With any site, it has to be hosted somewhere. Usually the options are local Australian hosting, or Overseas hosting.

To sum up the benefits of each, overseas hosting is cheaper, and Australian based hosting has faster response times, it’s a balance really. You can start with overseas hosting, and as your business grows, move to Australian based hosting, but really, I recommend making the additional outlay for hosting locally. A faster more responsive site seems that bit more professional.

The main aim of your site, is to push your product, and having a site that is professional, gives your customers confidence. Having a consistant and clean look to your site, which is easy on the eye and quick to navigate, is one of the main factors in increasing sales.

If you are looking at doing online e-commerce, there’s a myriad of options for payment methods, and they can get quite expensive, especially when wanting to do credit card transactions. You might want to start with direct debit and money orders, then PayPal, Paymate or other merchant gateways, or if cashed up, look at real time Credit card transactions. Most popular shopping cart software handles all these. Always talk to your bank about what they recommend if wanting to do credit card transactions, it’s usually not cheap. (NAB are actually quite good, and will even help do the work of making the software connections to the bank for you! e-path.com.au and www.directone.com.au to name a few integrate with oscommerce and zen-cart, linked below, there are too many options to mention them all!)

There’s two types of software for shopping carts, commercial and opensource software. Commercial software you pay for the software itself, and are locked in to working within the providers framework of costs for additions and changes. Free Opensource software is an extremely viable alternative, and because anyone can view and change the code, with thousands of people contributing to it, you can both install and manage changes yourself, hugely cutting costs. If you really need help with installation or changes, any web site developer worth their salt, should be able to do so. Therefore, you can really find and bargain over costs in this regard, the bargaining power is back in your hands.

Before I get to far into it, I’ll just say, that your best option is to get hosting that comes with an opensource shopping cart. You will be paying roughly $120-$600 per year, depending on the setup integration already done. That’s not really bad is it? :)

If your current hosting account has a ‘database’ allowed, you just need to install the software, and your set to go!

here’s some options to look at to get you started :

http://www.magentocommerce.com
http://www.zen-cart.com
http://www.oscommerce.com
http://www.opencart.com
http://www.ubercart.org
http://www.cubecart.com (version3 is free, the latest version supported costs money)

Even if you don’t use a cart, and especially if you don’t use a cart, you have to make sure your site is built correctly. Some small things can make a huge difference when it comes to things like Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

Make sure you have ‘Title’ attributes on all your pages, search engines read the title and structural names of parts of a site as well as the content.

Make sure your images are as small in file size as possible, only have large images if you need to show detail, and I recommend that you link from a smaller thumbnail image to the full image if you do need to, thus lowering the time it takes for pages to load, but allowing those interested to see more if they wish.

‘Copy’ is the text on a page. This is what search engines see, and the main thing they use for returning results to those searching the web. Make sure you use the same terminology on your pages that people will use to search for it. Make your pages small in size, large pages are hard to read, and usually aren’t.

Keep your navigation to a minimum. Research shows that pages with more than 7 links slow people down in trying to navigate, and seem crowded. People browse fast, and you want people to find what they are after, quickly and easily. Farm people off into various areas as quick as possible. Small navigation listings gives people a sense of cleanliness and professionalism.

All in all, it’s relatively cheap to get started in a professional way. Let’s sum up :

1/ Look for adequate hosting, that allows a database, or better yet, has an integrated option of shopping cart ($120 to $600 per annum)

2/ Go for a free opensource software shopping solution. You can always get help if you need it they are very well documented, and searches on the web for your problem find free answers, or ways to get free answers, like forums for the product. Worst comes to worst, you can talk to most web developers, and find the cheapest option, for them to install for you, or fix your problem.

3/ Look at the types of transactions you want to do before choosing an option, make sure with your bank, that things will work. Better yet, ask for their recommendation for a free opensource shopping cart, if wishing to do credit card transactions.

4/ Make sure the content, titles and images of your page have your attention. Use the words that people will search for, in your ‘copy’ or text of your pages, and keep your file sizes and pages as small with good text as possible.

The above should get you started, feel free to comment below to help improve this resource for all.