On line shop ...HELP!

[kitycat1666]

I have an on-line shop which is a page on my website (done myself on vistaprint) which uses paypal to process payments. As we didn't do a huge amount of business this way it's worked fine until now. I recently did a deal with one of the coupon sites for one of my products and sales have been phenominal.

Customers have go onto my website, enter their voucher code and their address and pay postage and packing via paypal. I then access the orders via my paypal account and that's where the problems start.

The main problem is printing shipping labels. There is no guidance on the site as to what size labels to use and appears to be no options to change the size. I called paypal to ask but after a fruitless conversation gave up after about 20 mins. But even if I could find this out, a lot of people are using someone elses PP account to pay but want another shipping address so it's long winded anyway and very prone to error.

What I need ideally is an ordering system which will still process via paypal but will send the information to me in some way that I can convert it to address labels and also generate confirmation emails and in an ideal world also store customer information for future mailings.

I'm thinking I probably need specialist software but I need to be able to link it into my vista website. I don''t even know where to start looking. Can anyone give me any advice? Alternatively if you know an easy way I can manage printing shipping labels on paypal any info would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Jill

 

[elliebee]

It's a wee while since I used paypal for this but am sure there is a "print shipping label" option or something similar.

It only works if you are using royal mail tho as it takes you into their website. You enter details of the package (weight, dimensions etc) and it prints off the pre-paid, addressed label on A4 paper. You can get 2 labels to each sheet of A4.

It's not ideal but was the best option available at the time

 

[kitycat1666]

Thanks, I've tried this and at least it's a bit easier on my writing hand. It's so wasteful though. At the moment I'm printing the addresses on paper and sticking them on. Wasting 3/4 of the A4 sheet. If anyone knows if there is a option to choose different label sizes please let me know.

Alternatively if anyone knows anyone who can advise me on off the shelf software for on-line ordering and dispatch plus give me some training, I'd be so grateful.

 

[WaxGirl]

I find this really interesting, would love to here more about your online shop as there's not much discussion on here around it, hope you get some reply answers, sorry I cant help!

 

[Ruth Mills]

The bad news is that you'd probably have to run the shop on a different domain to your Vistaprint website - that's because if you are not using Vistaprint's online shop system, then you'd need to use a third party system which would then need to run on a different server (unless Vistaprint provides an API [application programming interface] or other means for connecting to its online shop software to download data).

At a guess, you'd probably want something that lets you export order details in a recognised format, e.g. Microsoft Excel, or comma-separated variable format (CSV). I don't know off the top of my head of any existing e-commerce systems that will do that, but it's probably simple enough to code (e.g. do a database query for orders that have not yet been processed, then iterate through the result set and use it to generate either an Excel document or a CSV file on the fly - in Java, you'd probably want to use Apache Poi to create an Excel document, for example).

 

[WaxGirl]

Ruth - can you make any recommendations on what's best way for people like me who have no technical knowledge/ability to understand how to go about setting up online shop - ie recommend where I can go to read /to learn about it? Thank you! Your reply looks really good lol I dont get the technical stuff but looks good.

 

[Ruth Mills]

Ruth - can you make any recommendations on what's best way for people like me who have no technical knowledge/ability to understand how to go about setting up online shop - ie recommend where I can go to read /to learn about it? Thank you! Your reply looks really good lol I dont get the technical stuff but looks good.

There's a lot of choices out there, so if you have the time, it's probably best spending a bit of time on Google researching the various options - as there's a huge range of companies offering everything from fairly basic shopping sites (e.g. where each product just has a PayPal "Buy Now" button) to fully fledged e-commerce systems with proper stock control and all the bells and whistles - with a huge variation in pricing!

So, I'd start off with working out what your requirements are; e.g. PayPal is probably the cheapest and easiest payment method to set up - but from a customer's perspective, something like Sage Pay would be better, as that would just let clients enter their credit card details securely without them needing to have a PayPal account.

Then you'd need to ask yourself how many different types of products you'd be selling - and if a particular company allows you to have an unlimited number of different products in your shop, or if they limit you to a maximum number of products (or do they charge you extra if you go above a certain number of products)?

Then you'd need to consider who your target market is - are you selling retail to the general public, or are you selling professional products to trade customers only? For the latter, you'd almost certainly want trade customers to have to register with the site and log in before they are able to make purchases - you may even want them to have to log in before they see any details of the products - or perhaps to be able to see what products are on offer before they log in - but not see the prices until they log in (so that potential clients don't get the wrong idea and ask why they are paying so much for treatments if the products are so ostensibly cheap at wholesale prices - when they're forgetting that they're paying for the expertise of a qualified therapist and all the other overheads, e.g. rent on the salon, insurance, taxes, etc).

So it's definitely best to sit down and work out exactly what your requirements are before committing yourself to a particular company; also it may be worth thinking about how the company would be able to handle your requirements should they ever change, e.g. does the company just offer an "off the shelf" solution, or are they able to take on bespoke requests for changes too (i.e. do they have the technical knowledge to be able to go off and modify an existing system to meet your new requirements - how much would they charge - and what would be the timescales for the work)?

 

[angel fingers]

ruth set up an online shop for me and its really easy to manage.
i can upload my new products and prices and i get notification to my email address when an order comes through.

i am a computer dummy and ruth has made it all possible for me.

 

[WaxGirl]

wow thank you ruth amazing reply - its given me a lot to go on and a lot to think about - thank you really pleased!

 

[kitycat1666]

There's a lot of choices out there, so if you have the time, it's probably best spending a bit of time on Google researching the various options - as there's a huge range of companies offering everything from fairly basic shopping sites (e.g. where each product just has a PayPal "Buy Now" button) to fully fledged e-commerce systems with proper stock control and all the bells and whistles - with a huge variation in pricing!

So, I'd start off with working out what your requirements are; e.g. PayPal is probably the cheapest and easiest payment method to set up - but from a customer's perspective, something like Sage Pay would be better, as that would just let clients enter their credit card details securely without them needing to have a PayPal account.

Then you'd need to ask yourself how many different types of products you'd be selling - and if a particular company allows you to have an unlimited number of different products in your shop, or if they limit you to a maximum number of products (or do they charge you extra if you go above a certain number of products)?

Then you'd need to consider who your target market is - are you selling retail to the general public, or are you selling professional products to trade customers only? For the latter, you'd almost certainly want trade customers to have to register with the site and log in before they are able to make purchases - you may even want them to have to log in before they see any details of the products - or perhaps to be able to see what products are on offer before they log in - but not see the prices until they log in (so that potential clients don't get the wrong idea and ask why they are paying so much for treatments if the products are so ostensibly cheap at wholesale prices - when they're forgetting that they're paying for the expertise of a qualified therapist and all the other overheads, e.g. rent on the salon, insurance, taxes, etc).

So it's definitely best to sit down and work out exactly what your requirements are before committing yourself to a particular company; also it may be worth thinking about how the company would be able to handle your requirements should they ever change, e.g. does the company just offer an "off the shelf" solution, or are they able to take on bespoke requests for changes too (i.e. do they have the technical knowledge to be able to go off and modify an existing system to meet your new requirements - how much would they charge - and what would be the timescales for the work)?

Thanks Ruth. I consulted a couple of companies that I tracked down and the one I think I'll go with has told me the same as you - it's really useful to hear it from you though as I would probably believe whatever they tell me!

To the lady who's interested in setting up an online shop, mine worked great with vista and paypal until I started selling big volumes after doing a deal with a social network discount site. If I was still only selling small amounts then I wouldn't be looking to change as it worked well and was cheap. Hate having to spend out on this new stuff before actually getting my hands on the profits but the prospect of working into the night hand addressing envelopes doesn't appeal either so I'm sure it'll be worth it.

Jill x

 

[Ruth Mills]

Thanks Ruth. I consulted a couple of companies that I tracked down and the one I think I'll go with has told me the same as you - it's really useful to hear it from you though as I would probably believe whatever they tell me!

To the lady who's interested in setting up an online shop, mine worked great with vista and paypal until I started selling big volumes after doing a deal with a social network discount site. If I was still only selling small amounts then I wouldn't be looking to change as it worked well and was cheap. Hate having to spend out on this new stuff before actually getting my hands on the profits but the prospect of working into the night hand addressing envelopes doesn't appeal either so I'm sure it'll be worth it.

Jill x

Cool that's good, what sort of figure did they quote incidentally, and how much of that was setup costs, and how much ongoing hosting/maintenance? What was that for too, e.g. Maximum number of products, stock control features, payment methods, etc?