Web Designer wanting to delve into e-commerce

[irisheyes4]

I have been designing websites (boutique and information mainly) for about 2 1/2 years now and don't know the first avenue I should take for delving into designing and creating e-commerce sites. I have no real html or code experience. I love what I am doing now, but would like to do the e-commerce sites. (I use Dreamweaver for my sites).

Would it be advisable to purchase an e-commerce shopping cart software program and just hire an outside design firm to do all of my e-commerce projects.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Charlene

[flood6]

It's funny because I went through this in reverse: I was an eCommerce site owner who got into web development.

This is not meant to sound snide, but I'm really curious: How can you design websites for 2.5 years and not know html? Even using Dreamweaver, it seems like html would have "worn off" on you in that time...

Anyway, if you already have a grasp of web development, I would suggest doing the eCommerce site yourself. You'll learn things fast enough.

I use osCommerce (http://www.oscommerce.com) for eCommerce sites. It's an opensource shopping cart and once you get the hang of it, you'll never use anything else. Great support community and scripts available to make it do whatever you want.

The bad news is that osCommerce takes some learning and patience. You'll have to learn at least a little html, php, and mySQL. The money you'll save doing this yourself instead of outsourcing it will be tremendous. Not to mention the fact that you will be able to use these skills in your web design projects.

[irisheyes4]

This is not meant to sound snide, but I'm really curious: How can you design websites for 2.5 years and not know html? Even using Dreamweaver, it seems like html would have "worn off" on you in that time...

I know some html only because I have had to look at the code from time to time, but what I mean is I could never write a site in just code.

I have heard a lot about oscommerce so I will have to try it eventually. I must admit I am a little nervous about it since I know once I do that I will have to write things like reports for my clients on their sales and all that jazz and I have no clue.

I really have to think this one over. Thanks for your input. It helps

[crashingflwrgrl]

There is already a wealth of information about this at your previous post entitled: Monster Commerce.