We want to put about 400 products online and we're not sure where to start. We have been told we can add a shopping cart script to our existing website, and another developer told us we should just go with a shopping cart catalog system, separate from our website. What is the best approach?

An ecommerce system, which combines a shopping cart, a product catalog system, and an administration system for managing your online purchases and adding new products, is usually the best solution.

While you can use scripts to add to your current website, this aproach is just not practical when you have hundreds of products.

Other considerations are search engine optimization. A complete ecommerce system will allow you to have individual product pages with meta tags for each product and category grouping.

Your current website can simply link to the new ecommerce system once it is in place and can be customized so it has a similar look.

Tips:

• Determine the number of products you will need to launch the website with and the number of product images you will need for each product.
• Determine what your project budget range will be before talking to potential web developers.
• Consider scaling back on your website project initially, then add additional categories and product pages after the website has been launched.
• Let your website developer know if you can assist with product image resizing or if you expect your website resource to do all of the website work.
• Review several websites that have the features or look and feel you like so you can share the website URLs with prospective website developers.
• Use a shopping cart catalog system that has SEO built in.
• Review online demos of the system before making a decision to go with the recommendations of your website developer.
• Be realistic about what work in the website is appropriate for you.

Additional Information:

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