Ok, I am about to start a new fundraising catalog and website for my coffee biz. Actually the paper catalog is finished and all of the paperwork, but I want to build an e commerce website with information pages as well as product pages. Looking at all the things that (apps) CC offers, I am very overwhelmed.
What will I need to purchase here at CC to A. Build a site (wysiwyg) B. Have pages available for information C. I will need a shopping cart And I need hosting. Does CC offer all of this? Is the Shopping Cart Creator a hosted service? Does it have SSL certs? I'm spinning in my head from all of this...LOL.. I went to Godaddy and they have complete packages put together that kinda demystifies the whole process, but I don't want to make a fatal mistake and just jump in with Godaddy without exploring my options. Can someone please help me here before I completely crack up! Thank you! I need to start drinking decaf I think...

I can answer some of this for you

CC do hosting $14.95 per month for a shop which is ideal for a beginner to websites, shops etc as it is made very user friendly and simple to use, fantastic support from CC and you will get lots of help in the forum from other users like me.

if five static pages is adequate all you will need is SCC or SCCP (my advice is go for the pro from the outset)

If you want to edit your own design rather than use one of CC many templates you will also need SCD or SCDP

Personally i have 30+ pages to my delorean site in my signature which I used VSD (WYSIWYG) and used SCDP &SCCP for the shop, the shop design being my home page in VSD cropped and added to SCDP as header, footer, and center of page not a perfect match but it worked for an amateur like me

VSD actually comes with a free hosting account, and the ability to make and set up one complex form which integrates easily into CC hosting (hosting is called SDRIVE)

Personally i dont use CC hosting for my shop, as there are cheaper options , and my shop was set up before CC offered hosting anyway, believe me it was hard to learn and had SDRIVE been available i would have used it (it all works in goddaddy) but shop around first if you are going that rute, I for one can recommend you something cheaper and better, but again if a shop is to make you money, cheeper is not better, personally go with sdrive

Nothing built with SCCP collects data so SSL isn't necessary, clients go from the shop to your payment gateway, which then becomes SSL on their site.

I do beleive CC are incorporating SSL in the foreseable future , but cant guarantee that

Free trials are all fully functional, including upload ability to a server, so try before you buy

SCC (shoping cart creator) SCD (shopping cart designer) P = pro version better more functions better for SEO also ; VSD WYSIWYG website builder

with some help in here its possible to incorporate all smoothly

Right now the 2 main limitations to the Shopping Cart Creator/Pro software is the ability to accept coupons, digital purchase setups. If you're selling a tangible (solid not digital) item, and if discount codes/coupons are not a big deal for you right now, then this software will do you 100% proud. And they are planning to add both of those features as well as a good handful of others too in the future so it's coming at some point.

I second everything Viv said and then some lol. Definitely do the TRIAL versions to be sure they are what you need, AND definitely do the PRO versions as they are the best features available and you will need them.

@ Viv: now there is a program they could get rid of in my opinion - Basic version of SCC just like they did with SCD

Good luck on your shop and keep us posted in the other thread to share your shop with us so we can see it when it's finished

Ok, after poking around CC for a couple hours, I think I understand how CC works. I think my main concern is with the shopping cart. Viv said that when a customer pays, the information goes to my payment gateway, and that is secured with SSl. I have a brick and mortar store, and I wanted to manually enter the credit card information into my POS system. As I do with my other website. Is this available on CC shopping cart?
Also Jo Ann said it can't do coupon codes. That's a pretty basic function of most shopping carts, I wonder why it's not available? What I am doing is setting up a new chapter to my business. I published a paper product catalog for schools and sports leagues and such to sell my coffee to raise funds for their organization (and me!) Part of my program is that the school or team will be able to extend their fundraiser beyond the typical 3 week period. After the initial fundraiser is over, the participants are invited to the website to order more products, and the school or team will continue to earn a percentage off of the residual sales. I figured the easiest way to do this was to issue the school or team a unique ID number that the customer would enter at checkout. Can I create a space in my shopping cart where a customer would be able to enter an ID code and that info sent to me? Thanks for all of your help people!
Just A side note.......I already like CC better than what I saw at Godaddy. I asked their support questions and sometimes they never got sent. Don't know if this is a browser issue (chrome) but when the questions did get sent, sometimes they wouldn't answer. And they don't have a community where unpaid people look for people to help them. That is awesome! I hope CC software will work for my needs. Brian

Hiya Brian,

Unfortunately 2 things are a negative for you. First the program does not have the ability to allow for offline sales so it cannot connect with your POS system at all, it's an only online thing... BUT... it does have the ability to do a Catalog store allowing you to create a page with your own form on it (via CoffeeCup's Web Form Builder maybe or similar program) where you can setup an order system that way. The thing with this is that if you collect any payment information then you would need to get your site setup for SSI as the program itself would collect nothing at all it would only pass the information through it via the form you create. The security would need to be setup by you. Doable yes, easy probably not. If it wasn't needing to do the online sales and you were to just accept orders that they paid an invoice for then yes that could easily be done with the Form setup on a page. There's no easy answer for this though.

Second, it does not have the ability to do account setups at all. The beauty of the Shopping Cart Creator shops, is that you don't have to work with any of the customer's data (payment data) as that is all handled through the payment gateways like PayPal and Google Checkout etc. This means easier for you and easier is what CC is mostly about so that's why it was opted to go that way instead of trying to do the internal payment systems. No it's not able to do any types of logins, or discount codes (it does have a nice discount system setup per product though!) or anything like that.... BUT ...

You CAN create multiple shops on the server and use CoffeeCup's Website Access Manager to protect those directories with an ID/PW setup either globally for that directory or even assign different ones to different organizations. You can make those passwords expire and have a lot of control for who gets to view it and order on it. This would give you the ability to assign each school or organization their own ID and PW and create separate shops with different pricing for different situations. The only drawback to this is if you need the shops to manage inventory. It may get a bit harry there if you have multiple shops as the inventory would be separate for each one. But it's quite doable and many users opt to go this route to give different discounts to different levels such as Wholesale and things like that. Does work pretty slick when setup correctly with the shop and Website Access Manager programs.

The programs are simple to use (well ok I'll be the first to say the Designer took a bit of time to figure out what setting adjusted what lol, but it was fun too) and they are very functional for the most part. I think what you're going to find is the main thing that will cause you issues is the inability to use the POS system. If you can work your way around that, then these programs would probably do well for you.

Ok, well, the reason I want to manually enter the credit card info is that this business has a different name than my store, but both are under my Limited Liability Corporation. I think the best way to deal with this is to contact my credit card processing company and see if they can set it up where I can merge the two names and use the same merchant account. Merchant accounts are expensive and I don't want to pay double fees. I would love to not have to manually enter the credit card info. Would save me a lot of time, and I would get a better transaction rate. I'll keep you posted on this.....
Inventory is not an issue. I roast all of my coffees to order. I never run out. I would just set the inventory to an open status.
And you are telling me that customers will have to input ALL of their information each time they order? That's a pain.
So, if I can't set up a coupon code( I don't get why this isn't included in the shopping cart) What is the best way for me to identify a customers affiliation with a school or a team, so the percentage raised can be credited to the school or team? I plan on having 20 or more fundraisers going at the same time, so setting up a separate site for each school is not an option...good idea, but no practical.
I LOVE this forum, and I really appreciate all of your help!
While I wait for your answers, I am going to try out the trial software and mess around a bit!
Thanks again! Brian