like Amazon.com

[tiptip23]

I would like to launch a web site that will be like Amazon.com
My plan is to make it local.

Do you have any sites that are to be used.
If not maybe we can buy it from

http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/index.html

can someone help
Thanks

 

[vacunita]

You mean Shopping Cart scripts? If so Google PHP shopping cart and you'll get tons of hits.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[tiptip23]

Hi vacunita
Thanks for your help
I tried what you said and I think there must be at least 1 million web sites out there.
I already bought 1 shopping cart for $150 .
I was not able to sell it and I could not do anything with it.
Someone was saying build it from scrath.
For me that would take forever.
I have to find something that will be easy to configure.

 

[vacunita]

Well you'll need to narrow it down a bit. What kind of features are you looking for?

What exactly are you looking to configure?


Perhaps Squirrelcart is more what you want. though always some PHP knowledge is good to have. Still I think Squirrel cart is pretty easy to use and configure.

http://www.squirrelcart.com/php_shopping_cart.php

You can use their Demo stores to try it out for yourself.
It even has an admin panel demo so you can try out its configuration options and screens.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[tiptip23]

Hi vacunita
Thanks for your help
If you put them side by side there is a big difference.
I remember 1 customer saying that the site I presented to him was off.

http://www.amazon.com/

http://www.squirrelcart.com/demo4/

 

[tiptip23]

To build a site from scratch it's not enough to the tutorials on this site

http://www.w3schools.com/php/default.asp

 

[vacunita]

Off course they are different, Amazon's shopping cart was developed by themselves with Professional web developers spending hours on it and doing upgrades etc..

Although I'm sure you could restructure a Shopping cart script to look more like Amazon, I don't think you are going to find one that exactly mimics Amazon.

The look of the Shopping cart can be modified, using CSS and HTML, but you'd need to know a bit about both to get into the shopping cart pages and modify them.








----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[tiptip23]

Hi vacunita
CSS and HTML
I know these
I had a php specialist tutor me on php
This guy was very good on this subject.
But he went to school.
I don't think you can learn that from the tutorials on the internet

 

[jpadie]

i suggest that you draw up a proper requirement specification. start with business level requirements and then trace from those in to the functional and non-functional levels (making sure that there is always a correlation from a functional requirement to a business requirement) and then advertise on rentacoder.com. you do not have the skill set (it seems) to understand a complex application like a shopping cart, so pay someone to use their expertise to build you what you want.

 

[tiptip23]

Hi jpadie
Thanks for your reply.
rentacoder.com
is a good idea sometimes people there have ready programs and you can you those as they are.
But what do you do when it comes to security issues.
You can't trust a total stranger that lives in a far country.

 

[Foamcow]

Have you thought of asking Amazon to let you have a copy their code?

Seriously, as jpadie said, it seems that you don't have the necessary skillset to develop something of the magnitude of Amazon. It's a bespoke system and has had [em]years[/em] of custom development by [em]many[/em] professional web developers.

What's more, they have carefully planned out what their app needs to do and designed it from the ground up and considered the performance, security and hardware requirements.

You need to plan your project then seek a professional developer or developers to build it from scratch. Rentacoder.com gives you quick and easy access to these people for knockdown prices. You do need to be careful though and select your coder(s) carefully and use contracts.

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<honk>*:O)</honk>

Tyres: Mine's a pint of the black stuff.
Mike: You can't drink a pint of Bovril.

 

[tiptip23]

Hi Foamcow

"Amazon to let you have a copy their code"If I could do that it would be fantastic,I could pay them a part of the profit I make.
But how can you make adeal with them
Who do you contact ,they don't even have a contact us link,

http://www.amazon.com/Careers-University-Recruiting/b?ie=UTF8&node=203348011

This is 1 page I thought could lead to something.

Even if you find the right person to contact they are not going to be intrested.



"select your coder(s) carefully and use contracts"
I think the security isuee is something you have to have done locally

 

[lgarner]

You didn't notice the smiling emoticon in the previous post. That was completly facetious.

Amazon certainly will not share their code with you. The reason that they are successful is because of their code and the website that they've created. They have put millions of dollars into its development.

Zencart is another that is supposedly pretty easy to configure. There's a module for Joomla called VirtueMart. These are both free to try out. Zencart has links to actual sites that are using it so you can see how it could look.

Whatever you choose, you will have to customize it to make it unique and attractive. The out-of-the-box demo like Squirrelcart's won't impress anyone.

 

[roo0047]

http://www.phpcart.com/

 

[tiptip23]

Hi lgarner

I know that a big company like Amazaon is not going to associate with me,but it's their loss.
Because they could be selling much more if they had small braches in each city and town of the every major Country they do business in.
Anyway nobody can change anything in this world.
They will realize it 1 day and then it will be too late.
"Whatever you choose, you will have to customize"
That is for sure.
I already bought template shopping cart and it did not attract people.
I thought it looked good ,but nobody liked it.
Thanks for your reply

 

[tiptip23]

Hi roo0047
I visted that site and I could not find a demo site to look at.
Thanks

 

[jpadie]

there are a whole bunch of demo sites available. just select product demo from the bottom right select box.

 

[Foamcow]

http://www.tradingeye.com/

is supposed to be quite good.

You could also look at hosted solutions like

http://www.shopify.com/

I know that a big company like Amazaon is not going to associate with me,but it's their loss

I think they'll manage.

You could, of course, use Amazon to sell your goods.

You say that you bought a template and people didn't like it. What are you basing that on? Lack of sales?
How did you market your site? What was the benefit to the shopper in shopping at your site? Why would they trust you?

Building and running a successful e-commerce site is a major undertaking. It's not a case of "build it and they will come". You need to sink alot of time, energy and money into marketing both online and offline. It's generally nothing to do with how the shop looks, so long as people can find what they want. There are plenty of successful, pig ugly, e-commerce sites out there. Personally I think things should look good and work well but I've learnt that this isn't absolutely critical with e-commerce, odd but true. Far more important is trust, order fulfilment and customer service.

Were you aware that Amazon only began to turn a profit a couple of years ago, they had been running at a loss up to that point.

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<honk>*:O)</honk>

Tyres: Mine's a pint of the black stuff.
Mike: You can't drink a pint of Bovril.

 

[tiptip23]

Hi Foamcow
Thanks for those 2 links but I think I am going to use the template site I bought about 1 year ago.
I already paid $150
It looks a bit like the ones that you sent me.

I didn't officially launch this site
I showed to some businesses so that I could use it for their business.

"How did you market your site?" I did not do any marketing just the times I showed it to individual businesses.

"What was the benefit to the shopper in shopping at your site? Why would they trust you?"
These are important points,I can emphasize on them

"Far more important is trust, order fulfilment and customer service."
I agree with you there

Whenever a company get too big ,their expenses get unmanagable, it also enjoys the power of being big to make bulk orders for things and getting a work force that is the top of the line.
This is something for us to learn from.
With us we don't have to worry about those things.

 

[Foamcow]

Whenever a company get too big ,their expenses get unmanagable,

That's absolutely not true. Sorry. There are plenty of large, huge, enormous businesses out there that get along just fine. My Amazon example was to show that even a huge operation such as Amazon needs to invest a lot of time and money in order to build a brand and a business.

So long as your bottom lines allow you to generate a profit, i.e. your income is bigger than your outgoings then it's working. Amazon used their capital to increase brand awareness and increase the scale and efficiency of their business. They are all about volume, hence the name Amazon - a river of stuff delivered to your door.

You say you paid $150. At the rates I charge that would get you about 3 hours work. Not much at all. I've done XHTML/CSS templating work for US clients (via Rentacoder) for $400 a hit. So $150 is nothing when you consider your goal of replicating Amazon. The lowest cost e-commerce site I've built was using Zencart and I think I charged about $1400 for that, maybe a little more.

It sounds like you are wanting to build an e-commerce site for local businesses that don't have an online store themselves? Is that correct? If so then is the reason they don't have a store that they don't want one? What about using Amazon Z-Shops? If your idea is for local businesses to sell to local people then what stops the people just going to the "bricks and mortar" store in the first place?

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<honk>*:O)</honk>

Tyres: Mine's a pint of the black stuff.
Mike: You can't drink a pint of Bovril.