How do I make it possible to enlarge an image on my website?

I did check this out and it sort of makes sense to me, but not really. I think I am just in over my head on making this website. I don't have $2500 to pay someone else to make it, so I just have to bite the bullet myself and learn how to do it.

The problem is it get's confusing when I try to encorporate customized settings (image enlargement, etc.) within a drag and drop website template. Also, the ecommerce website (ShopSite) is confusing me because I don't know the following:

1. ShopSite has the option to build pages on their website, when I've already made them on iPage. Do I need to make them on ShopSite in order for the cart and buttons to work properly?

2. How will the transaction made on my website be transferred into my bank account? Will they ask me for my bank information, etc.? (When I signed up with iPage I used my debit card, but it's not the business account I want the monies to be transferred to. This is the only place I could think that it would go to as it doesn't even ask me for a bank for my transactions.)

3. Are there people that specialize in assisting with an ecommerce website on iPage (for a small fee, just to get through these problems, not to build the entire site)?

4. ShopSite comes with Paypal - do I need to do anything else with PayPal to register or will they use the information from ShopSite?

I would love to pay someone to build this as it has become a sort of dead end for me and I just want to get it up and running - however - I don't have the budget to do so - so any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks for your time!

1. At some point the user will be redirected to shopsite.com to checkout. This is unavoidable. What most people do, and what ShopSite offers, is that you can customize the checkout pages on ShopSite to match your Web site. More info here http://shopsite.com/templates/cookbook/tips-notemplatecart.shtml

2. When you setup the account at ShopSite, it should have asked you for banking information to deposit the amounts into your account. It could also be that they keep a running total and you request a check from ShopSite. To really understand how they process transactions, I would contact them via phone or live chat, since they will have all those answers.

3. I don't think that people seek out iPage and ShopSite and make that their specialty, but I do think there are capable people out there that can connect the dots for you. I mean, essentially you have two sites: your site on iPage and a checkout site on ShopSite. From what I understand about ShopSite is that if you don't build your Web site using their system, the option you have is to add little "Buy Now" buttons to your products in iPage. Then when someone clicks that button, they are redirected to checkout. I would think that ShopSite support should be able to help you to get the code for the buttons (or look here http://shopsite.com/orderanywhere.html).

4. Are you saying that people can checkout with PayPal using ShopSite or that ShopSite can send you your money via PayPal?

Let me ask you this, when you initially said "I am using ShopSite for my ecommerce.", how are you using this? Did you just decide that you want to use this? Is this your only option? What made you choose this and what do you have vested in using ShopSite?

~Sovereign

Well, you definitely gave me some clarity on many of my questions which helps in not being completely discouraged with what I am trying to do.

As far as PayPal goes, I believe that customers can pay using PayPal. I'm not sure about ShopSite paying me using PayPal thought - I will have to check.

When I signed up with iPage, ShopSite was in the Control Panel and I just assumed this was the only way to go. Since I have never made a website or used an ecommerce website, I really didn't give it much thought. I assumed it was a service I had paid for or was complimentary with iPage, so I used it I'm not opposed to using another ecommerce website, but I would rather not have to pay for something that I already have.

Thanks for all the information - It helps a lot!

ShopSite is not a free product, so you may want to verify with your host that you have a license that came included with your hosting plan. Often the hosts do have an agreement and purchases a multi-license so they can distribute the product to the users hosting with them, other times they will just install the products for you, but you still need to pay for whatever option you choose.

Part of the decision of how you want to manage your products should be based on how many products you have. If you have, let's say, 5 products and they hardly change, placing buttons next to each product and linking to a checkout site is an OK solution, but if your store is going to be growing (more products, more variations), I would not go with the iPage/ShopSite combo, as it will make maintenance and management very difficult down the road.

~Sovereign

Yes, I will check to be sure . I know I tacked on a bunch of options after the intial $2.95/mo. fee with iPage, bring my total up to over $100 plus the monthly payments, so I'm assuming it was somewhere in there. I did cancel my registration so I could get my refund and really figure out my best options without wasting "hosting time".

I will have various products in and out so what would you recommend that is easy to use, affordable and will allow me to add/switch products? I am importing various items from all different countries so the products will changing fairly regularly as they sell out. I would like to be able to mark things down (show orig. $ crossed out and sale price beside it), offer gift certificates, just basically have a fully functional website that allows me to run a business online without being a computer genius. I think this is probably too much to ask of a host website, but since I don't have thousands of dollars to pay someone to build and maintain it, it's really my only option.

Any suggestions??

Thanks again for your wisdom and insight!

I've heard good things about Shopify. They have good support and provide you with most everything to get your business started, but at the same time, if you need more custom things done down the road, it's very developer centric and you can hire someone to accomplish what you need.

It looks like their cheapest plan is $24/mo, but you would be building your entire site (or choosing a template) using their system. So whatever $100/mo you are paying now, you could cancel that -- make sure you have your domain name saved separately (transferred) before canceling, if you registered your domain with your current host. So far $24/mo (and you can upgrade as business increases) you get good product.

I haven't checked if they provide everything you mentioned above, so the first step would be to give them a call to talk with someone about what you're looking to do. If they say: "yes, you can do that with our product" then you need to figure out if you are willing to drop iPage/ShopSite and start over, but that would be my recommendation.

~Sovereign