Minimum knowledge for Homegrown Ecommerce Site

Question

I am a relative novice to professional web development and design. One of my clients has requested that I set up an E-commerce site to sell their luxury purses. I have some pretty solid experience with php and MySQL but have used neither professionally. I have not yet dealt with Sessions or anything resembling a shopping cart and I fear my lack of experience will lead to security issues, or worse, getting to a certain part and realizing I am in over my head and not being able to complete the job.

EDIT: Ok, you guys have convinced me not to build my own. Any more advice/suggestions?

The Shop: going to sell 2-300 items, with checkout, and inventory control. The client needs a easy-to-use backend, with the ability to place a single item into multiple categories. Also I have to make it so there are color variations of each item, and multiple images.

I have, by the way, looked into other options (CMS's) but am getting frustrated with the research process. It seems as though there is quite a steep learning curve for many of these as well. I spent the last day or so learning Liquid (for Shopify), and have also played with PrestaShop, and Magneto a little. I can tell I prefer developing my own solutions to the frustration of having to learn someone elses system, but will listen if people advise me to further pursue this route.

EDIT: I Should have mentioned the Client has already designed the interface they want (for the customer) so if I use a CMS option I need to be confident that I can theme it appropriately

Well, to avoid writing a novel, I am going to leave it off there. If you have any questions I will check back often and try to address them. I greatly appreciate any help/advice you might have to offer on this subject.

Answer 1

I'm glad you tagged your post with Shopify, it is the best solution for your circumstances. I would highly recommend you set it up in Shopify, buy a stock template that best fits the clients needs and get running.

This is one of those age-old dilemmas, where you'll hear about the best/worst ways of etc. etc. When it comes down to it, get the purses up online, there are beautiful templates to choose from. When there's some cash flow from the store you can absolutely guarantee that client is coming back for more work from you.

By choosing Shofipy and a template, you have turned the core portion of your work into a non-issue. You can then focus on loading all of those products, what items should be featured, checkout setup, SEO, traffic flow, etc. When starting out in the ecommerce world you'll be shocked at how much penumbral setup there is.

Start selling first.

Adapt, create, or choose a new template ( even a new ecommerce solution! ) when there's business, traffic flow, orders coming thru, lessons learned from selling, and a reason to do so.

If you take another look at Amazon.com you'll see there isn't much special about the template, it's all the power behind it and its traffic flow. Shopify allows for extensions, API's, webhooks, templates, etc. You'll never be stuck using Shopify.

Think about your client, they want ROI ( return on investment ). The quickest path to ROI is sales of goods. Approach step two when step one is complete.

Answer 2

I'm sure you will later regret reinventing the wheel - spare yourself a lot of trouble by starting from some popular framework.

Personally I recommend Magento, it is very professional. I like how easy it is to setup a hotsite for a holiday or product line.

Answer 3

Having used oscommerce, Magento, and Prestashop, I can say that Prestashop is by far the better choice, in terms of being easy to install and get running. They also have a fairly active forum, where you can get help. The clients I have used it for are non-technical, and have been able to learn to use it without too much stress. Magento is way more complicated to set up and get running, although it is more powerful for large sites with many facets. Oscommerce is too insecure. Prestashop gives the best tradeoff between complexity and power for a new shop, and is an active software project with frequent updates to fix new security issues, etc. (something oscommerce is not at all good at).

Also, both Magento and Prestashop offer you the option of having them host the software, which makes it even easier (of course in that case you have to pay them something).