1Luciano Posted January 16, 2016 Share Posted January 16, 2016 Hello All! Just want to share with you few of my stumbling block during my journey in this eCommerce business. I bought my domain + hosting plan with Godaddy and I'm quiet pleased with the purchase as they are always ready to answer all of my little questions and help solved problems I've encountered in the course of setting up my website,.security,domain etc... Anyhow, I was looking for a template for my website and I had a perfect Idea of how I wanted my website to look like and I was certain that there's surely a template out there that could match a least what I had in mind, I put aside $100 for a template and was ready to go a little higher like say, $150 If it matches my dream template'... I spent about 2 days surfing and searching for a template, Unfortunately I came across an Opencart youtube video that lead me to a search for another template that lead me to yet another template called Templatemela. Templatemela was put together by some guys in India, (Well I didn't know that ) On picture Templatemela looked like one of those delicious pizza commercials on tv until you bought it. Everything will Un-install when you make a one tiny changes to a page ....the code was hard to understand and if you delete the demo that came with the template the whole page looks like you're staring at a blank white background..which means that you have to work around the demo by uploading your photo in one column before making any further changes. I will spend hours on end trying to get hold of the template guys but wouldn't get any respond till sometime around 2am Canada time...then I realized from their IP that the are actually in India! ha! Wished I knew that before. But anyhow, I will spend the next hr emailing back and forth with them because they have no other way of communication except by email... They said "no we installed the template for you on 2 other occassion now we're going to charge you $40 to reinstall it again"! ...I said wtf did you just say? ...I cannot Install your template and when I googled for solutions apparently there's not a soul has ever used their template ...I was furious! Two days went by they finally agreed to install it for the last time or I will have to pay them $40. I agreed. They installed it again and I was trying to ask them if it was a bug or what should I do to prevent it from uninstalling? Again...No response. for the third time the template kept installing.... I've spent 3 weeks on the damn template getting angry and investing huge amount of hours and sleepless night on something I should have not bought. Finally, I said,phuq It! ..I deleted the entire database with the opencart etc... and got hold of sweet sweet PrestaShop ! I'm new to Prestashop but I LOVE IT! ....my question is, how long did it take you to finally build your online shop with prestashop? at what point can you say, Ok I'm going Live? Thanks for reading.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SupportPS Posted January 16, 2016 Share Posted January 16, 2016 Hello. There are two ways to start:1. Use PrestaShop Cloud. 2. Use a separate hosting to install PrestaShop.To do this you need:1. All free. Only if you need the new theme and modules, you must buy them. Buy may only on addons.prestashop.com 2. You pay for:hosting: about 7-12 dollars per monthdomain name for the shop: 8-16 dollars a year.services for the installation of the shop, if you are not able to install: 30-60 dollars.theme and modules, if they are needed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1Luciano Posted January 17, 2016 Author Share Posted January 17, 2016 Hello. There are two ways to start: 1. Use PrestaShop Cloud. 2. Use a separate hosting to install PrestaShop. To do this you need: 1. All free. Only if you need the new theme and modules, you must buy them. Buy may only on addons.prestashop.com 2. You pay for: hosting: about 7-12 dollars per month domain name for the shop: 8-16 dollars a year. services for the installation of the shop, if you are not able to install: 30-60 dollars. theme and modules, if they are needed. Thanks for your response. I've already Installed PS and in a gradual process of populating it with products I'm going to sell...I was just wondering how long it takes for others to go Live online with their store. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simonas Invertus Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 I could say an hour but you would call me a liar. To set up PrestaShop is easy. If you use default template which is not pretty, you do not need to waste time for looking and installing. Most templates even the best ones usually do not work out of the box. You need to change logo, add your own menu, category pics, banners. It takes time. I also had bad experience with theme support. Basically you write to them like this: "If you will not do this I will ask for refund" In my experience this was the only way to make them work and we wrote back and forth for... I guess two weeks or so... You also need to uploads products, that takes time depending on how many products you have. So, to sum up: You can set up a small shop with out template in a day. But if you want a template the time will extend. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PrestaHeroes USA Posted January 22, 2016 Share Posted January 22, 2016 (edited) I could say an hour but you would call me a liar. To set up PrestaShop is easy. If you use default template which is not pretty, you do not need to waste time for looking and installing. Most templates even the best ones usually do not work out of the box. You need to change logo, add your own menu, category pics, banners. It takes time. I also had bad experience with theme support. Basically you write to them like this: "If you will not do this I will ask for refund" In my experience this was the only way to make them work and we wrote back and forth for... I guess two weeks or so... You also need to uploads products, that takes time depending on how many products you have. So, to sum up: You can set up a small shop with out template in a day. But if you want a template the time will extend. well said! (bravo! we don't often get sage advice on how to start out...outstanding post of the year) Focus focus focus on buidling catalog...use default theme...get the categories/products/shipping/payment all working...then think of a logo... to often (we all do it at times) is think of how it looks over what we are to present... then you will be up and ready in short order and can then look at feel of front office...until then ignore it... happy day, el motivational music Edited January 22, 2016 by El Patron (see edit history) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caygri Posted January 24, 2016 Share Posted January 24, 2016 all depends about how spoonsorized your shop! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1Luciano Posted February 18, 2016 Author Share Posted February 18, 2016 (edited) Those who had the opportunity to see my online-shop said it's time for me to go LIVE... however I feel there's more work to be done.,each time I added a product Image, it feels like it was the last one thing I'm going before launching but I personally would like to have about 200 product pictures which is about 20 pictures per category.. and if you think about it... one need to have a huge amount of time on their hands in other for them to be able to launch their website within a week after installing your first Prestashop or templates... Like I said before in my previous topic, I would to have customers enjoy viewing at my website for at least half an hr. I'd like them to have a reason to stay on my website for a long long time.... I've seen people rushing to to launch their store and excuse my choice of word, the website looks boring! ..no styles no color balance just a simple boring website! All I'm using is just Prestashop but I've mastered a way to create a balance and perfection to make my cheap website look expensive .... Thanks for reading Edited February 18, 2016 by 1Luciano (see edit history) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 don't wait too much too, otherwise you'll never get anything online.. or the design and technoloy will be out of date so much you can always improve it when it's online already, by little touch here and there and add more product everyday. Aso, consider that google index / scrawl your website and it takes time for him to do the job properly, the age of your website is also in count, and google bots don't look at design... And last thing for design, if you look at it too much you'll be borred with some time and would like to change it even before having beeing seen by customers, this is no productive behaviour too, like for all things in life : try to find the middle path Good luck for you ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simonas Invertus Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 Like I said before in my previous topic, I would to have customers enjoy viewing at my website for at least half an hr. I'd like them to have a reason to stay on my website for a long long time.... I am sorry, do you get paid for views or for selling an item? Its not an art gallery you are making, but online shop. The faster you start the faster you will get your first sale. Usual time span of internet user is 30s, only sites like facebook, google get an hour. You should be happy if you get 2 minutes and if you get 10 you should thought a party to all your neighbors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1Luciano Posted February 20, 2016 Author Share Posted February 20, 2016 I am sorry, do you get paid for views or for selling an item? Its not an art gallery you are making, but online shop. The faster you start the faster you will get your first sale. Usual time span of internet user is 30s, only sites like facebook, google get an hour. You should be happy if you get 2 minutes and if you get 10 you should thought a party to all your neighbors. I totally disagreed that the longest time a buyer stays on a well constructed website is 30 sec. I'm not build a facebook 2.0 ! I'm selling apparels.... and I can assure you that once I'm satisfied with my final set up and arrangement and post the websites URL for PS users to pass their remarks, most people will be surprised that I did not use ANY templates... Like I said before my friend, I'm not in a rush to finish my website, it's a slow and a very small pace at a time but I'm almost finished. My goal once again is to make sure anyone who visited my website to not rush out... It gotta be real and Interesting kinda place! .... I have faith in what I'm doing... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulfirth Posted February 20, 2016 Share Posted February 20, 2016 For me it's actually taken 12 months of off and on work. I know, that's far, far too long! My site is for my wholesale customers to view products and place orders. Many of these customers have been trading with me for many years so I didn't want to upset them with a rubbish site. I suppose I was being a bit of a perfectionist when creating it. I've purchased a theme then added images and CMS pages plus a few extra modules to make my site work with my products and how my customers will want to place orders. Time wise it hasn't helped that my business is very seasonal - Spring and Autumn are incredibly busy so there's no time to work on the website. Another problem I faced was when I had 80% completed and a new version of Prestashop was brought out. I thought it to be a good idea to update and duly did so. This resulted in my theme and various modules not working and having to update these also. Getting the theme and module guys to work this out took two weeks. I suppose the most time consuming parts have been: learning how the different parts of the back office work and getting them to do what I want. writing the CMS pages. creating images in Photoshop for the home page photographing all my different products. experimenting with CSV import to add products to the shop - new products are added twice weekly so I needed a quick method to do this. testing out the shop as a customer - really, really important to try out every aspect of the shop including emails received by customers. tweaking the translations so that everything looks how I want it (not too American for my UK customers!). This took a long time to go through each email and PDF, changing things like "tax" to "VAT"; "billing" to "invoicing"; "shipping" to "delivery". Finally pressed the ENABLE button yesterday, now I need to find out what my customer think. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1Luciano Posted February 22, 2016 Author Share Posted February 22, 2016 Hi Paulfirth, I'm always ready for new Ideas. I like some of the things you did,like Photographing all my different products, Experimenting with CSV import to add products to the shop, Changing "tax" to "VAT"; "billing" to "invoicing"; "shipping" to "delivery... I'm not REALLY sure If I know how to use the CVS Import to add products. I would L.O.V.E to know how to do that, I've youtubed a few video on that topic but the guy who made the video played music in the background and didn't really do any talking. Whenever you have the time, would you please lend me 5 minutes of your by giving out five details of what I need to do? Thanks mate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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