Hosted solution questions I cannot find answers for. Please advice.

[demiurgic]

Aloha folks,
Please allow me to introduce myself. We deal with Kava, a herbal supplement and a sacred Hawaiian root and have decided to go online from our farmers market venues. A successful Kava website in my opinion is www.konakavafarm.com and we'll have some similar products.

Since I have no programming skills so I opted to go the hosted solutions route rather than the OS way, although it's the smarter and cheaper route in the long run. With our labor intensive product, running the shipping department and customer service dept, I'll learn code when the sun freezes over at this rate.

After going thru 20 or so hosted solutions, and mostly reading about your opinions & comments on them (for days, non stop ), I have picked a few. In no specific order, they are Volusion, Core Commerce and Interspire.
If you have any say about any of these, please do. If you wish to recommend something else, I am totally open to that as well. Wish I could work Magento which is too cool for OS software out there.

These are issues that are probably addressed at some point, but ones I could not get an answer to. Your help with these is really appreciated.

1. Is there a solution that really allows and gives one room to tinker with the front and back end for for SEO and SEM? This is a very important factor to me obviously. I understand that OS is better in this area, but there must be a SEO-able winner amongst the hosted solutions me thinks. what do you think?
As time goes by, this will be the area I will be working with the most. I am planning on starting with adwords and that's pretty much what I can think of for SEM. Any suggestions on any first SEO/SEM steps I should take after the website is fully operational?

3. Are there hosted solutions that have better hosting than others? Faster loading pages, images, etc. Dedicated hosting gets pretty steep.
Volusion's bandwidth limitation is not appealing. Is there a middle path "solution" in speed and bandwidth in your opinion?

4. I truly believe that a professional website is crucial. First impressions are last impressions when we have a few seconds to keep them interested after the first glance at our sites.
Which hosted solution really delivers in this area and should I be looking into customizing templates from them or just choosing a template (wondering if customizing will help with the SEO)

that's all I can think of right now. If you have any suggestions or recommended readings, please let me know.

thanks very much for reading and aloha to you all,
Demiurgic

[JEccles]

I have been using Volusion for nearly 3 years now. They provide an easy to use and intuitive solution for folks like us that do not know coding. I have had no problems with the bandwidth and the busiest of the 3 stores is starting to average over 7,000 page views a day. The SEO and SEM functions are great as is the support you get from the Forum.

That said, they are rather expensive and do very occasionally have connectivity issues. These issues are usually fixed quickly and I think any hosting company will run into the same from time to time.

My overall rating, from a scale of 1 to 10 would be a 9. I have no intention of moving on to anything else at this time.

[marc77]

My personal recommendation is KingCart at http://www.kingcart.com . We are working together with them since several years (they have built-in support for our affiliate management software).

Or have a look at http://www.verio.com/ecommerce-hosting-solutions/ - Verio has a good reputation as webhosting company and their rates seem fair enough.

[SoundsGood]

I have picked a few. In no specific order, they are Volusion, Core Commerce and Interspire. ... Wish I could work Magento which is too cool for OS software out there.

These happen to be the exact 4 solutions I'm considering.

Anyone have any further comments on these choices?

[demiurgic]

sounds good,
I did pick one but none of those, it was MAGENTO.
I feel its the best choice, cheapest, most flexible, etc
hope that helps mate,
Demi

[SoundsGood]

I see. Great choice... but way too confusing to me, unfortunately.

Did you do it yourself, or hire someone? I looked into hiring someone to do a magento site for me, but everyone wanted over $1000. For that much money, I might as well just buy Interspire (especially when it's easier for me to use).

[roban]

Magento is not as intuitive as others but I suppose once you learn it it will work well. I have been helping develop e-commerce software for the past 7 years first with Cube Cart and now CS-Cart. I put up an instance of Magento, scratched my head for awhile and uninstalled it.

[demiurgic]

yea, I'm doing it myself. as Roban said, its something you have to learn. And there is much to learn, coding aside. Just admin panel is a maze. However, the flexibility it provides (so far, knock on wood) is quite amazing.

I could have taken the easier route, Volision, etc. and there is a chance I still may.

However, had to try to figure it out myself with the Magento forum help.

Interspire is way too much money for me. I'd rather build something simple on Magento, (if I can) and revamp it thru a pro, when the business can afford it.

best of luck on your quest.

Demi