Hi Janine,

You seem to be one of the most reputed experts on Dreamweaver that I have come across so I would very much appreciate your advice…just some suggestions on my next steps would be great.

I have done a couple of sites which I am pleased with, but I really want to take it to the next level and now want to be able to design  ecommerce sites and integrate a CMS into my CS3 Dreamweaver sites for  clients so I can develop a web design business for small businesses in my local area.  I have a potential client asking me for this right now so need to find out how to do this a.s.a.p. if possible! Any advice you could offer on my next steps, products you could recommend (software plus training manuals), would be great. In fact, do you have a product of your own that would help me?

Many thanks in advance for your advice
Lucy

Hi Lucy,

Thanks for the kind words about my book and congrats on building your own Web design business.

You’re wise to be thinking about developing more advanced skills so you can handle CMS and ecommerce, but you should know that things get a lot more complicated with these advanced web site features, and the liability risks go way up as soon as you’re dealing with credit card processing.

Google Checkout is easy and works for many sites, but you’re right, if your clients have lots of products or want to do their own credit card processing, you’ll need a more sophisticated service.

Here are some of the most popular ecommerce options I’ve found:

Magento: A very high-end solution, lots of advanced features, but very complex to set up (they offer a 19-hour basic training program) and prices range from $3,000 to $12,000.

Yahoo Store is used by big and small sites. It offers great features but some restrictions and  a monthly fee of $39.

ZenCart and OSCommerce: These open-source shopping carts are free and popular, but they require complex customization. To set these services up, you’ll need PHP programming skills as well as CSS and HTML, and you’ll need to do the integration with a back-end transaction service such as PayPal to make them work. You’ll also need to set up a secure server, which you can do by purchasing an SSL Certificate through your service provider, but options differ, so make sure your hosting service has what you need before you get started.

As for CMS options, these days I don’t recommend that anyone create a custom CMS unless they’re working on a huge site like Amazon. Instead, start with WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal (the three most popular open-source CMS options). You can customize these programs to create almost any kind of site and you’ll save yourself reinventing the wheel. There are lots of resources for all of these services, especially WordPress and Joomla.

That list of CMS and ecommerce options should get you pointed in the right direction, but here’s my best advice. I took a look at your first two sites and you’ve done a lovely job, but setting up a client with a full-featured ecommerce site is a LOT more complicated than what you’ve done so far.

Even with my experience, I prefer to hire a programmer to set up ecommerce features and help with CMS configuration. Most CMS and ecommerce tools are built with PHP or some other advanced programming language, which is much more complex than HTML and CSS to learn.

Even small web design firms are often run by at least two people — a designer and a programmer — because it’s incredibly rare for one person to have good design skills and master the advanced technical skills for a CMS or ecommerce.

Since it seems you have some design experience, I’d recommend you look around for a programmer who has already successfully done an ecommerce site, ask that person what it would cost to just do that part of the job, add what you need to do the design and other development, and go to the client with the total for both of your services.

With time, I’m sure you could master the more advanced skills if you want to, but setting up an ecommerce site yourself is not something I would recommend you take on while you’re still learning. Not only is it a lot to learn under pressure, but you can really get into trouble if you don’t set things up properly and the ecommerce system breaks, costing your client sales, or worse, compromises the credit card numbers or other personal data of customers because it’s not set up securely…

I sincerely hope that helps you and I wish you all the best with your new web design business.

Janine