The easy way to improve your professional image,

                 boost your sales and reduce the cost of selling online.

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Why choose Your Shop™  to design or improve
your website?

We make your marketing job easier -- so you can focus on what you do best.

Let's face it. There are hundreds of website designers and programers to choose from, all with different strengths and weaknesses.

Your Shop is unique from the others in our ability to provide cost effective design, marketing and business expertise, and a broad array of services including e-commerce and email marketing sollutions, search engine optimization, and friendly technical support.

Your Shop sites are professionally designed to reflect the character of your business and customized to the way you conduct your business.

 

Who are you guys?

We are ourselves entrepreneurs. Our professional websites
are built for entrepreneurs - by entrepreneurs.

We understand the online selling process from start to finish. In fact, along with our graphic design and programing expertise, we know alot about business, marketing and accounting in general. That make us the perfect partner in your endevor to grow your business and gives us many ways to help you do just that.

 

What if I don't want an online store?

We have everything you need for a successful website, with or without an online store.

Your Shop can also improve and upgrade an existing website based on your requirements.

 

What Shopping Cart Program do you reccomend?

Zen Cart

This is an excellent choice for any small business with a reasonable sales volume and a moderate development budget.

Zen Cart is extremely feature rich, right out of the box. Customization and branding beyond the standard templates, will require you either know a programming language such as PHP or ASP, along with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Or you can hire someone like Your Shop who does.

Because it's free you own it, so the cost of programing it can easily be recouped over the lifetime of commision free sales.

It can be extended to meet the product configuration and parameterization needs of most industries and can be customized by any competent programmer, so you are not locked in.

However, it's not for everyone - if you're selling a few t-shirts on your blog, you're probably better off using something like RightCart or CafePress. And if you're selling off Aunt Edna's collection of Hummel figurines, you might want to consider Yahoo Auctions or EBay.

 

What are the differences in various
Shopping Cart Solutions?

Below is a summary of the 4 main types of Shopping Carts. The last solution (Zen Cart) is the one we use.


Options

Issues

A large hosted
e-commerce site, such
as EBay, Yahoo Small Business or Amazon.

  • Vendors like these offer total solutions. You use a wizard to build your site, and they host it. And because they're large operations, you can be reasonably confident they won't disappear tomorrow.
  • Little work required and many of the payment collection issues are handled for you.
  • Harder to add "branding" information and additional content.
  • They take a commission or charge a monthly fee.
  • Limited ability to customize.
  • As your store grows, they typically do not scale up well .
  • May be hard to migrate away from these sites; as they control your data and possibly even your brand.
  • Be careful if a hosted e-commerce vendor offers a free domain name with the purchase of a cart. It's likely they own the domain, not you, making it very difficult for you to move away from them if you decide to change your cart.

A smaller hosted
e-commerce site, such
as Shopify, RightCart, or eCrater.

  • Vendors like these also offer total solutions.
  • They have many of the same advantages and disadvantages as their larger cousins listed above.
  • However, many of these sites only charge you when you sell, so they may be less costly for very small vendors.
  • They also typically offer much more customization ability and a less "boxy" user interface. At the same time, because these sorts of companies are often small startups, their survival is not certain.

A back-end hosted
e-commerce site, such
as BV or GoECart.

  • Vendors like these host the database and back-end functionality of the cart; you host the front end and modify it to your needs.
  • Much more customizable than previously mentioned solutions, but more expensive; typically a monthly fee will be charged for hosting. There will also likely be fees based on the number of products you sell.
  • Some of these systems allow cart functionality to be nailed on to an existing website; others will require that their cart construction tools/wizard be used to create the front end.

An e-commerce package you own yourself, such
as Zen Cart.
  • These offer the ultimate in customizability. However, much more time and computer knowledge is required to set-up these systems.
  • This is the system we use here at Your Shop. Once we set-up your shop there are no further charges unless you need assistance or upgrades. And, because it is such widely used software, if for any reason we are unable to help you, you can always find someone else who can.
  • You will pay for your own hosting and SSL certificate, but you own the software, so there are no other recurring fees except your usual credit card merchant services fees.
  • Because you own all the software, it can be customized to work exactly the way you want it to.

 

Of course, you should be sure you're doing an apples-to-apples comparison. Check the cart features and constraints for each option to determine if the price point you're using in your calculations corresponds to the product meeting your requirements.

For instance, in the second comparison, the price point is based on the number of items in your catalog. A larger catalog increases the price to $50/month. In the third comparison, the price point does not include cross-selling features; if these are needed, the monthly fee goes up to $100 or more a month.

 

Want to learn more about Zen Cart™ specifically?

Take a look at these resources:

Zen Cart Home Page

Zen Cart Support Forum

Zen Cart Wiki


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