Building an online store

Hi -
I am an ebay seller trying to open up my own independent online store unaffliated with ebay.
After reading through the several reviews of ecommerce web hosting services and shopping carts I just feel like I getting more confused about what choices to make...

I need something that can handle a line of cosmetics and also provide for future expansions of the cosmetic line. I also need something will be easy to develop and design for. I have experience with simple html and Golive but that's about it as far as my code experience goes.

I am also confused about the bottom line cost of the services, do they commonly take out a percent of your profits?
Security issues are a problem as well - do free web shopping carts like zen cart not offer good security for your customers?
Somebody please help! Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

thank you!

An easy way to start is with something like yahoo stores. They give you almost anything that a start-up online store needs. That will get your started with minimal learning.

You will pay them a monthly fee plus a percentage off the top of your transactions. You can also start with a paypal shopping cart that has easy to use purchase buttons that will copy paste right into a webpage.

You could try these and then after you see how things work you can go into the expense and learning that other options offer.

If you hope to get search engine traffic that will only happen if you are willing to do pay per click or spend the time or money to optimize your site and acquire enough links to be competetive.

HI -
Thanks for the response!
I looked at yahoo/paypal and was hoping to find something with less expensive fees. Some of the other hosting options I viewed like Apollo and Aplus included the Miva shopping cart, which looked very simple. I liked the user interface and customization possibilities but I wasn't sure if it was a good one to use and the fees were very buried.

Would you consider Miva a good option or is there another online store of that nature that you would recommend? (especially one that doesn't have per transaction fees)

Thanks!!

I use UltraCart and have been happy with it for a few years. I have not used Miva or others as I am satisfied with my current set-up.

Hi,
I was formerly an eBay powerseller, and closed my eBay store several months ago. I now have a Yahoo store and am very happy with it. Compared to eBay's fees, I consider the 1.5% transaction fee reasonable considering all of the benefits of Yahoo stores. Yahoo also has 24 hour tech assistance, which is another plus. The best thing you can do for any store you choose is to stick around here, where you can learn how to optimize your site for search engines, as well as many other things. Of course, this is only my opinion, so you should consider all of your options, compare, and make an educated decision. Best of luck, and let us know what you decide to go with.

Faith

if you want to setup a store completely where you have total control then a joomla site may be ok for you.

joomla is open source and you can get an extension for it called virtuemart which allows you to create a complete store and it has many different payment options.

allows you to start off small and build up to using larger payment processors for credit cards etc too.

best of all its free to start as both are open source.

pretty steep learning curve but worth it in my opinion

i use joomla for 1 of my sites and am very happy with the ease of use and ease of install / update.

go to joomla dot org if you want to read about it.

i think virtuemart is at virtuemart dot net

let me know how you get on and feel free to pm me if you need help

I was an ebay powerseller also, then went to the web because the transactions are so much easier and faster there, the fees are much lower and the customers are not as time consuming. I walked away from a lot of revenue but it was a good decision.