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...That is an extremely vague question to answer. We'll need a heck of a lot more information first:
- what kind of store?
Online store selling photos.
- does it need a shopping cart? if so, will it need to handle foreign transactions?
Yes. Yes it will.
- what kind of user features are you looking for? (e.g. personalized user accounts, search options, recommendations, etc, etc, etc...)
personalized user accounts, recommendations.
- will it need to be designed from the ground up or do you have an existing template?
from ground up
- what kind of technology will it implement (database, scripting language, server platform)?
I have no idea.
- what kind of hosting do you have?
So far just a .com name, no hosting.
- what is the time frame for completion?
2-4 months
- what kind of traffic do you anticipate?
I have no idea but I have feeling it's going to be BIG.
- who will maintain the website after it is completed?
Can I do it myself?
...and that's just the tip of the iceberg..
I'm looking to take my store online and I need a website.
You should just open your ideas here.. also there's tons of sites out there that offer "Templates" as to give an idea what they can do.
http://www.templatemonster.com/ for example
what is the difference between price and unique price?
At templatemonster when you buy the non-unique version of the template, other people can go and buy the same template as you.
If you buy the unique template, they take that one off the market, so only people who have already bought it can use it. So potentially you'd be the only person to own the template, making it now unique.
OK I'll just post here then.
In the website I posted here's what I've been able to notice:
Gift Certificates
RSS feed
cart
blog
lots of photos
All of that stuff is pretty basic. You should be able to get a top of the line job for ~$550, possibly more depending on what you mean by a lot of photos. Gift certificates is easy enough to even setup on your own when using OScommerce. OSC is also what I would suggest for your store, IMO it's the most user friendly and most supported cart software that there is right now.
All of that stuff is pretty basic. You should be able to get a top of the line job for ~$550, possibly more depending on what you mean by a lot of photos. Gift certificates is easy enough to even setup on your own when using OScommerce. OSC is also what I would suggest for your store, IMO it's the most user friendly and most supported cart software that there is right now.
I hate to rain on your recommendations, but OSC is great for some things but I know for myself and through a great deal of my various clients experiences that many users turn away soon as they recognize an OSC store - and regardless of what you do unless you spend many, countless hours changing everything, you can always spot an OSC store.
If he's using a store for photography, he's going to at least want a store that incorporates ImageMagic for displaying thumbnails - something that OSC doesn't do out of the box, so you end up with pixelated thumbnails. Interspire make a good commercial cart software, ClientReady and a few others.
If you really are looking for free, check out Magento Commerce.
I would disagree with two things, first the price. Going off ONLY the items listed earlier, the OP should expect AT LEAST $1500 from a reputable business / freelancer. Since we all know there will be many more 'features' than just those listed, I wouldn't even want to imagine how expensive it could get. Especially since threadless seems to be the end goal here. To duplicate that site in any shopping cart available, there'd have to be a lot of customization done to it. More than $1500 worth.
Also, think of it this way; would you expect a quality (and secure!) ecommerce website, fully featured, for $550? If you do, than you need to realign your understanding of the industry and also realize that you need to invest a larger amount of money into your business.
Sure someone could throw up an install of Magento, even through 1-click installs through the host, and have a store 'up and running' in an hour. But that doesn't include any design work, and don't get me started on customizating the shopping cart system. If you pay $550 for someone to do that, well you're literally throwing away your money. That will do absolutely NO good for you.
A lot of people don't realize that when opening an online store - especially when it's their only point of sale, you can not be cheap on that part of it. For crying outloud, it's the cornerstone to your business!
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2nd point; You honestly are recommending OSC? No offense, but have you actually used OSC? I have, it's horrible. Horrible template system, code that breaks with even the most basic tweaks, no centralized add-on system, meaning you have add-ons telling you to go and modify 'line XXX of file XXXX' over and over again, which after all is done, breaks your store. NO support from the creators - the last release of v3 alpha 4, was in March 2007! Over a year ago! Sure they have a lot of live sites, and community members, and add-ons. But that doesn't mean it's good, by any stretch of the imagination.
I find it amazing that people STILL recommend that steaming pile of dog crap.
Np, the more info and differing opinions the OP gets, the better he'll be able to make an informed decision. As far as OSC being accepted or not goes, I guess that all depends on the industry. The market that I'm in, which is aftermarket performance products for sports cars, OSC is actually very common and those stores thrive just as well as the ones using paid-for software. But, again I can see that differing depending on the market at hand.
The one thing that I feel is untrue however is in regards to thumbnails. There's an excellent script that you can install that will automatically create thumbnails for you. So, you don't get the pixelated or distorted preview images. Instead you get very clear and great looking thumbnails without having to do any extra work, besides putting in the script which takes about 5 minutes to do.
Yes, in fact I do own an online business which uses OSC. So, I do have a lot of experience in using it and modifying it with custom scripts in which I personally have found everything easy and reliable to do. As I mentioned earlier OSC is the most used software in my industry, so you can be succesful with it.
As far as pricing goes I think it's all about establishing a good relationship with quality freelancers in order to receive good pricing. I have a couple people that I work closely with that I found from namepros.com
To the OP I would suggest checking that site and getting a quote. As you'll see there's a reputation system in place, much like what you'll find on ebay, so pay close attention to that.
I think you got lucky than. I've setup OSC on multiple sites, for many different purposes, and had nothing but headaches for everything that's not just a straight install. Sure from time to time you find a plug-in that works like intended from the get go, but I can't count the number of times I've had a botched install due in part to the instructions (or lack there-of) from the creators.
Also, IMO it doesn't matter if OSC has successful shops or not. That doesn't make it a good ecommerce package. Part of their success is only because they've been able to partner with such a huge amount of hosts and control panel applications that they just inheritely get a huge amount of market saturation. That doesn't mean that it's warranted at all.
Unfortunately the open source shopping cart system market is pretty limited, so IMO it only really became successful due to their being little to no competition in the first place.
It's definitely not for someone that doesn't understand what they're doing. That's for damn sure. I should know as well, since I've had to train people how to use it, not to mention use it myself.
While I'll be the first to admit that 'quality' does not correlate to price, it still is a good general rule of thumb. I know I would not trust an ecommerce site I only paid $500 for. Especially if it's heavily customized. I know how much work goes into creating and customizing the systems behind them, and know that anyone that has the chops to do it won't be charging that small of an amount, unless of course they're from India and charge next to nothing.
I know my arguments are starting to sound like I'm some ranting, asinine asshole. OSC really gets my blood boiling. I'll just refrain from continuing that conversation.
Nah, you bring up good points and I'm sure you've worked with more e-commerce sites than I have. Also, yes I'd say about 95% of the people charging the estimate that I gave are from India or other similar countries. But, if the work turns out to be just as good, I think that's still a viable option. The quality is usually about the same, it's just that our differing economies allows them to charge less. Always ask for a preview before being fully committed though.
200-6000
But most are around $500, $100 a page is the general rule of thumb. Shopping carts and complex scripts will get you up into the thousands unless you want to be a slave to some company's free hosted shopping cart.