A friends wants to create a website for his new venture.

Reality|Bites · 1 Feb 2012 at 17:04

Hi a friend want to create an online shop for his new business and he asked me for some help creating it, The thing is, the last time I created a website was using Webword in College 12 years ago lol.

He will be selling womens underwear (no not used ones I already asked him)

He wants to create a site similar to this

www.mysmartypants.co.uk

How easy would it be to achieve this goal?

Thanks in advance?

AS_Platinum · 1 Feb 2012 at 17:42

All depends, tbqh. There are plenty of free shopping carts out there, which is probably your best bet, then there is the gateway (what payment method etc) then design, its not something I'd like someone with experience from 12 years ago to do, no offence intended.

Hyburnate · 1 Feb 2012 at 17:45

Its something you pay a PHP, HTML, CSS and Designer to do in one go as in just one person. From first hand experience designers design layouts that some things just take ages and forever to code where as someone who needs to code only designs what they are capable to do in that time window - And you know whats to do and much easier to integrate. So finding that person is the hard part.

Edit: I guess he wants payments through cards- That can be hard for unexperienced people like yourself to do.

ringo747 · 1 Feb 2012 at 17:48

Make sure he realises the importance of search engine optimization too - a nice shiny new site is all well and good but it needs to get lots of exposure for it to be a success. I know very little about SEO though but I'm sure others can help more on that front.

Van Hellseek · 2 Feb 2012 at 06:07

Creating websites for mates is usually a terrible idea in my experience.

Be prepared for him expecting a lifetime of free tech support.

sharkkk · 2 Feb 2012 at 15:18

Van Hellseek said:
Creating websites for mates is usually a terrible idea in my experience.

Be prepared for him expecting a lifetime of free tech support.

reflux · 2 Feb 2012 at 15:32

Hire a design agency tbh.

guyj · 2 Feb 2012 at 19:54

All of the previous replies are correct. There are many challenges in running a shopping cart and designing a front end that seamlessly interacts with it. Research is the name of the game to find the best package and if you feel strongly enough that you want to do it, try, you never know. BUT your friend better have a good plan of what he wants and what he's trying to achieve and realise just how much work you're going to have to put in. Artwork, Good content, product images SEO management, payment systems are all things which are key and have changed significantly in 12 years of web development. It's not an easy task, even if you take on something that already exists. Not to mention the money for purchasing stock, the economy and competition out there.

The www.mysmartypants.co.uk website/business is far from perfect, it still requires further development. I can get away with saying that as I own it. Having bought the business as a going concern its still taken a good amount of money, endless hours of time, a good and understanding web developer and crashing through some painful barriers to get it where it is now. However its worth every minute of research and development put in.

Thanks for the traffic generated from this forum entry. I had to look up why the sudden interest from this particular site. Although you could buy a bit more from us instead of just looking at the pictures. Lol. Good luck with whatever you choose to do but don't look back and regret not having a go if that's what you'd like to do. It'll be a learning experience I can tell you.