E-Commerce website questions

[Louis G]

Hi All,

Im helping a friend of mine who has a very small wine importing business. His web designer is stuck at present and cant maintain site, as he's based in latvia without a job, laptop etc.
So we are stuck with a half complete site http://www.winehaus.co.uk

How easy is it to set up a E-commerce site ourselves? We have no web design skills or computer coding skills.
Is there any e commerce software that is easy to set up, that we could do ourselves, so we have greater control.
Any recommendations, advice or tips would be greatly appreciated.
Oh and can they be run on a mac?

Thanks

[Ratsoap]

Might be a bit tricky with no knowledge at all. I was going to suggest something like Zen cart, as it's free, but I see the site is already using that. If you can get the logins for it, you should be able to just fire ahead and use the admin area to set up the shop.

Failing that you could try something like an ebay or Amazon shop?

[Sledge]

I use Mal's eCommerce for the site I maintain, the benefits being that we don't have to maintain a bunch accounts, don't have to deal with payment processing, the API (insofar as it can be called such) is fairly straightforward, the cart page is customisable enough and the free version is plenty good enough for small businesses.

Note you don't keep a list of products and prices on Mal's, it's all handled by the form data that is passed when someone clicks "Buy" on something. I really like it.

[Louis G]

Might be a bit tricky with no knowledge at all. I was going to suggest something like Zen cart, as it's free, but I see the site is already using that. If you can get the logins for it, you should be able to just fire ahead and use the admin area to set up the shop.

Failing that you could try something like an ebay or Amazon shop?

Hi,

I have logins for hosting site and can download the site per sa. But I don't know where to start with it.
Is Zen cart any good? Doesnt look like it runs on a mac though
A friend recommended cube cart. But it seems the same as Zen apart from costing £100 odd

[Louis G]

I use Mal's eCommerce for the site I maintain, the benefits being that we don't have to maintain a bunch accounts, don't have to deal with payment processing, the API (insofar as it can be called such) is fairly straightforward, the cart page is customisable enough and the free version is plenty good enough for small businesses.

Note you don't keep a list of products and prices on Mal's, it's all handled by the form data that is passed when someone clicks "Buy" on something. I really like it.

Ok thanks, will take a look at this.

May I ask what site you maintain so I can get a feel for the end result?

[Sledge]

May I ask what site you maintain so I can get a feel for the end result?

With the proviso that I'm in the process of reigning in the design with a strict site-wide template at the moment (next version of the site will basically build itself from an xml file of products), sure This page here shows examples of using a couple of different selection methods -- have a nosey about at the code (the docs on Mal's aren't bad either) and it should hopefully click.

[gilesgoat]

May I ask what site you maintain so I can get a feel for the end result?

With the proviso that I'm in the process of reigning in the design with a strict site-wide template at the moment (next version of the site will basically build itself from an xml file of products), sure This page here shows examples of using a couple of different selection methods -- have a nosey about at the code (the docs on Mal's aren't bad either) and it should hopefully click.

How can you have all that princess stuff and not even one My Little Pony ?

[Sledge]

That's actually a damn good question given how it would sell