Posted by verity on 06/01/06 14:15

David Segall wrote:
> "Violet" <verity.gray@mac.com> wrote:
>
> >I'm supposed to be starting up my on-line business in October and I
> >haven't written any pages yet.
> >I've made a non-commercial site in the past with 'FrontPage' but this
> >has to look professional & deal with orders & payments.
> If "deal with orders and payments" means a shopping cart as in most
> commercial web sites you _cannot_ write this yourself by October. Find
> a hosting company that offers this facility and use their web design
> tools to customize your site.
>
> HTML is not sufficient for writing the code on the server required to
> process orders and payments. I like Dreamweaver for writing HTML but
> that won't help with the server-side processing.

I think I understand that, you were very clear. I might put it off till
next year but I shouldn't really because the orders will have a
seasonal pattern.

Not sure I actually need a shopping cart;
think I will go for contact by answerphone, fax or email; so would I
need a shopping cart?
Or is it best to do that so I can readily expand - "think big!"

I won't be having that many products to start with, mostly stuff I am
designing & manufactoring myself. I already have a lot of the stuff
I've designed and used, when I wanted to sell it via a similar site, I
was appalled at how much commission they wanted just for advertising &
processing orders.
For other reasons also, I thought, start small in a small but not
crowded niche & who knows? :-)

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