What to look for when hiring developers?

Hi everybody.

First post here and it's going to be a long one but we appreciate all the help we can get.

We have a goal to create two ecommerce sites that loads quickly, has appealing design, is web 2.0 oriented and is very cost-effective with little maintenance.

Introduction
We will be setting up two ecommerce websites. Current budget is estimated to be $1000-$4000 for each site, though this is just an estimate and may be changed. The sites are for two small/medium sized businesses (they might, and hopefully will, grow larger in time)
Orders on the first site will be forwarded to the manufacturer through one of two options. First option is through fax (they will then have to call and confirm the order). The other option is by logging in to their homepage and inputting each order. Then the products are simply sent from the manufacturer to the customer. We will take payment before paying the manufacturer.
Orders on the second site will be similar. Orders taken on site, then, after payment is approved, forwarded to a dropshipper in China.
If it is possible to automate this kind of ordering, after receiving payment, that would be a huge advantage. The idea outlined here: http://dynamicwebengage.com/default....&articleid=156 is similar to what could be done through fax.

This will be our first ecommerce website and we therefore need information on what to look for when hiring.
Our preliminary research has produced to following requirements:
Required E-commerce features:
• Shopping Cart (preferably a free/cheap one, i.e. cubecart)
• Search Feature
• SSL encryption
• Accept PayPal, credit cards and authorize.net
• Ability to add/edit/delete products and easily add/change pictures.
• Shipping cost calculator. We can easily change prices
• The website must be SEO optimized and work well with Google Adwords and Google Adwords' conversion tracking.
• Google base integration
• Database driven product management
• When an order is placed, we need to get an email with all the details of the order
• Customer Login/account
• The site should be made following as many principles as possible outlined in the following web page: http://web2.ajaxprojects.com/web2/ne....php?itemid=29
• Facebook, digg, delicious and reddit icons/support.


The Questions

1. What should we be looking for in an employee when hiring for this job? Especially regarding things like ajax/java, php, .net, mysql, jquery and so forth?

2. What is a realistic budget for such a website?

Given the specified features:

3. Is there something missing in order to produce a successful site?

4. Is there something there that is not worth the time/money needed to implement it?

5. Are there other features you would recommend?

6. We are currently using bluehost for the hosting, do you have any knowledge regarding hosts, are they good enough?

7. Considering the size and ordering system of the two sites, which system would be best to implement for the ecommerce system (current research has suggested that magento would be the best option)?

8. For website management, considering the size and ordering system of these two sites, what would be the best choice (remember that we will be dependent on the people we hire to do the coding/maintenance)? Please comment on our research and add your suggestions.

Drupal:
- Might be more expensive (is our budget big enough?)
- Has great potential to create amazing sites
- Developer friendly, not that designer/user-friendly

Wordpress:
- Not that good with ecommerce
- Cheap/simple
- Upgrades can be problematic

Joomla:
- Not as powerful as drupal
- Friendly for all types of users - Designers, Developers and Administrators
- Lack of SEO capability (this is would not be good).
- Too much superfluous code

ModX:
- Good because you can customize everything to your needs without modifying the core
- Great scalability
- Is getting extremely good reviews from web designers and it seems like quite a few users have switched from joomla to ModX recently.

Concrete5:
- Perhaps the most user friendly with inline editing
- Flexible
- Easier for us to “learn” and understand (this might be an advantage if we are able to do some of the work/maintenance ourselves)

9. What budget would you recommend for setting up an ecommerce website for a small/medium sized business?

10. What would you demand from a potential employee, regarding previous work history, portfolio, number of years working within the specific areas (i.e. ajax: at least 3 years to be proficient)?

11. Though the design of the two sites will be a bit different, is it possible to use the same “template” to make the development of the two sites more cost-effective?

12. What would be a realistic estimate of cost per month of such sites after completion?

Thank you all in advance!

Also, if you can only comment on a few of the questions, please do:)

OK, you have a lot of knowledge about what to look for, but you have no practical experience in the industry. I will answer the question, at least the ones I feel like answering, then you just get an opinion.

1. One man cannot do all that by them self. You talking about a team of people for a payroll of over $250K a year in America.

2. 10K - $2500 for program, $2500 for marketing, $2500 for loading items, $2500 for advertising.

3. Strategic Marketing Plan
4. Open Source eCommerce Programs
5. Strong consistent messaging, uniform item images - size, background color, zoom level
6. Don't worry about it till your doing over 100 orders a day
7.Our system does 90% of that, we can integrate faxing for blind shipments

8.

9.10K per site

10.

11. yes

12.Operations - $100.00 Marketing - As much as you can spend - normally 10% of your revenue.

Thanks mate!

You are correct in noticing that the marketing is absent from the actual site creation. The marketing plan is separate from the site and will mostly be "physical" marketing, at least in the beginning.

On nr.7 you mention "our system". May I ask which system that is?

We author a program called Internet Commerce Engine 5 that does 98% of what you described in your post. The only thing it doesn't do is fax orders, but I think that can be added with a fax board and some extra code on our behalf.

We have a order fulfillment system, in which you can print orders to the warehouse. On the list is the capability to just forward the order to a fulfillment center, based on the fulfillment vendors in the order. But we need a test subject to refine that process.

It's just food for thought.

Dear Carljohan1234,

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Carljohan1234

Required E-commerce features:
• Shopping Cart (preferably a free/cheap one, i.e. cubecart)
• Search Feature
• SSL encryption
• Accept PayPal, credit cards and authorize.net
• Ability to add/edit/delete products and easily add/change pictures.
• Shipping cost calculator. We can easily change prices
• The website must be SEO optimized and work well with Google Adwords and Google Adwords' conversion tracking.
• Google base integration
• Database driven product management
• When an order is placed, we need to get an email with all the details of the order
• Customer Login/account
• The site should be made following as many principles as possible outlined in the following web page: http://web2.ajaxprojects.com/web2/ne....php?itemid=29
• Facebook, digg, delicious and reddit icons/support.

---

CS-Cart software has all E-commerce features you require except the last one (Facebook, digg, delicious and reddit icons/support).
As far as the License for this product costs only $ 228, with budget of $ 4,000 for site you'll be able to add a variety of changes you need (cost depends on their complexity) as well as to create and integrate a new design for your web store.

Regards, Alt-team.

Having created multiple e-commerce sites all without much knowledge of HTML/CSS, or any of the Java type languages, I have been able to do quite well for myself. There are a lot of e-commerce shopping carts that can be confidently run for less than $30 a month.
Of course, for SEO, you'll have to pay a pretty penny, but can also be outsourced for a lot less than what the big box SEO companies will charge you.
I would not use any of the open source products. Especially if you want to create a thriving e-commerce site with minimal headaches.
Just pay $25 a month for a fully managed ecommerce service to start off with. As you grow, you can go for more expensive plans with the same company. You'll be glad that you did.

I would suggest you use joomla, an open source content management system that will give you the web solution your looking for and the best part about it is that it comes with 1000's of downloaded modules to attach to your site making it more and more dynamic.

I can help you do this for you :)