Building A Great Online Apparel Web Site – The Technical Aspects

January 11, 2009 · Posted in Business Planning, Marketing · Comments Off 

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Creative Commons License photo credit: tompalumbo

Building a great apparel web site is more than just pretty pictures and fancy Flash imageries. Believe me! I have built over 8 of them in the past 10 years. From the 1st apparel site I built myself with Microsoft FrontPage to the latest one running on ColdFusion and built by professionals, I think I could tell you a thing or 2 about the subject matter. This article deals with the “technical” aspect of it.

There are 2 approaches to building an apparel web site. One is to use a total solution provider such as Volusion, which is the best provider I found so far. They provide complete e-commerce packages that are very easy to use, can get you up and running in literally minutes. If you are selling apparel items at the retail level, this is a great way to get started. All you have to prepare are product images, product description, and pricing. Their service even handles payment processing. You do need to setup your own merchant account that links to your bank account. There is a small setup fee. Other than that, all you pay is a month fee for the service. Of course, the merchant account will incur separate fees (a monthly statement fee), and the credit card processor will charge you based on the number of transactions ($0.35 to $0.50 per transaction) and the amount being charged (~2% to 4%). This is a great way to go if you are selling to consumers who are buying no more than a few items at a time. Read more

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