Using Actinic V8 as a catalogue and online ordering system without secure checkout

[Chris Leavold]

Hi, I'm new to the forum and pretty shakey on some aspects of website design. I'm not a professional designer but I have been let down by the guy who was supposed to have been a professional so thought I'd 'try my hand' at it.

I have two sites to construct. One is a straight ecommerce site with shopping 'cart' but the other is aimed at schools who want to purchase playground equipment.

I am fairly confident, having downloaded evaluation of V8 Designer, that I can handle the ecommerce site by keeping it simple but the second site does not require ecommerce facilities. I want to present it as an online catalogue which shows a photo of the product, enough information so that the customer is confident that it fulfills their needs and finally the price (with lots of attributes and choices). Customers should then be able to order the product from the site with an absolute minimum of information being required from them. I do not require them to register or log in. Prices are ex VAT as schools can reclaim it.

All items are made to order so there is a lag of 3 or 4 weeks between order and delivery. Customers are invoiced on delivery for payment within 14 days.

My question is similar to another post I read, started by TrevMac, but I hoped that mine was different enough to start a new thread. ?

Should I use Actinic for both my sites?

Many thanks for any input.

[Darren B]

I would use actinic for both sites, you do not need to enable online ordering on one site, you do not need people to register, Actinic can generate your invoices for you

You say you have the trial version so you can see how easy it is to maintain a site, you do not need a secure server, if you want to accept payments then Paypal and noxhec are good starting places for your e-commerce side of things.

Cheers
Darren

[Chris Leavold]

Using Actinic as an ordering system

Hi Darren,

Many thanks for responding.

My evaluation copy has just expired so I didn't get the chance to find out where to switch on/off the secure server functions.

We use Quickbooks for our accounting system. From what I've read it seems it should be possible for me to integrate with Actinic (in the future).

I will download the evaluation version one more time before I commit to becoming my own ecommerce website designer but it looks as though you might be hearing more from me in the future.

All the best and thanks to all for proving a useful and reassuring resource.

Chris