Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with e-commerce

Costs for PA-DSS Certification

Invoke — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:08:38 -0800

PA-DSS Credit Card Certification, how much does it cost? I'm one of the core developers for Satchmo, an open source e-commerce toolkit. It looks like we need to be PA-DSS certified by next summer, but the costs are quite vague. From what I can tell, it costs $1250 to list your application as certified, plus $250 per update release. Never mind that this is an incredible, thoughtless, not-going-to-make-things-any-more-secure burden for an open source project, the real question is "how much will it really cost to certify Satchmo?"

It appears from looking at the horrible documentation that the best path to certification is to hire an outside firm to do it. Has anyone done that? Is it not merely suggested, but well-nigh required? Has anyone done it without an outside firm?

Pros & Cons of bringing web development in-house?

MeatLightning — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:33:22 -0800

Pros & Cons of bringing web development in-house? Hi all -
I manage a mid-size e-commerce website. We currently work with an agency to build and maintain our site. We are considering hiring a dev (C# / .NET, SQL) and taking over development... or at least much of it (still may go out of house for UX, front-end dev).

Anyone have any advice, experiences, warnings, etc they can share?

Have you gone down this road? How did it go? What should we watch out for?

thanks in advance!

Make Wiki do Retail

webhund — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:41:31 -0800

How could a wiki be used by a small retail business selling tangible products? I'm looking for ways to use a wiki in a small retail business to better serve its customers. Looking through example sites of various wiki-species (mediawiki, dokuwiki, etc...) leads to a dry hole of wiki usage in the retail sector.

The only authorized wiki authors/editors would be the shop owner and her staff, with editing locked down to the general internet public. The business sells high-end food ingredients to a niche culinary market, both online and at a brick/mortar store. Principal customers are restaurant chefs and home cooks/foodies.

The business uses its blog for "what's happening/good now" type of stuff and then has static product pages on its site where the details of each product are explained, all linked to the online store. Where does (or does not) a wiki fit in this?

Are there things that a locked-down, but publicly-visible wiki could do that a blog or other non-wiki CMS could not in this application? The business owner is technologically adept, is an active blogger, and is looking for new ways to use technology in a traditional retail setting.

The best of the best

simplesharps — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 21:15:41 -0800

If money was no obstacle, what complete eCommerce solution would you deploy for a medium to large online company? A complete solution could mean two systems tied together, one for the website and another for inventory (think about managing a large warehouse) or a system that handles both. The perfect product could be one developed from scratch, an existing framework that we could manipulate to our specific needs or a complete ready-to-go product.

I'm trying to identify examples of best practice solutions for the medium sized company and upwards - there are plenty of solutions for the small business (magento, shopify etc)

Thanks!

Need a SUPER simple online shopping cart.

bink — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 09:21:55 -0800

Looking for a very simple cart solution for a very simple business. I'm setting up a shopping cart for a small business that sells one (1) product. I need a shopping cart that will automatically calculate tax, shipping to all around the world, and, most importantly, will be DIRT SIMPLE for the people who fill the orders. Is there anything that's simpler than PayPal?

In the past, we've used PayPal but those emails sometimes get lost, the shipping charges weren't always right, and the people in the company had difficulty dealing with them. I think they ended up printing out every email and doing shipping labels, record-keeping, etc. by hand in a paper notebook. It needs to be easy for an over-60 technophobe to deal with.

They would like for customers to be able to send checks or money orders as well; I set up a Mal's E cart but getting two emails for every transaction was too confusing.

The ideal program would send a very simple notification email that the order's been placed (and paid for, if so) and would make it really simple for them to print a mailing label and add the buyer's info to a database. Oh, and it needs to work on a Mac!

Free would be nice, of course, but I think they're willing to pay a bit for something that will really work.

What do I need to know to my high end retail sales site off the ground?

JJ Jenkins — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:46:32 -0800

What are the best books/sites for learning the necessary web design and dev tools for an e-commerce site? I have a decent graphic and web design background, but I haven't used it in nine years or so, which means I never quite grasped CSS.

What books/sites/languages can you recommend so that I can design and build a website for direct sales? I will be selling very few (3-5) products that come in several colors. I want to be able to add to them, but I will hire a firm once the number gets too high, so right now it doesn't need to have a complicated database to accommodate high volume of inventory. This is a fashion product so I want the design to be cute and stylish, but easy for customers to navigate and buy products.

My thoughts are to use something like Dreamweaver for design and then program in the e-commerce parts myself. (Do people still even use the term e-commerce?)

I basically need it to look very high end and have a shopping cart with multiple payment and shipping options. I'm confident I can do this myself and have been thoroughly unimpressed with the web pros I've tried to work with. I think I can figure it out on my own for less money and time. However, I don't want to pore through textbooks and do tutorials on things that are unnecessary to get this site off the ground.

Also, I'd like to design and program regular emailings to alert my customer base of new products and availability.

I hope this is specific enough to make sense. Thanks!

Who did Office Depot go to set up an online storefront?

cha4 — Tue, 13 May 2008 08:40:00 -0800

I've been tasked with finding an e-commerce consulting company to help guide us (we are a wing of a fortune 500 company) through the entire e-commerce process. Not so much creating it necessarily, but more guidance/consulting. My google-fu is yielding all fluff. Ideally, looking for "Company X helped Barnes & Noble switch to an online storefront" type of info, so I can back up any suggestions I might be able to make.

Ecommerce software with integrated configurable (granular to the minute) release schedule for products?

imbecile000 — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:16:05 -0800

I am having trouble finding a e-commerce software that releases products at specific times of day (I am looking to get as granular as down to the minute). Anyone know of an ecommerce system that has such a queuing/scheduling system? We'd prefer to buy than build it ourselves! All e-commerce packages I've looked at allow you to release products into the store as available for purchase by day (by defining what day that product will be available or in stock) - but I would like to queue up products.

For instance: Product A (10 units of inventory) are available for sale at 8:10am, Product B (5 units of inventory) available at 8:20am and so forth up to a couple hundred different batches/releases a day. On the front end it would additionally useful if the latest product could be most prominently displayed and the last 10 products could be seen in a list.

BONUS (nice to have) if the products that aren't for sale yet, but will be up for sale later in the day are browseable with a countdown clock ticking down to when they are available.

Open Source Shopping Cart

pinto — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 10:28:10 -0800

Simple e-commerce solutions. I have a fully built site, with individual webpages pointing to specific product items. I simply want to add a backend shopping cart functionality that resides on the server, without relying on PayPal. Whats the best opensource solution that allows me to pass a variable (ie, add a "Buy This" button to already-designed pages) to a shopping cart php function (inventory isn't necessary at this point) and allowing checkout/payment? Is this possible or is PayPal the easiest way to go without completely
rebuilding my site in an opensource commerce engine (ie OsCommerce)?

I know this has been addressed to some extent before , but I don't think I need a sweeping e-commerce solution, just a cart, checkout, and merchant services (visa/mc) hookup.

What shopping cart software should I set up?

amtho — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 20:04:15 -0800

Best starting point for e-commerce / shopping cart software? I'm a competent Perl programmer with background in several other languages, who wants to create a decidedly minimalist-looking web site shopping cart for a client. I expect to hack Perl or PHP code, but would like to hack things that are designed to be hacked. Anyone tried CRE Loaded? Other recommendations? Other places to ask? The old system, heavily modified from an open-source Perl code base, probably should go; I'm pretty confident I can figure out PHP enough to customize something that isn't actively getting in my way (have modified WordPress successfully) -- but what code to start from?

I'm willing to pay a little. I want to install it on my own server space. I'm very picky about design and usability, so I'll want to change the front end of anything (that I've seen available) substantially. And oh, I'll probably want the back end to integrate with our existing payment handling system (Mal's, in case anyone knows/cares), but I can write that code myself if needed.

Specific changes I'd want:
- ability for people to purchase without having to "create an account";
- will keep track of shopping cart contents even if cookies not enabled (i.e., can keep cart ID in URLs if no cookies available)
- URL's that are sensible words instead of automatically-assigned numbers (maybe called "search engine friendly"?)
- ability to completely customize the layout of the home page and other pages, including product listings - this includes HTML, not just changes to CSS.

I've read some similar questions in AskMe, and this one is almost exactly me, though it's from 2006. I'm interested in CubeCart and SquirrelCart, which it recommends, but one option that I'd particularly looked at some years ago is a version of OSCommerce called CRE Loaded -- anyone know that one?

If there's a good resource out there in the world, book or web site, that will give a good survey of available software with my particular concerns in mind, or if there's a better forum you know of for this kind of question, I'd love to hear about it.

Would you like VAT with that?

subpixel — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 07:45:17 -0800

Is VAT calculated based on the billing or shipping address of an EU customer? I'm building an e-commerce store for a German client who sells and ships physical goods to consumers (not other businesses) worldwide.

If a customer in Spain purchases a product, they are charged VAT (at the applicable German rate).

But if the same Spanish customer purchases a product and has it shipped to her brother in the US, should VAT be charged?

Thanks

Looking to add online sales to my site.

tomble — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 04:26:37 -0800

I built a website for my business. I want to sell things from my website! My hosting has a CGI-BIN directory and will run scripts etc. What do I need to know to add a shopping cart function and sell goods? What e-commerce software would be easy to use and integrate into my site? Payment doesn't need to be automated, but I would like to be able to securely take credit card numbers for processing later, if possible. Further details :

About 100 different items in the store that I sell.
I have reasonable knowledge of html.
I've briefly looked at a few web commerce packages (such as Zen Cart) but recommendations are very welcome.

Thanks!

Should I pursue an e-commerce patent?

subpixel — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 10:22:05 -0800

I'm developing an e-commerce project with business processes that are truly unique and might be patentable. I understand there is serious debate about the benefit and/or validity of many patents in this field, but I think my idea stands up to the bullshit test, and I don't think protecting it would be anti-competitive.

So, should I launch and go about protecting the invention later, or should I hire a patent attorney right away? I've searched the patent databases myself and found nothing remotely similar. But I'm not an expert.

Advice for someone wanting to build an e-commerce site... ?

dobbs — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:01:01 -0800

I've built plenty of websites. I've never built an e-commerce website. I generally use Dreamhost as a host and Expression Engine as a CMS. What's my next step for building an e-commerce site for a new client? Resources? Recommendations? etc. I'm in Canada if that makes a diff; products will ship world-wide.

How much would YOU pay for Microsuck.com?

CommonSense — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 12:11:22 -0800

I'm thinking of putting my once-great anti-Microsoft advocacy website up for sale. But should I even bother? I have the dubious distinction of being the guy behind Microsuck.com, a website I started in 1999 without any real aim or ambition. For a while, I kind of maintained it, off and on. The last time I really gave it any attention was over two years ago, though.

What keeps it alive is the forums, though -- to this day, it still has an active user base, despite the fact that the long-running joke is that the administrator (me) is essentially an absentee landlord. A few other forum moderators keep an eye on things and "hire/fire" other moderators as needed. Otherwise, weeks will go by without me even THINKING about the site.

There's also some value in the fact that a slew of other domain names all point to the site -- fuckmicrosoft.com, fuckwindows.com, and about 15-20 more of roughly equivalent "value."

I feel like it may be time to let it go. It was vaguely interesting years ago, but it grew into an annoying albatross. I get SO much spam (several messages every time my e-mail client checks -- and that's every FIVE minutes) that what little real feedback comes in has maybe a 5% chance of being read (or even noticed) by me. And what I do get, I don't even answer.

There has been some media coverage of the site before -- mainly online, but by household-name media, and I was once interviewed on Pacifica's Free Speech Radio News show. A few years ago, the website could probably be fairly described as being somewhat well known among geeks. All that is gone now. (Of course, the fact that hating Microsoft ceased to be a "geeky" thing years ago and is now as mainstream as Britney Spears has a lot to do with it, I guess.)

In this phase where I'm trying to "de-clutter" my life, parting with this site would be a great idea. But I also have a not-inconsiderable amount of debt, and selling it for a decent sum would be a a great way to kill two birds with one stone.

I've never bought or sold a website before, and I've only bought virgin domain names from GoDaddy, etc. So I have no clue about what kind of money is involved here. But it seems to me that I can get a reasonably healthy sum if I play my cards right. I'd sell the site -- both the main site and the forums, and all associated domain names -- but ideally, I'd like to see something in the five-digit range. Am I nuts?

Can we purchase an online auction solution to meet our needs or do we need a programmer?

bristolcat — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 13:03:14 -0800

Are there any good online auction solutions out there or should we hire a programmer? I am helping my brother research for a project he's working on. He needs to set up an online auction site with strict requirements, but I found our options lacking. After exploring phpauction among others, I wonder if our requirements would be better implemented by a freelance programmer.

The requirements:
-Needs a clean, simple interface for both admin and user.
-The payment must be submitted within 15 days after purchase to an escrow site, so no online payment.
-The admin needs to be able to restrict users based on eligibility.
-The auction must be posted for 15 days before anyone can bid on it.
-If the auction ends with no bids, the user must wait 120 before they can post again.
-Auctions must feature reserve prices.
-Each auction must include certain disclaimers.
-There should be as little hands-on work done as possible by the admin, outside of checking registrations for eligibility.
-Must be secure.

Does something like this exist? Does something exist that we could customize to meet our needs? Would we be better off hiring a programmer? How much would something like this cost if we hired a programmer?

We appreciate any help you can give us! Thanks!

Help with ZenCart Basics

aladfar — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 14:32:13 -0800

ZenCart Basics: The AskMe archives provide great information about e-commerce solutions. Based on previous suggestions, I've decided to go with ZenCart for my first project. But I need some help with the basics. Before working out all of the design aspects, I want to get my client started populating the store. I know what categories I need to create and exactly what attributes need to be associated with each product. But getting this set up isn't entirely intuitive. There's lots of support out there for ZenCart - what's the best? Is there a ZenCart for Dummies resource that would make my life easier?

Am I making this up? Does this exist?

heavenstobetsy — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 15:55:02 -0800

I had a friend once who became a member of some sort of organization not unlike Avon, but with housewares/knick knacks? She paid a fee yearly, I think to be a member and get these housewares/knick knack type things at a good cost and resell them however she wanted. Does this make sense? Does anyone know what I'm talking about or how I can find such companies?

list your fav shopping sites!

bradn — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 07:45:18 -0800

Please list your favorite online shopping sites, from a design, user experience, and functionality perspective. I work for a small consumer electronics manufacturer, looking to overhaul our e-commerce website.

I am looking for both web (department) stores and (especially) manufacturer stores that give you a good shopping experience.

We're also looking to keep people coming back to our site with community-based, interactive features, such as product reviews, forums, RSS feeds, etc, so please list any sites with those features.

Cool web 2.0 features, of course, get a bonus!

Best places to buy CDs online?

davebush — Mon, 08 May 2006 11:02:02 -0800

I'm looking for good online CD shops. Here's my criteria:

Good shipping rates to Canada / Fast shipping / Accepts PayPal / Excellent selection of electronic/ambient releases (labels like Touch/Fax/Warp)

How to create rotating online flash product display?

Fishing Nut — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 00:18:12 -0800

Flash Template & Info for creating 360 rotating products? Looking for information on creating online product displays that allow the customer to rotate the item 360 degrees to view the product.
Step 1 would be to photograph the product while rotating it.
Step 2 would be to incorporate the pictures in a flash template. The template would have nav controls built in.

My question is where can I find info on techniques and software for step 1, and info and or pre made flash templates for step 2?

Need a non-sucky merchant account.

spilon — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 13:25:19 -0800

Any recommendations for a quality e-commerce merchant account services provider? I currently use Authorize.net and Concord. While I like Authorize.net quite a bit, I am experiencing very poor customer service and various "gotcha!" type hidden charges from Concord. The reseller I originally used to establish the account, Merchant Express, has been no help whatsoever. I would like to replace Concord, and keep Authorize.net if possible. Can anyone recommend a company that isn't a total nightmare to do business with?

Crime, Web 2.0 Style

chudmonkey — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 13:56:36 -0800

ShadyDealingsFilter: Since I've read some how-to's on cyberstalking and murder and such here lately, I have a hypothetical question about criminal fund-raising... I'm no criminal mastermind, but I do have a hypothetical premise in my mind that might make a good story if some realistic mechanics could be worked out. Hence:

Let's say you wanted to commit a criminal act, but needed a signifigant amount of money to successfully commit the act. Let's say the commision of the act was the important thing, and that getting caught afterward would be acceptible, if not preferable. Let's say the nature of the crime is such that international law-enforcement would cooperate to prevent it, but that it couldn't be 100% preventable, even with advance warning. Let's say that you don't have access to any large sources of money, but that the criminal act would be endorsed by/popular amongst a large segment of the world population.

Using the internet or otherwise, could you realistically announce your intent to commit a crimimal act and solicit funding from a worldwide audience, while mainaining your anonymity and the anonymity of any "donors" throughout the financial transactions and the investigations of motivated police agencies?

In short: could you setup an anti-charity and collect money for bad deeds instead of good, without lying about your motivations, without exposing every donor to conspiracy charges and without getting caught before you finish?

Promotion ideas & advise for online business.

arrowhead — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 01:20:03 -0800

Has anybody had any success making good business out of an online business such as CafePress? I opened an account recently, selling rock climbing shirts and apparel. Started some promos on the rock climbing forums and managed to get a couple of sales, but it has flattened since then. There are only so many climbing sites that I could promote at.

Would gladly appreciate some ideas / advise / tips on promotions, especially if you've done something similar and seen some success out of it.

Thanks!

Too good to be true?

reformedjerk — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 14:21:12 -0800

Is Comp-U-plus.com legit? If so, why do other companies still exist? I've been looking around for a pair of Sennheiser PXC-250 noise-cancelling headphones (any good?) and comp-u-plus seems to have it at a considerably lower price than some of the other shops--comparable to some refurbed models elsewhere. Thinking this might have been a fluke, I tried looking for an iPod shuffle there, and again it was easily 25% cheaper than it's competitors. If this company is legit...how do others compete with it? Please explain economics to me.