dreamweaver for specific things. I'm at the point with my site where I need to figure out how to add a shopping cart and how to display the items for sale. Pretty confused here. Do I design the layout for the items that will be displayed or does a shopping cart script handle that. Any good advise for building a small attractive ecommerce site would help. Here is a link http://beat-science.com/ to my site, just to give you an idea about it. It is a clothing line that caters to dj's, beatmakers, producers, and beat culture enthusiast scene. I have only mock-built the home page at this point, because I want to figure out the ecommerce before I go any further. Thanks.
Hello! If you plan to take orders online, it will be easier to choose some shopping cart software and then apply your design to it or search for the ready template.
For the back-end handling of products you'll want to develop that using some type of scripting like ASP/ASP.NET, PHP, etc. and an associated database. Not hard to do, but can be labor intensive if you're relatively new to web development. A better solution for you may be to go with an open source e-commerce app -- like Magento or OpenCart. The development is already done for you, so it's just a matter of implementing it on your server.
Why reinvent the wheel? Use an open source cart then modify it to your requirements. Highly recommend Magento.
Hi. I think the best way is to use an ecommerce software like zencart or oscommerce. They are all free. Why to waste time in coding?
Dont go for free ecommerce softwares...rather look for paid decent service provider...that way they will have accountability and your store will run smooth.Free ecommerce cart crash anytime or any kind of security breach can happen and they wont be held responsible for any of these.Many times due to some bug or underdeveloped version your ecommerce website wont work properly.Hence go for paid versions.
I disagree with sphinx498, I have been using OpenCart for over a year now and have never had a problem with the website crashing or a security breach.
If you want, you can turn to us for help on building the e-Commerce site for you, we used nopCommerce and it's in my sig to see our recent work based on it.