Hi folks A mate of mine has opened a book shop in an idyllic location on a South Thai Island. It became quite popular within the first month of business, but now he's thinking of running his own online book-store to try and sell some additional stock nationally as well as locally. He hasn't got the foggiest how to go about this, and as a webmaster of several projects, he has asked my advice. However, I'm a web publisher and make my money through selling affiliate products and PPC advertising. What he needs is a database driven book-store that has a simple function to update as new stock goes out, new stock comes in, and some kind of shopping cart, or other options for payment. So I was just wondering if there is anyone reading this who can make some suggestions, or recommendations, of an online book-store SW package that might do the job nicely, but more importantly would be easy to maintain for someone who's not a computer savvy wizard. Thanks in advance Andii
well, Magento for an enterprise level solution but it has a bit of a learning curve. My next suggestion would be prestashop which is quite easy to use. Let me know if you need a hand getting something up. hope that helps, Nigel
Thanks for the response Nigel I'm just waiting to get a few more specific details from my buddy, after which time i shall update the post. In the mean time, I'll take a look at your suggested programs. Many Thanks Andii
Hi Folks, I'm back I've had some feedback from my buddy in Thailand regarding this. I'll try to keep things simple and pull out only that data that's relevant to the topic. Any advice on templates, tips and the like is very much appreciated. Please bear in mind, I'm not a programmer, nor do I claim to be, and although I design my own sites, the couple of db driven projects I've created in the past (not blogs), have always had the coding and functionality done by professionals. This is why I'm wondering if there are any templates or easier ways to go about this in 2010? Anyhow, here's a breakdown of what he's asked me thus far: The owner basically wants' his shop to become a kind of hub in the long term serving a community of local expats and visitors to the Kingdom, all of whom share a love of books and travel. That's about all really, but like so many new websites, ideas will evolve as construction and time passes by. The idea is that once built, maintenance is easy and painless and the community, web credibility, and site authority, will develop over time using the usual clean on and off page SEO methods. Thanks in advance to anyone who has anything to contribute to this, even if it's just a link to some impressive sites already dealing in books on an interactive level (the ones i've found so far are pretty basic e-commerce type of online stores). Cheers for now Andii
Aitch Be welcome to follow the signature below, our website company will be happy help you Feel free to contact us if having any questions
Hi ChPeter To be honest, i found your response a little cheeky and opportunistic. Forums are there so that folks can ask for assistance, give advice, or offer suggestions. In other words, interact and help each other out. Even plugs for business are fine providing the reply adds some value and reference to the topic being discussed. Now if you had said something along the lines of: This kind of approach would be a lot more appreciated than just plugging a link with no reference whatsoever to the the topic in question. I hope that makes sense? Sorry to be a bit blunt, but I've been online a good while now, and this copy and paste tactic which attempts to take a lame advantage of circumstances, is not the way to go about building a good reputation online IMO. Andii
Aitch, We are a start up IT company based out of Mumbai-India. We are in the final stages of creating our own Ecommerce Management System. As you know, most Ecommerce businesses consist of 2 major parts: 1] The online store: Where the buyers view products, adds products to the shopping cart, and makes payment. 2] The Ecommerce Management/Admin system: Where the entire store management is done (Categories, Products, Content Management, Discount, Customers, Orders, Reports..........) We can create the online shop & our Ecommerce Management Site can be used for managing the online store. Most of the features your friend requires can be easily controlled by the Ecommerce Management System: - Update stock. - Add/Update Product details (Product Quantity, Product Description that appears on the screen, Sequence in which it appears, Cost & Selling price, multi-images, in-built SEO.....). - Home Page can be easily editable. Book information/description can be editable. Book images can be changed. Store/Book news can be updated....... - Popular authors, best-selling books, etc can be highlighted & shown in special panels. Your friend will have full control on what is to be displayed on the store. - Newsletter, promotional mailers, etc can all be created & sent by your friend. He can Segment his customers & send targeted mailers to them. - In addition to the features mentioned in your forum entry, your friend will be able to Track & Update all his orders; Offer Discounts; Highlight Discounted Books; keep Track of & Segment his Customers; Send Targeted Mailers to Customers; view Product-wise/Category-wise Sales Reports; Add new Categories & Products (which will be immediately displayed on the store); Categories and Products will be Search Engine Optimized (SEO); change Shipping mode & price; Add Tax; ……………etc. All the above can be easily done by your friend with absolute no knowledge of Software. It is our endeavor to take care of all our client's software requirements so that they can focus on the more important task of managing and promoting their store. We do all this at a very reasonable price. Currently we do not offer blog functionality, but we will include it in subsequent releases. In case you wish to take this discussion further, our email id is "Estwald.Technologies@gmail.com". Warm Regards.
Hi Estwald.Technologies, and thanks for your detailed response to the topic in question This post proved to be a little sleepy and since opening it, my friend in the south of Thailand has decided to go with a local developer. Unfortunately, it's never been easy to get those over here to deliver on their promises, and i guess the bottom line is they tend to bite of more than they can chew, or take on jobs and outsource various parts of it that fail to synchronise with the job as a whole. This is why i was hoping to at least get him a kind of working template from which he then build and tweak with ease as the feedback came in and he got more familiar with the project. Anyhow, as he's in the South, and i'm in the North of the country, all i can do is keep an eye on things for him from afar. Cheers Andii PS - i did look for your web address for future reference, but failed to find one. It might help to set up a site with a portfolio and perhaps not use a free e-mail account to promote a professional service. Up to you of course, but it's been my experience that folks need something more than text talk in order to from a good first impression
ZS Cart is the web based shopping cart software and it is easy to create an online store in just minutes with ZS Cart.Try with ZS Cart to set up your online store.