Uhmm...I dont really know where to start but with a simple explination that goes pretty much like this...
I am a web designer, trying to start up my own company at the moment. I already have clients in Ireland and England and South Africa. I have studied BTech-IT, Software development at TUT before this as well as a Web design course at CTU. The reason I have taken this course, is because web design is fun, awesome, the best thing ever, more a paying hobby than anything else, and I couldn't imagine doing anything else to be honest, but mostly, because trade over the internet is already, but lets rather use the words "beginning to" become the next big thing of our life times.
I am a tiny bit confused still after going through all the documentation, links, tips etc... that we have been given so far with this course. I would have thaught that an online shop, is coding, and coding only, with some prebuilt scripts to use on your own designed site.
After following the first few steps given to us in our tutorial letters on ecommerce, it seems now that an online shop is rather Software, a package that you can edit to suit your own product needs, pricing, country, language, currency etc.. etc... etc...
I would have thaught it would be coding, or scripts that you can apply to your own designs, instead of altering the "looks" of this ecommerse software. Now I'd wanna keep this a "off topic" discussion to avoid clashing our busy days with our course, but is there any person out there that is also a web designer, doing this full or part time that knows how the basics works? Probably a stupid question seeing that this is a "basic introduction to ecommerce" course.
What i mean by "BASICS"...Can you edit ecommerce software (osCommerce used in out course for example) to look 100% like you designed the whole site..have your own HOME, ABOUT, PRODUCTS etc... sections and implement just the shopping cart, tweaking the looks to fit the rest of your site. OR do you have to chose whatever ecommerce software solution you want that would work best for you.
I have already looked into the site stucture, theres one stylesheet that i found that basically controls the whole look of the site. But it seems a bit hard to design around software, rather than making software fit YOUR site??
So basically, my question would be this:
Does an ecommerce site, involve the same steps as any other normal one would apart from the ecommerce software packages available.
(Im talking noob language so bare with me)
NORMAL SITE
1) Get a client (haha)
2) Design logo / corporate identity (if needed)
3) Buy domain name and hosting space
4) Design their site
5) Test discuss and all the yucky parts the website ( i know this happens more often than just once)
6) Upload your site to your hosting space and point to domain name (I know this is done automatically but im talking noob language)
ECOMMERCE SITE
1) Get a client
2) Design logo / corporate identity (if needed)
3) Buy domain name and hosting space
4) Get ecommerce software and tweak looks so it looks like you designed it???? (this is the main question mark really)
5) Test discuss and all the yucky parts the website (again i know this happens more often than just once)
6) Install the software package on your hosting server and upload all files??
I know there are different kinds of ecommerce software available, but this is the first time if seen the works of it (or the backend). But i have however seen it work in the practical world on numerous sites, just like everone else. And thats exactly why after looking at osCommerse, i dont really understand where the design part comes in. Its really easy to create all your products, or saving some reading time here, it seems easy to populate ur database. But it seems complicated to design the site to your clients liking.
Im listing a site here that i designed for a client in Ireland, and by this I hope to make my question bit more clear. This osCommerce software wont look anything like my clients site, even if i tweak a few images here and there, and i would need to edit the whole stylesheet to make it look even remotely close to my design.
http://www.conversemodels.co.uk/
This client obviously wont sell his models lol, but if i had to implement ecommerce software on this site, would i need to get specific type of ecommerce software design from scratch, or would it be possible to use osCommerce or any other available package for that matter and tweak it to fit my ALREADY DESIGNED site??
Or am I totally missing the bus :s?