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How to make an online shopping website?


TWyPGn

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I intend to make an online boutique but have no experience in that. I?ll try to explain the problem to the best of my ability.

 

Making web pages isn?t a problem but I don?t know how to add online shopping features like shopping cart, payment methods, maintaining customer accounts etc. I have a few questions like:

 

1) Do shopping cart and payment features use JavaScript or any kind of database to process the order?

2) Does maintaining customer accounts require any database?

3) How does the seller access the order information etc?

 

I?ll be grateful if anyone could explain in detail. Thanks!

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1) Yes Database, Hopefully No to JavaScript. A good cart uses PHP or another programming language like Python, Perl, ASP or Java

 

2) I would say usually yes, that would be the smart thing.

 

3) Signs into their account.

 

There are many Shopping Carts out there, some free some not. Some can be used stand alone if it is really a trues pure shopping site. Otherwise you can blend the code into normal pages or have the normal web pages link to the shopping cart pages.

 

Some account places like PayPal and co. offer there own shopping carts that you can download and install in your site or just link to their site where you list the products and use the shopping cart from their server. That is likely the easiest, means it will always be up to date and reaction to security holes is faster but it does not allow much skinning for the page to look like your site.

 

It is really a simple choice about how you wish to do it. Shopping carts are really just a batch of scripts you upload to your site and link to a database. The only one I can think of at the moment is Zend.

 

One thing to consider however is accessibility. People with disabilities do surf, Blind users find it easier to shop online then go to a store IF the site is accessible to them. So see if any cart you look at mentions accessibility. If it does not it may block lots of possible customers from using the site due to choices in use or user agents or because of a wide variety of disabilities.

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Thanks LSW for your detailed reply. Paypal shopping cart seems to be an easy solution to it. Do I need to buy the shopping cart software/service from paypal?

 

I googled Zend. Am I supposed to buy the shopping cart software or download the script from the website http://www.zend.com/en/ ? I am not very clear about the whole thing.

 

I'll appreciate if you could explain both Paypal and Zend thing in detail.

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Thanks Eric! I checked foxycart online. Since I am new to this, I want to have all the info before going into it. I have a few questions about foxycart:

 

Are the foxycart people going to make the website (I want to make my own layout and design) including the shopping cart? Secondly, am I supposed to use their webhosting service or can I use any other? Thirdly, how it all works?

 

Thanks!

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Thanks Eric! I checked foxycart online. Since I am new to this, I want to have all the info before going into it. I have a few questions about foxycart:

 

Are the foxycart people going to make the website (I want to make my own layout and design) including the shopping cart? Secondly, am I supposed to use their webhosting service or can I use any other? Thirdly, how it all works?

 

Thanks!

 

Your welcome! This video from CSS Tricks will explain it all. http://css-tricks.com/video-screencasts/45-using-foxycart-for-ecommerce/

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