building an online shop - help!

[costumequeen]

Hi!
I want to make the leap from selling my stuff on etsy to a proper online shop, but I am realising that my knowledge is outdated! I built various websites a few years ago with dreamweaver, but I think things have moved on somewhat, and I've never tackled ecommerce! I have a wordpress.com blog, but I think I need to use.org to get the shop widget? I have used ecwid but not built it from scratch so I only know how to use it once it's up and running. Can anyone recommend a user friendly and low cost/free solution? I know how I want it to look (and am handy on photoshop) but not how to get there!

There are lots of Wordpress themes which include ecommerce, off the top of my head woothemes.com

Thanks! Am I right in thinking I need a hosting company to use wordpress, then build the various widgets into it? I'm a bit confused with where to start to be honest! Thanks for you help though!

I've PM'd you. :)

Thank you! I can't seem to pm you back but it's much appreciated!

I use EKM Powershop. Costs £23.99 per month + your domain.

So far I have had a really positive experience with them. When you first set up, they call you once a week to talk you through any problems. I have found it really easy.

I have also used 1&1 but would not go back to them. The customer service was terrible.

Yola is also quite cost effective and easy to use.

No need to worry if you have left making website a year ago. Why don't you try some free online web creating a site like webs,blink web,yep,etc..Here you have to just show your own skill with the help of attributes present on the site.
Or take some online help from here www.modz.fr/

Hi there, how did you get on with your shop creation? I'm interested in seeing how others set up their online business.

I started my own around 3 weeks ago, but I'm lucky, my husband built my site for me.

Interesting thread. Which payment system are you using?

I'm about to launch in a couple of weeks actually. I bought a hosting package with 123-reg, and used wordpress to set up shop. I bought a theme with an integrated e-commerce system (woocommerce) and it's almost finished! I'm pretty pleased but it did take me a while to get my head round wordpress and the theme itself!

Great, I am using wooecommerce on a wordpress site. I have asked this on antoehr thread, but how did you go about setting up a payments system/merchant bank account/security requirements etc?

For the moment I'll just take paypal but I am using the business option so customers can pay with credit/debit card too.

The paypal option was integrated into woocommerce, but I had to open a business paypal account to use their credit and debit card facility. I think sagepay has an easy system as well?

@costume thanks for replying. I think SagePay is easy once set up (very smooth, we use it in my day job) but they want me to set up a merchant bank account.

Hmm I don't really know much about that - will you be processing card transactions and need a machine? I don't think you need a mba otherwise? But I'm not that familiar with that sort of thing to be honest!

No I won't need a machine and it would be sagepay processing it. Hmm...