Help with eCommerce site/design

[New2Ecom]

We are in the second edition of our ecommerce website. This edition uses 1shoppingcart as the shopping cart and credit card payments are processed through PayPal and InstaPay. We intend to make this a full ecommerce site with SEO, MP3 downloads, audio & video, autoresponders, etc. The current webdesigner/master promised the site would be done in two weeks….four weeks later we are live, but not completed. This is the second webmaster who has made big promises, then got to a point where they don’t know how to do something and the project stalls. (They could not even tell us how to process the sales through 1shoppingcart after telling us that was the best shopping cart for us!) We have limited funds, but need someone who is knowledgeable in ALL ecommerce web design areas to finish and maintain this website. Our URL is www.HypnosisCenterUSA.com. We are happy with our current website hosting, so we are not looking to change our host.

Any suggestions regarding someone to handle the site when we have limited financial resources would be appreciated.

Thanks for your time.

[Corey Bryant]

Hopefully you have a contract with the individual.

A lot of times, you get what you pay for and a lot of people expect bubbly on a beer budget.

Since you don't want to change hosting companies - are you looking for a PHP, ASP, .NET solution? Or are you wanting a hosted shopping cart?

You say you intend to make it a full ecommerce site - what is it now? Are you not selling services / products through the internet? Are you not happy with 1shoppingcart? What can it not do that you want it to do?

[New2Ecom]

Since you don't want to change hosting companies - are you looking for a PHP, ASP, .NET solution? Or are you wanting a hosted shopping cart?

You say you intend to make it a full ecommerce site - what is it now? Are you not selling services / products through the internet? Are you not happy with 1shoppingcart? What can it not do that you want it to do?


Thank you for your time and your reply.

I think 1shoppingcart will work fine as long as it does everything we have been told it will do. Previously we had ZenCart and it couldn't do all we wanted it to do. My problem is I just can't get the site completed.

I don't know the difference between PHP ASP or .NET so I can't answer that question. I want it to be a full site, but again, I can't seem to find anyone who can do all the things I want done.

[The Old Sarge]

How was your site built in the first place? Some sort of site builder? Coded from the ground up?

[New2Ecom]

As far as I know it was NOT a site builder and WAS coded from the ground up.

[Corey Bryant]

Hm, well if 1shoppingcart will do fine for you - stick with it. As far as server side languages, usually PHP on *NIX servers and ASP / .NET on Windows. It is possible to run PHP on Windows if it is installed and possible to run some ASP on *NIX as well, but you would need to contact your hosting company.

ZenCart is PHP - chances are you are on a *NIX server and can use PHP / mysql

[The Old Sarge]

As far as I know it was NOT a site builder and WAS coded from the ground up.

The reason I asked about the site builder is that your code has no DOC TYPE at all and the layout, inspite of the style sheet, is done with tables. This sort of says "builder." Who coded it for you?

[cinnamon9691]

It sounds like you are saying that everything is almost finished on the site but your webmaster hasn't completed what was originally the agreed scope of the project. Did you sign a contract outlining what work was expected from your webmaster after store launch?

[cometmall]

so what exactly not finished

[New2Ecom]

Thank you all for your replies.

This site was originally built a year ago with Zen Cart and it sounds like that means is was built with PHP. We designed a major overhaul of the site and the original webmaster said it could complete it for us. After about ten weeks he was not even close to completion. A friend recommended another designer and after an interview, but no written agreement, we hired the new designer. The new designer recommended the switch to 1shoppingcart. We were told the way the 'old' site was designed it would not be SEO friendly. (I don't know what that technically means.....as I said before I am new to website and design and programming. I have a vision and I know things can be done because I've seen them on other websites....I don't know the technical terms to get them done.) In any event, the current designer has moved the site forward, and put it live before it was completed. We have not tested the 'store' so I don't know if it works; the video is not online (the designer now says they don't know how to do that); many of the links still don't work; autoresponders don't work; SEO is not complete....etc, etc, etc.

I thank you all again for taking your time to read and respond to my posts. I hope I have answered some of your questions.

[cometmall]

I think it's was a mistake to use 1shoppingcart instead of Zen Cart.
1) There is no direct connection between SEO and shopping cart, if you not happy with Zen Cart SEO you can always improve it by yourself.
2) Zen Cart is free, 1shoppingcart not free, so you could use the money for marketing and advertising instead of 1shoppingcart

If you happy with Zen Cart and everything working there, and you just want to improve the Design, i would suggest to go back to Zen Cart and deal with Design.

Note: Dont let Designers do Programming, it's two different fields.

[Corey Bryant]

We have specific people working on our new website actually. We have a designer doing the layout. We have the developer completing a few things up and then we have a SEO / SEM person helping us finalize a few things.

You cannot really skimp on these things. Yes you might find someone that does not charge you as much as the other person that he might be ten times as busy and cannot focus completely on your job.

[amazonas719]

I've had alot of problems with my previous webhost, after a power outage, all my data got deleted on the server.
So i switched and haven't looked back. This company has 1st class support and i can call them anytime and speak to a real person,
so definitely give them a try bluehost (http://www.bluehost.com/track/castraus/phpdn.com)

warmest regards,

Shelly.

[chrisranjana]

You say you have limited resources to pay for the programmer, maintaining a website will not take that much resources but you really need to allocate some percentage of your earnings from your website for design programming and SEO since those are the 3 which will bring in more customers.

[roban]

Your site title could use improvement. Try Hypnosis Center USA. Then add key words and description tags using targeted key words and phrases that you use in your Body text. Basic Organic SEO.