estimate time for setting up custom cart
Printed From: ProductCart E-Commerce Solutions
Category: ProductCart
Forum Name: Customizing ProductCart
Forum Description: Exchange messages with other users that are customizing ProductCart.
URL: https://forum.productcart.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=352
Printed Date: 27-November-2024 at 5:03am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.04 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: estimate time for setting up custom cart
Posted By: Ceylan
Subject: estimate time for setting up custom cart
Date Posted: 04-August-2006 at 2:09am
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I need to estimate how long it will take me to set up a cutom cart, including installation on server, customization (not my design time-just adding design to cart and adding databse and images), as wellas setting up admin window for client . Once I design the site I need to set up the cart to reflect the design( I've read the header and footer info- that won't take longI figure 2-3 hrs at most- but wondering about setting up the catalog pages with all the thumb photos , incorporating the databse etc...I 've never done this so don't know if its just a matter of uploading images and database? so I'm having a hard time figuring out how many hours all this will take? it may help you to know my intial design quote for html pages included this- Buttons/links will include: “About Us", " New Cards ", " Assortments", "Customer Service" section , “Privacy Policy" , “Contact ". All pages will be designed to support a search input box where visitors will be able to enter search terms. All pages will be designed to support a signup input box where visitors will be able to enter their email address to signup to receive information. This quote includes, for the New cards section, placement of a total of 65 photo thumbs and creation of 65 subsequent main pages with large photos and for the Assortment section: 6 photo thumbs pages each opening to 12 thumbs page of card photos contained in each box and creation of 72 subsequent main pages with large photos Can anyone help me estimate the time so I can give my client an honest precise quote based on the time it will take me to implement all thsi?  ------------- Cey http://www.ceylandesign.com |
Replies:
Posted By: netprofits
Date Posted: 04-August-2006 at 6:42am
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There are several steps to setting up a Product Cart Site: 2. Setup of site design by modifying header.asp and footer.asp: 3. Setup of Control Panel info. The Product Cart control panel comes installed as a fully functional area for you and your client to maintain all aspects of the Product Cart site. You need to setup things like Company info, Emails, Display settings, Shipping, Payment and Tax info and of course your product categories and products. The basic setup of information takes about 30 minutes to an hour. 4. Product Entry: Assuming you already have product images and content, it probably takes about 3 minutes per product to setup a product once you have done a few products. If you have to create product images and content, of course that would take longer. Also, if you have product options or custom/search fields or are using the apparel add-on that involves more work. We usually give our clients an Excel spreadsheet where they enter their product information and we use Product Cart to import their product information and upload the pictures. If you are manually entering products, PC has a built in image sizer so you upload the largest image and it will auto-generate and resize the thumbnail, detail and enlarged images. If you have not tried out the Product Cart demos, you should since you can walk through the whole control panel and try out all of the things you would need to do, especially creating product categories and products. ( http://www.earlyimpact.com/productcart/demo.asp - http://www.earlyimpact.com/productcart/demo.asp ) In our opinion, the Product Cart Control Panel is by far the best and easiest to use of any ecommerce application we have ever worked with and all of our clients say the same thing. You should also skim through the User's Guide which is very helpful: In Product Cart you won't need to create all of the different pages manually, you create categories and products and PC handles displaying the category pages and product detail pages for you. So once you have an idea of how long it takes to setup one product, just multiple that by the number of products you have to setup and you have a ballpark time estimate. 4. Training your client: It usually takes 2-3 hours to train the client on the PC Control Panel. If the client is not technical at all it may take a little longer. We usually do to different training sessions. One when the site is setup and the design is implemented to show them how to setup categories and products and manage content pages and then another session after products are created to show them how the ordering process works and how to process orders and manage other areas of the site. I hope this helps! ------------- NetProfits Internet Consulting Certified ProductCart Developer http://www.nicwebdesign.com" rel="nofollow - Our Site |
Posted By: MarkCoyle
Date Posted: 04-August-2006 at 9:25am
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For me the time wasn't in setting up the store itself (allow half a day), it was in the store configuration to fit our preferences, setting up the categories and moving the product descriptions into Product Cart. cheers Mark |
Posted By: Ceylan
Date Posted: 04-August-2006 at 12:36pm
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when you say "We usually give our clients an Excel spreadsheet where they enter their
product information and we use Product Cart to import their product
information and upload the pictures." so if we have the Excell sheet- this replaces having to enter each product manually? is this correct? ------------- Cey http://www.ceylandesign.com |
Posted By: netprofits
Date Posted: 04-August-2006 at 12:43pm
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Product Cart allows importing of an Excel file to populate the products in the database. See the User's Guide in the Product section. There is a complete explanation on importing products including the steps to take, the format of the file and explanation of all fields that can be imported. ------------- NetProfits Internet Consulting Certified ProductCart Developer http://www.nicwebdesign.com" rel="nofollow - Our Site |
Posted By: Ceylan
Date Posted: 04-August-2006 at 12:50pm
so how long di it take you to set up categories and moving the product descriptions? I have 2 categories and 137 products ------------- Cey http://www.ceylandesign.com |
MarkCoyle wrote:Posted By: netprofits
Date Posted: 04-August-2006 at 12:59pm
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Time for product entry will vary depending on what you need to do. 2. Do you have content for all of the products in electronic format (i.e. a database, spreadsheet, Word docs), or will you be manually typing content from a printed catalog or writing content from scratch? Once you have the content in electronic format and the pics ready, actually creating the products manually in Product Cart or automatically by uploading a spreadsheet and FTPing the pics, it can go pretty quick. In general we charge anywhere from $3/product (when they give us electronic copy and pics that are ready to upload) to $20/product (when we need to create pics and type content). If they give us the spreadsheet filled out correctly and the product pictures formatted correctly, we even do the initial product import for free. ------------- NetProfits Internet Consulting Certified ProductCart Developer http://www.nicwebdesign.com" rel="nofollow - Our Site |
Posted By: MarkCoyle
Date Posted: 04-August-2006 at 1:07pm
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Hi I do my work on the site at night, so it's hard to given an estimate of unbroken time. For configuration of the store - probably 2-3 hours plus ten minutes here and there as I learn more and add features. Modifying the CSS files (assuming you're in v3) - half a day, there are a lot of codes to work through. Setting up the categories - for me it was probably four hours, but then I have 400 products and many categories to enable finding the products in different ways. For you obviously much less (but having 70 or so items to a category might require some breaking into sub-categories in the future). Moving the product descriptions - well my descriptions are full reviews with a flash mp3 player, web URLs etc so it took a while as I was transferring HTML/flash layouts. Doing this for 400 products took a long time - probably something like 30 hours but I had a very specifc requirement. If you are just moving text and graphics, far less time than mine. One aspect it's hard to quantify is becoming familiar with the store admin - it's really doing worth this before you do anything else. Spend a few hours reading the user guide two or three times, have a play at the admin area before doing anything real. It will pay dividends later on. It's tempting to estimate down to hours for such projects, but in my experience you will need a block of time to set-up/configure/enhance/integrate/test/refine - for a commercial project you should be looking at sets of days, possibly around a week depending on your experience. If you need to do custom ASP coding on the store and you're not expert in that area, either you'll end up subcontracting it or spending a lot of time. That's a luxury I have as my store is accountable only to myself and a partner, but for others that might not be possible. I hope this helps. cheers Mark |
Posted By: katharina
Date Posted: 04-August-2006 at 1:12pm
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I like to give you our time frame we had with an older version. At that time we did not have an excel file. We had one person adding about 1000 products by hand in the back end. It took about one week to get the products into the system, that was only working 1/2 day on it. The current and the new version lets you import the products, which should cut the time into half if you don't have an excel sheet on hand. As for installation/setup we simply paid Early Impact to do it for us. It was only 50 dollars back then and I think it well worse it. We simply customized our header, footer, added some custom pages, and played with the settings to our liking. It wasn't hard at all, and this is the work you have to do with every program out there. Overall it was very easy. Another good point about Product Cart is there customer service. You do not wait days for an answer, they usually get back to you the same day and they do not mind to go to your site to fix it. Their customer service is outstanding! It is also great that they have this forum, because not every program has this. It gives you an insight about customer satisfaction and you should check other product's forums for the same. We use http://www.webhost4life.com - www.webhost4life.com for hosting. Their technical support people are just as fast. One last important thing is the search engine friendlyness. Product cart has it added and we show up quite well in google. This is a concern for database driven sites, they do not always show in search engines. This can be a big issue with a costomers. Product cart export to google base (formerly called froogle), and it can generate a site map. These two features make it very search engine friendly. |
Posted By: Ceylan
Date Posted: 04-August-2006 at 2:14pm
This forum rocks! thanks for all the info it eally helps I have been reading the user guise for version 2.76 and will probably read it through again... and again- I assume verion 3 won't be too different - pc said they'd have the user guide V3 ready end of August. I may have to start job way before. I think it may be a good idea to pay Early Impact to do the installation/setup although I 'm always for having more control and knowledge. ------------- Cey http://www.ceylandesign.com |
Posted By: MarkCoyle
Date Posted: 04-August-2006 at 2:20pm
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I found version 3 easier than version 2.76 as EarlyImpact have designed it to be intuitive. The upgrade manual for version 3 is so good it's virtually a user guide on its own. I would be tempted in your position to do a straight v3 implementation without 2.76 first. The other posters are right - the support is ace and really quick. cheers Mark |
Posted By: netprofits
Date Posted: 04-August-2006 at 2:41pm
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Mark is correct. If you haven't already bought 2.76, it is definately worth getting 3.0 to start. The header/footer setup in 3.0 is more advanced and uses all CSS for design which is great. Although the 3.0 manual won't be ready until later, the 2.76 manual is pretty similar and if you read the posts on the new version they cover the new stuff in 3.0 ( http://www.earlyimpact.com/forum/forum_topics.asp?FID=16 - http://www.earlyimpact.com/forum/forum_topics.asp?FID=16 ). ------------- NetProfits Internet Consulting Certified ProductCart Developer http://www.nicwebdesign.com" rel="nofollow - Our Site |
Posted By: ProductCart
Date Posted: 04-August-2006 at 5:14pm
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New in v3 is also built-in help. For example, click on the little, yellow information icons on this page (this is a demo of v3, standard version). http://www.earlyimpact.com/demos/standard/pcadmin/AdminSettings.asp?ActiveTab=4 - http://www.earlyimpact.com/demos/standard/pcadmin/AdminSetti ngs.asp?ActiveTab=4 We are working on updating the User Guide, but we added too many new features to this thing, and so it's taking a while ------------- The ProductCart Team Home of ProductCart http://www.productcart.com" rel="nofollow - shopping cart software |
