My website.

pastasolo

I have a website for my shop at the moment I have about 2500 procucts on it at the moment. It's a wool shop amongst other things.

It is on os commerce. I got the website designed in 2008 via a website called scriptlance, it has been functioning okish. But i have a number of issues with it:

1. I would often put together a pattern and people would buy all or some the items needed to purchase that pattern. But lets say they need yellow wool I can add it to the list of items they need but it would be taken away from general sale.
2. Also if they have purchased a pattern they then can't purchase a 2nd pattern, they have to do a seperate transaction.
3. It takes a long time to take on and off products. To sub catagorise them can be tricky.
4. I don't know how to change the picture on my homepage!!
5. I am taking credit cards but I have to type the persons credit card number in my own terminal manually. We are very careful with peoples credit card details, but I'd like to change this as I know it's not the most secure. I can use paypal on my account but they take waay too much of a percentage so I'm not going to go that route.
6. I have a lot of catagories and sub catagories and the items aren't able to move around that readily.

I am prepared to invest my time and money into this website but I just don't know where to start. And I want to get it spot on this time. I got a bit of advice from a few companies and they were telling me that I need them to custom build a site for me. I am worried about this for example, If I forget somthing or wish to make a change at the start then it will have to be coded again and I'd have to pay.

Is there something off the shelf they could use and they could teach me how to us e it? Or is there something off the shelf I could buy myself and figure out perhaps with the help a professional. I figure the more I know about the site the better able I will be to manage it!!

I know this is long, but I would really appreciate your help.

TonyStark

I was under the impression that http://www.magentocommerce.com/ is a branch of oscommerce that has some paid for support. I guess it gives you access to paid for experts who could help solve some of the issues you have with your site at the moment.

pastasolo

Thanks for reply, but I am honestly totally clueless! What would they do? Do you think it comes with my package? It's 5 years old now!!

Maybe I should talk to my web host? I have no IT support whatsoever! I really want to learn but am at a loss as to where to start. Is oscommerce a product that's taken off a shelf and then adjusted to suit me?a d this crowd could be my support for it?

adm

magento has nothing to do with oscommerce. OP you need to find a web development company who provide eccommerce solutions - and yes I would recommend magento. The people who make magento give the software away for free (open source) but also have paid for solutions you could look into . But hey why not look for some Irish companies that could help!

Graham

What advantage would the OP gain from switching from OSCommerce to Magento rather than continuing to develop the existing site?

oeb

1. I would often put together a pattern and people would buy all or some the items needed to purchase that pattern. But lets say they need yellow wool I can add it to the list of items they need but it would be taken away from general sale.
2. Also if they have purchased a pattern they then can't purchase a 2nd pattern, they have to do a seperate transaction.
3. It takes a long time to take on and off products. To sub catagorise them can be tricky.
4. I don't know how to change the picture on my homepage!!
5. I am taking credit cards but I have to type the persons credit card number in my own terminal manually. We are very careful with peoples credit card details, but I'd like to change this as I know it's not the most secure. I can use paypal on my account but they take waay too much of a percentage so I'm not going to go that route.
6. I have a lot of catagories and sub catagories and the items aren't able to move around that readily.

Hi pastasolo, there are a couple of ways of addressing your problems with your site. The first option would be to hire a relitivly local developer who specialises in osCommerce (It's quite popular, so it should not be too hard) and get them to fix the issues you are having with the site and to provide full training for you.


The second option is to re-develop. Think seriously about this, as this more than likely would involve pretty serious interface changes for your customers (Although, quite possibly for the better) and it will require that you re-learn how to administrate the site. It may also require you to start from scratch, but not always (I know tools exist to port from osCommerce to opencart, I assume they do for others too). This option will more than likely be the most expensive option.


There are a few choices, personally, I'm a fan of OpenCart, but Magento is also popular.


Just make sure that whomever you get to develop the site has plenty of experience in dealing with the platform of choice (upgrade or new site) and is prepared to offer (on-site if possible) training in your new site/upgrade.


With regard to payment, our customers generally use realex, the fees are less than paypal once you start making enough sales to be really concerned about paypals fees. I would suggest that you stop taking the credit card details via email or through the backend of your site, it is a security nightmare and can cause some serious damage to your business if someone should retrieve them (That's another reason to use paypal/realex/another payment gateway, it becomes their problem, and they typically have millions invested in security)

Graham wrote: »

What advantage would the OP gain from switching from OSCommerce to Magento rather than continuing to develop the existing site?

If at all possibile, I would probably recomend sticking with what they know, but they may find that a lot of features they want when they sit down and actually think about it are easier and/or cheaper to implement with a new platform.

pastasolo

How about getting a new website via Wordpress using a local developer? Or getting a local develper to use their own system?

Thanks