TulipTools Internet Business Owners and Online Sellers Community

Quote:Most people choose a web host based on price, technology and/or the recommendation of their web agency. All of these are important factors, but most people overlook the destructive impact choosing the wrong host can have on your online marketing initiatives.

How do you choose a hosting company? One of the most important factors when choosing a host is determining which tools and services they support and don't support...

Does your host provide or offer ecommerce packages? If so, is that the software you will be using to sell your products online? If not, make sure the host will support your ecommerce solution of choice. Many ecommerce solutions require specialized installations...

full article: http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/7952.asp

Quote:Most WYSIWYG  (what you see is what you get) site building applications make optimizing your site for the search engines very difficult at best, with most actually hurting your chances of achieving necessary search engine rankings. These tools in many cases actually prevent Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices from being incorporated into your website

GoDaddy should add this paragraph as a warning label to their hosting plans.  Microsoft Front Page could use this label too

Can someone recommend ones that do not have this issue?? Kim

I'm not really a big fan of GoDaddy's web store creator software.  It is very limited featurewise.

If you have limited web site experience and want a 3rd party hosted  easy to setup shopping cart there are various options:

Low cost- ShopPal http://www.shoppalstores.com/ , EasyStoreCreator http://ezstorecreator.com/ezstore/features.asp

$60 and up monthly  range- 3D Cart http://www.3dcart.com

$100  and up monthly price range- MonsterCommerce http://www.monstercommerce.com/ Volusion http://www.volusion.com Make-A-Store http://www.make-a-store.com/  All 3 of the $100+ services are excellent

I'd look at the features each offers and decide which one best fits your needs and expected budget.

If you have more web knowledge, then installing your own software like osCommerce, ZenCart, X-Cart, etc is also an option but will require much more setup work in the beginning.

EDITED to add-  Avoid CityMax.  The lack of a site search feature on its stores will kill your sales if you list more than a handful of items.

Wonderful. THANKS!! Very helpful. I appreciate it. Kim

We started working on the site with the free trial of Shoppal stores. I noticed that I had to log on to IE to build the site. It wouldn't work with Foxfire. I guess it is using Microsoft's editor. Could this cause a search engine optimization problems? Thanks. Kim

[quote author=DecorativeDishes link=topic=2442.msg8954#msg8954 date=1139259241]
We started working on the site with the free trial of Shoppal stores. I noticed that I had to log on to IE to build the site. It wouldn't work with Foxfire. I guess it is using Microsoft's editor. Could this cause a search engine optimization problems? Thanks. Kim
[/quote]

It won't cause any problems with SEO.

I would make sure that everything on the buyer's side of the site works with Firefox though.