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Help with new payment solution and site content

indigo87indigo87 subscriber Posts: 1
edited October 2006 in Website Critique
 Hello,
I`ve just setup a new site/business selling jewellery.  As I am just starting up I couldn`t afford a fancy online shop but (as I`m a programmer) I`ve kind of worked out a checkout of my own and a method for receiving payment (based on PayPal invoices).  What would be REALLY useful is a bit of feedback on the system and the process and the help page that goes with it (and obviously any other feedback!!).
The site is www.harribella.co.uk</A></A>
The check out can be accessed via any of the product pages, I won`t give too much detail because I need you to see if its self-explanatory!!  The help page can be accessed at www.harribella.co.uk/i_payment.asp</A></A>
Any feedback or advise will be gratefully received especially comments on design, layout, browser difficulties or image quality.
Thanks
Russ
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    asykesasykes subscriber Posts: 3
    Russ,One point worth considering, from my experiences of seeing the transactions that pass through several big ecommerce systems it`s generally been the case that where users have a choice of payment methods. paypal has constituted less that 5% of all the transactions.Now that doesn`t mean that faced with a compelling product and no option but to proceed with PayPal they may just make that choice, but it is worth asking yourself how many of your hard won leads are being lost at the checkout stage.You may even consider watching your web stats for this point, or indeed offering clients a poll to find out if they would prefer another payment method.
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    indigo87indigo87 subscriber Posts: 1
    Asykes,
    Thanks for the input and, I agree, PayPal isn`t the ideal solution, it was just the only way I could get up and running with the minimum amount of up front investment.  The website is important but I have other sales channels as well and therefore cannot risk all my money on an e-commerce solution when I don`t know what the take up will be. I have google analytics running on the site so I hope to be able to see how many visits turn into sales.
    Do you know of or have experience with any good, cheap (read Free) and reliable (read Easy to use) e-commerce solutions that I could take a look at??  I`ve had a good hunt round but everything seems to be too expensive for a startup.
    Thanks for taking the time to respond, its much appreciated!!
    Russ
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    indigo87indigo87 subscriber Posts: 1
    Thanks for everyones comments.  I take your points (hostclick & ElidS) about email PayPal payment being a bit of a turn off for would-be buyers.  I`ve looked at the two solutions Hostclick mentioned and both look good, i will have a go at setting one or other of them up.
    In the mean time I`ve looked at the PayPal checkout system.  I realise this is still via PayPal but at least its a proper checkout and payment system and doesn`t use my (rather amateur) version.  As I can tailor the checkout page and the buttons I think this is a better short term solution.  I don`t know if you would agree, any comments would be good!
    Thanks for you help guys/girls, much appreciated!!
    Russ
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    indigo87indigo87 subscriber Posts: 1
    Hello again!!
    I`ve now changed the site to use the PayPal checkout solution, this is the one where you generate the add to basket and checkout code using a series of forms in PayPal and then add them to the site.  This looks to me like a much better solution than I had before but I`m still not 100% convinced.  It looks and behaves better and removes the need for me to manually generate PayPal invoices but still not ideal.
    I looked at OSCommerce but I`m not sure I have the infrastructure for that at the moment.  Looks nice though!!
    Thanks
    Russ
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