Fast and low costs way to setup eCommerce using osCommerce

With the fast movement of business in different industries, a lot of people are trying to start up a low cost business while working. The business model might include selling of products or services.

To setup a physical business store, it requires high setup-cost such as office/shop space rental, electricity and phone bills, etc. If your business is selling products that means you need to invest your money for product inventories on the top of those expenses above.

For this reason, many people with small capitals are trying to setup their business online using eCommerce store. Even big companies such as Dell, Google Store are also selling their products online to reduce costs. At the same time, having online store means that your business can have larger geographical business scopes.

However the setup costs associated to eCommerce website development is relatively huge if you get a web developer to design eCommerce website from scratch. Another downside is that newly developed product/software is often very buggy and consumes a lot of times to debug and fix the bugs. This means time required to start your online business is longer and you’re left behind your competitors. In many cases, you might be lacking of technical knowledge.

Rather than designing your eCommerce from scratch, you can now easily setup your basic eCommerce store with only a few clicks with almost no cost. Some web hosting companies provide control panel for the user to administer their own site. This control panel normally includes a self-install tool module, such as osCommerce, to develop the eCommerce store. Find out from your hosting provider if their hosting package gives you this facility.

Few things to obtain before setting up your online store:

1. Hosting package
   
2. Domain names ready
   

Once you have acquired everything above, you are now ready to start setting up the online store. The following steps show you how to install osCommerce if your hosting provider is using Ensim control panel. Please ensure that your hosting provider enables your osCommerce module.

Installing osCommerce

1.          Login to your Ensim site administrator interface. It’s normally http://www.yourdomain.com/admin by default. It might be different if your hosting provider changes the configurations

2.          On the System Menu, click on Power Tools.

3.          Scroll down and find osCommerce module there. Click on the button on the right hand side of 0

4.          You’re now redirected to osCommerce creation title “osCommerce Online Store”

5.          URL path. URL path is the subfolder path where the eCommerce is setup. If you want to setup eCommerce on “store” folder, type “store” on URL path folder. If you want to setup on root folder, leave the URL path to be blank. We’re going to setup on root folder, so leave the textbox blank.

6.          Database name. Specify the database name that you would like it to be created

7.          Site Administration MySQL password. Type MySQL database that’s given by your hosting provider. Normally is the same as main login username.

8.          Username of tool administrator. Type the username that you would like to specify as eCommerce main admin account.

9.          Password of tool administrator. Type the password for the eCommerce admin account.

10.      Confirm password of tool administrator. Confirm the admin account password again.

11.      Email of tool administrator. Admin email contact.

12.      Click Install. You’ll get message telling that you’re installation is successful. Your store is now ready and you can now access the eCommerce store on http://www.yourdomain.com.au.