Dazed and confused

[Milansmarket]

Total Newbie here.

 

I recently secured a domain name and I'm working on building the site, its for my Bakery but I have to say I am completely overwhelmed by everything I have read here on the site. All I want to do is have people be able to order form my site and pay from my site. Maybe I'M not at the right site??? This osCommerce came with my site through IX.. Perhaps I just do not have an adequate understanding of how a commerce site is structured. I think there is my website and on it there are my products people can choose and then pay for. Am I correct in assuming that os is for all of the "what happens when you click on a buy this or add this to your cart button"? and a company like pay pal handel's the financial aspect of the transaction?

 

I read the Pay pal information and I understand it to say if I do not have someone like os I can use them for everything is this correct and if so why go through all of the (what it seems like to me because I do not understand it) hassel of setting up os...

 

I consider my self rather intelligent but I guess I just need some place to start to understand how the whole ordering from my site really works. If anyone not laughing too hard to type can help me I would appreciate it.

 

Thank you

J.

[Guest]

Total Newbie here.

 

I recently secured a domain name and I'm working on building the site, its for my Bakery but I have to say I am completely overwhelmed by everything I have read here on the site. All I want to do is have people be able to order form my site and pay from my site. Maybe I'M not at the right site??? This osCommerce came with my site through IX.. Perhaps I just do not have an adequate understanding of how a commerce site is structured. I think there is my website and on it there are my products people can choose and then pay for. Am I correct in assuming that os is for all of the "what happens when you click on a buy this or add this to your cart button"? and a company like pay pal handel's the financial aspect of the transaction?

 

I read the Pay pal information and I understand it to say if I do not have someone like os I can use them for everything is this correct and if so why go through all of the (what it seems like to me because I do not understand it) hassel of setting up os...

 

I consider my self rather intelligent but I guess I just need some place to start to understand how the whole ordering from my site really works. If anyone not laughing too hard to type can help me I would appreciate it.

 

Thank you

J.

 

The PayPal solution works extremely well ... in a limited way. OSC can mark an item as not in stock. If you only baked 100 loaves but, after selling 16 of them you got an order for 150, PayPal would accept the order. That is enough to turn a great day into an unmitigated disaster.

 

PayPal requires that you manually access and insert a payment code for each item you are offering to sell. Can you really afford to spend 10 minutes listing each loaf of bread?

 

In its earlier days, PayPal had a rough and rocky reputation. While many people do not recall much in the way of specifics, they recall the general sense of the reputation. Thus, you could lose sales just for that reason, totally unrelated to how they conduct business today or to the value of the merchandise you sell.

 

I use them. I like to offer my customers choices. And they are nice to have handy while trying to sort out the workings of OSC.

 

But (when things are working right) OSC will let me add a product for about than 5 minutes work (including the steps necessary to prepare a photo for use). It will also decrement my one-of-a-kind inventory automatically. No overselling of one-of-a-kind handmade artwork.

 

BTW, I have an I.Q. in the low stratosphere. But NOBODY (no human, anyways) is an expert on everything. I freely admit to being confounded by the metric tonne of php coding fueling OSC. But I'm probably a better die-maker / machinist than the programmers.

 

One of the things you could do to help your understanding is to take a critical look at the buying process the next time you order online. See if you can mentally separate the different steps involved.

[Milansmarket]

Well......what was it like 23 views and only one reply?? There are either allot of confused people out there or they were all laughing too hard... Anyway thanks Bill I appreciate you taking the time to reply. I have a million questions but in the interest of time I think I'm gonna go with Pay pal for now. The website now is for the sale of a hand full of specialty cookies that are made to order and it looks like it will work for me at this time. When I start asking questions here maybe one of the moderators will start a "Basic start up questions" area. I read the post that tells you how to start the process but then it kinda leaves you hanging. I'm surprised there is not an area like this already I'm sure all the info is here perhaps someone just needs to organize it ? Well thanks again

J.

The PayPal solution works extremely well ... in a limited way. OSC can mark an item as not in stock. If you only baked 100 loaves but, after selling 16 of them you got an order for 150, PayPal would accept the order. That is enough to turn a great day into an unmitigated disaster.

 

PayPal requires that you manually access and insert a payment code for each item you are offering to sell. Can you really afford to spend 10 minutes listing each loaf of bread?

 

In its earlier days, PayPal had a rough and rocky reputation. While many people do not recall much in the way of specifics, they recall the general sense of the reputation. Thus, you could lose sales just for that reason, totally unrelated to how they conduct business today or to the value of the merchandise you sell.

 

I use them. I like to offer my customers choices. And they are nice to have handy while trying to sort out the workings of OSC.

 

But (when things are working right) OSC will let me add a product for about than 5 minutes work (including the steps necessary to prepare a photo for use). It will also decrement my one-of-a-kind inventory automatically. No overselling of one-of-a-kind handmade artwork.

 

BTW, I have an I.Q. in the low stratosphere. But NOBODY (no human, anyways) is an expert on everything. I freely admit to being confounded by the metric tonne of php coding fueling OSC. But I'm probably a better die-maker / machinist than the programmers.

 

One of the things you could do to help your understanding is to take a critical look at the buying process the next time you order online. See if you can mentally separate the different steps involved.