Hi everyone!

I am in the final stages of my website development and I find myself at a crossroads. Since the site is now completely built I am ready to add all of my online products to the site in order to start selling online. I am going to sell cookbooks, appliances and software. What I CANNOT find is a good content management program that will help me add and organize all of my products. It seems that a program DOES NOT EXIST that will allow me to incorporate my products into my existing website. The only programs available seem to add a shopping cart w/ products in another place- and it cannot be incorporated into the current look and feel of my site. Is there a program which generates product code that I can insert into my existing site? Every website I go to that sells online seems to have mastered this process but I do not know where to begin!

Any help ANYONE can offer would be more than appreciated.

Thanks. :)

You can view my site at www.letstalkchef.com to get the gist of what I am going for. Thanks.

You can keep your Blue Voda design and layout theme and simply implement a PayPal functionality, either as a free version (where customers process payments on the secured PayPal site), or with another PayPal level of service that would allow you to transact business completely on your site (which would require converting your VodaHost account to a Dedicated IP with a SSL installed). Either way, consumers are pretty accepting of PayPal in either format (even going off your site to pay and then returning), but this is the only way to keep your site 100% BV and within your total control.

You could install some of the other cart systems that are seemingly commonly suggested here in VT to install onto your BV site, such as MALs Cart and others, but invariably you might find these either crude or limiting. Up to you. These too, will need to incorporate a payment method, and although they also offer PayPal as an option, I personally see using one of these carts as complete redundancy: why choose on of these systems if they are funky to begin with and then have to deal with setting up a payment solution when PayPal offers everything pre-integrated already?

The next step up in the logic is to choose to go to a fully capable "Cart" istself, with the hope of retaining as much design and formatting control as possible, without having to undertake a huge learning curve on top of things (now that you have the hang of BV, learning another system will invariably be an undertaking, yes?). And, the first step up this 'cart ladder' would be Soholaunch, as it can do everything you expect a cart to do, has easy payment setup (PayPal included), and has more opportunity to re-configure the look and feel to more closely resemble what you have already laid out in BV.
* To go the extra mile, you can actually get with a Soho-Pro to totally convert your BV layout into a custom-made Soho template --- and I mean a total clone type of template --- which few are capable of actually doing, but is not as expensive as you might first guess (from personal experience, I would think between $75-125, which is actually less than a Premium Template for osCommerce or some of the others!). There is only one person I would recommend for this, and that is Ben at TemplateZapper.com (one of the very few Authorized Soho Providers).
Seems his site is been hung up for a few days, but worth the effort getting in touch with him exclusively!

Beyond that, you need to explore other carts, such as osCommerce, ZEN, Cube, or even phpCoin (all of which are Free, and in Fantastico in your VH cPanel).

Keep in mind, however, that for ANY cart or system you decide on using, you will need to prepare your products/items/offers for "loading" into a format, and for the most part that means simply listing all the attributes and info into Excel, to give it some basic format, right? Even if the cart prefers a CSL or CSV file, these can be created simply by saving your Excel "Master" file as that extension .... point being that using Excel to prepare your data is really all you need to do to keep your stuff organized and "actionable" and in a format able to be incorporated in a "cart" as well as remain compatible with Quickbooks too, and this being the all-around basic foundation, there is no reason to think this would be a "compromise" for your getting things squared up and still be able to use PayPal in the simplest format, right?

Really, it's just a matter of how complicated you want to be, and how you foresee yourself being able to manage your setup. If you enjoy things being 100% in your control in BV and don't mind the time required to manually lay out your product and buttons with code, then I suggest the simple PayPal method as the best choice. And, if you want a more capable technology that may or may not require more effort from you to manage, and still keep your BV look (if not entirely, then with the most preserved) I would nudge you to going Soholuanch and getting with Ben at TemplateZapper.com to do you a totally custom template and then learning how to do everything yourself on the back end.

That is my take on things.....and after a couple years answering others and doing my own stuff, this is the soundest advice out there, I believe, that is not all "blah-blah-blah" or trying to sell something on the side or pretending to be some sort of "Guru" unjustifiably!

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My Websites... VodaHost Support....Soholaunch Support....osCommerce Support

Thank you very much for your response. Frop your suggestion I have contacted Ben at TemplateZapper.com and am awaiting a quote on the project. My next question stems from product integration. How do I use Excel to enter product information. Do I need to create a product template through Excel and then alter that template for each new product? Also, what is the process for saving the Excel file so it is usable within BlueVoda for publishing to the web?

Thank you very much for you help. It is beyond much appreciated!

Joe

Be sure to get Ben's recommendation for a "Cart Manager," which basically will allow you to load in bulk products and other data files (Excel formatted) at the click of a button: he might be able to include an add-on in your build that will do the same thing as a software title (they are all very, very affordable).

The software will instruct you on how to format your Excel files based on your Category and sub-category set up established in your Template/site design.

It's quite simple, actually, and once you are exposed to the overall logic, it becomes clear on how to accomplish more than initially seen.....no need to overthink things or over-complicate the process that has already been proven successful....

Based on your last post, there seems to be something of a confusion: if you are getting with Ben to do a custom template for Soholaunch (to have the exact look you created in BV to "skin" a Soho cart with), why are you asking about using Excel files in Blue Voda? Soholaunch will become your foundation, your cart, and BV will no longer be usabale, right?