What do I need to sell stuff over my website

Banta posted this at 12:53 — 15th December 2000.

They have: 7 posts

Joined: Jul 1999

Hello everybody,

I suppose this is quite a standard question that comes up every now and then. Unfortunately I didn't find any thread on that lately so here we go :

I would like to sell stuff over my webpage that I myself manufacture. So I am not looking for a link to amazon or so, but simply a form (or one of these "put in your shopping bag" programs) that people can use to order stuff through my website. I am quite new on that, so I am looking for some basic description on how this is being done and what do I need to learn to be able to do that. It should a solution maybe a little bit better than a plain e-mail but easier than a complicated database/sql system.

I thank you very much for your help and have a merry x-mas

Manuel

japhy posted this at 15:38 — 15th December 2000.

They have: 161 posts

Joined: Dec 1999

You have to look at all the things that come into play:

form of payment... credit cards? you'd better have a secure connection so that misfits don't intercept the customer's CC number and wreak havok. cash, money order, check? you'd better hope the person pays, or you're giving away stuff like crazy
interface... "shopping cart" stuff? do you want to use cookies, or would you rather have it stored in a database somewhere?
management... a database IS the easiest thing -- learn to deal with them. Perl's DBI module is a serious help (or you can use Win32::ODBC if you're on a windows box)

I recently finished building a rough e-commerce site for one of my college courses. We used Cold Fusion and Perl and Win32::ODBC to get the job done. Don't stay away from SQL because you don't know it. Learn it.

fairhousing posted this at 22:03 — 15th December 2000.

They have: 1,587 posts

Joined: Mar 1999

i'd suggest something like ccnow.com if ur not looking to pay any $ upfront.

good luck

Mark Hensler posted this at 09:40 — 16th December 2000.

He has: 4,048 posts

Joined: Aug 2000

I think I must mention upfront: I have not yet done any e-commerce related work.

But I do know enough to give an educated opinion. And my opinion is this: unless you have the resources (time and/or $$) and the patience (this will take some time), I would recommend selling through another party.

Mark Hensler
If there is no answer on Google, then there is no question.