Simple e-commerce setup for a new site

[afieldoutback90]

I am working with someone who has a couple of e-commerce sites (he himself has no great developing knowledge). He now has a new site that we are designing/developing (albeit slowly) and wishes to start afresh with a simple e-commerce site. I do not have a great knowledge of developing and am trying to research whether we can set up the site with a "free" e-commerce functionality. The site owner has Paypal and Worldpay accounts and we know we could put links and coded buttons for those payment methods. However we would like to make the site fully functional with a cart/basket to add several products. Initially there would be low volume sales and could begin with one or two sales per day or even per week.

Here is a comparison table that I found:
http://www.templatemonster.com/help/e-commerce-comparison-table/

So at this stage I am getting information overload.

My thoughts are; can we set up the site with no cost initially (we could upgrade to a higher cost service if sales increase) and who would be the best provider? Also what would the limitations be with a free service? And, Which is the simplest service?

I went to the http://www.oscommerce.com/Products site (as a first example) and identified that you can download the product; but thought is this really for free when you get further down the line of development.

I hope someone can offer some advice based on experience, bearing in mind I am new to e-commerce.

Thanks.

 

[essellar]

Yes, osCommerce is free (both as in gratis and as in libre). It's not one of those "freemium" deals where you start out free and have to pay later when you've reached a certain limit/level. (It's also horribly-written software that puts out some of the worst HtmL I've seen in many a long year, but that's besides the point.)

If you search for "free php ecommerce script" on Google, you'll find a number of scripts you can use that are and always will be free to use. Look for one that comes closest to having the features and appearance (or theme) you want. As long as it does what you want and works with your payment processor, you'll be okay.

 

[afieldoutback90]

Thanks Essellar or is that essellar? Good advice there but I wondered if you or anyone had a particular favourite ecommerce provider, based on simplicity? I have just looked more at the options on cPanel and have been reviewing the Softaculous demos and apps. Again this is a very steep learning curve but nevertheless one I want to learn (as it is 2012).

I am also not sure whether to continue building the site and content; before fully researching and implementing the ecommerce script? Am I causing more work when I could prepare more beforehand? Also , I can't find any step by step tutorials for this process!

Thanks all.