Ive spend the WHOLE day looking at cubecart, and paypals shopping cart, amoung other free shopping carts and ones offered for a price by designers.
I have originally designed my own site and planned (just for now) to design a store using just paypal as the shopping cart.
When I mentioned this in the forums, ALOT of people (rightly so I guess) suggested using paypal only was a bad idea. Various reasons were given...
`no means to discount things'
`no way to offer coupons'
`limited shipping charge flexibility'
`no stored customer accounts where customers can come back'
and so forth
Now I dont mean to toot my horn, but I'm actually pretty damn good at html website design. And the store I have designed so far for the purpose of using the paypal shopping cart isnt bad at all, in fact its pretty good.
Starting out in the business, I am litterally starting things out on a shoe-string budget, so having a merchant account and payment gateway isnt an option, so its really down to either the customer paying via paypal or credit card using the paypal shopping cart, or contacting me via email to place the order with a money order or cheque.
I have heard of some people starting out this way and later on down the track managing to focus on other things like 'superior customer service' and making a clear profit step by small step until they had enough revenue to justify buying a shopping cart system that actually looks nice and easy to navigate and doesnt look cheap and nasty AND has a direct merchant gateway to pay via credit card, money order or however they like.
Would it be so bad to start using this very professional, sleek, simple and good looking html website with the paypal shopping cart just for now until I get on my feet to justify spending money on more fancy stuff?
I have originally designed my own site and planned (just for now) to design a store using just paypal as the shopping cart.
When I mentioned this in the forums, ALOT of people (rightly so I guess) suggested using paypal only was a bad idea. Various reasons were given...
`no means to discount things'
`no way to offer coupons'
`limited shipping charge flexibility'
`no stored customer accounts where customers can come back'
and so forth
Now I dont mean to toot my horn, but I'm actually pretty damn good at html website design. And the store I have designed so far for the purpose of using the paypal shopping cart isnt bad at all, in fact its pretty good.
Starting out in the business, I am litterally starting things out on a shoe-string budget, so having a merchant account and payment gateway isnt an option, so its really down to either the customer paying via paypal or credit card using the paypal shopping cart, or contacting me via email to place the order with a money order or cheque.
I have heard of some people starting out this way and later on down the track managing to focus on other things like 'superior customer service' and making a clear profit step by small step until they had enough revenue to justify buying a shopping cart system that actually looks nice and easy to navigate and doesnt look cheap and nasty AND has a direct merchant gateway to pay via credit card, money order or however they like.
Would it be so bad to start using this very professional, sleek, simple and good looking html website with the paypal shopping cart just for now until I get on my feet to justify spending money on more fancy stuff?