Web Hosting for Retail Sales

[Atom]

My wife would like to start a web site to sell products which she now sells at craft shows. I've been selling odds and ends on ebay since 2000 and have considered that route, and will likely still establish a presence there, but mainly to drive traffic to her own site.

Does anyone have experience setting up a site like this? I'm interested in finding a hosting service that is both cost effective and geared toward this type of application. I'm also interested in opinions on what type of software and payment systems might be required. I have a PayPal account but figure we'll need more than that for taking credit card payments.

Any ideas, thoughts, suggestions, etc. would be greatly appreciated.

[Dimitry]

WebHost4Life

CrystalTech
I use the first one, seems pretty good so far. I setup a few people on the second and heard a lot of good things about them also. Reasonable prices also.

[Atom]

I checked out webhost4life.

Does it matter who I purchase a domain name through?

Here's webhost4life's page:
Webhost4life Low cost domain names, domain transfers, web hosting, email accounts, and so much more.

Also, what's the difference between regular shared hosting, semi-dedicated and dedicated server?

[Dimitry]

Domains, not really. For the most part, you get all the necessary features from all places.

The type of server, differences are price, speed (if you get a lot of hits, a big database on the backend etc. then you'll have to start looking at hosting other than shared).

I'm not shared right now and I have enough options to get me started for my site. If it ever starts to grow, I'll probably have to upgrade. I might be missing info here as I'm definately no expert in this region so if anyone has more to say about this, feel free.

[tobyhede]

There are a range of options.

eBay have a store system now that is pretty flexible ... you could use that for your fulfillment and have a separate site for your branding and "presence".

Most of the cheap hosts will allow you to install Open Source sales system like OsCommerce or ZenCart. These are pretty useful shopping cart systems, I have used both in production and they are great.
See other threads for comments on hosting.

PayPal have a range of merchant options ... fees are just about the best in the business and are generally already integrated or very simple to get started.

[Atom]

Since my last post, I purchased the domain (www.terris-kids.com) and a shared-hosting package from webhost4life. I posted a bare-bones page, just to get something out there, and feel like I accomplished something.

After reading tobyhede's post, I'm thinking more about ebay and ways to point ebay to the site, and the site to ebay, and then see how sales pan out from there.

Anyone know of any really good books or web sites on developing a web site?

[tobyhede]

The materials at W3 Schools are excellent.

[TheBull]

Originally Posted by Atom

Anyone know of any really good books or web sites on developing a web site?

If you are looking for a store front site, I really don't think a book is the correct route for you. There is a HUGE difference between a 'web site' and an online store. An online store is an application and building one from scratch with no prior knowledge of HTML and programming is only going to discourage you.

Instead I would look for a hosting company that can provide or allow you to install a software solution to handle your needs. Any good provider can do this (I have done it for clients in the past). As for the solution, the best route is to get a PHP-based package as that is what almost every host will allow you to run and find one that is geared towards your needs. For example you could install say, osCommerce, which is both very popular and very customizable or you could go with a Yahoo-backed store or something similar.

It all depends on the kind of products you are wanting to sell. My wife for example was selling candles for a while and something like a Yahoo solution wouldn't work because of the options (scent, color, size, etc.), while the osCommerce worked but it can be a chore to setup initially. If you are going to be selling baby shower gifts (from the link you provided) then something like a Yahoo store would most likely work for you to get started. You can integrate the Yahoo stuff into just about any site fairly easy from what I have seen and then you can grow it from there if need be.

If you still want to learn some html, googling for 'html tutorials' would be a good start before you go buy a book or two. One thing to remember is that a good website/application is more than HTML, it has CSS, graphics, color, etc. which a HTML book won't particularly cover well. Again there are options out there for free such as free content management systems (look for Joomla, Drupal, etc. Google for 'php cms'). These are really fancy site builders to put it mildly and most can incorporate store front functionality.

Hope that helps!