Time Spent to Get a Good Store Up and Running

I have built over 100 websites with Dreamweaver. I am now going to show the time I have spent getting opencart working and perhaps others can share similar information.

1- I spent about three hours deciding to try out opencart over other Ecommerce based solutions.
2- I installed opencart in a few minutes with my host making it super easy.
3- I spent about three hours uploading 20-30 products in the default installation.
4- I spent about three hours reading the documentation provided on this site. The documentation doesn't seem to help much.
5- The store would not show any of the products in it. Then, I read that I shouldn't mess with the default install folders. So, I read about how to install a new template and it seems to be not that difficult. Still, not quite sure whether I can use the default one or not. I like it, but it says not to use it.
6- I hire a guy who sells templates online to set up the store for me. It takes him about two weeks to set it up.
7- I will now put some products in opencart again and see if they show up. Also, I still need to figure out the SEO urls because it is not clear what url you are going to get.
8- I have spent at least three hours in these forums.
9- Total time so far: I have spent about 15 hours so far.
10- Money Cost: 15hours * $30.00 = $450.00 for my time. $20.00 for a template and $50.00 to have a guy set the store up. So far the cost is $520.00. Of course there is also the cost of not selling any product while it takes weeks to get the store going.

Work Left to do:
1- Input products for the second time and see if they show up this time
2- Figure out the SEO urls
3- Figure out how to add information pages
4- figure out how to tweak the template for SEO
5- Learn how to set up open store

Finally, still waiting for template guy to get back from one week vacation to help me work on it again. Right now I am wondering if it would have been better to go with UK site builder guy.

Prediction: I predict it will take 150-250 hours of my time to get a 20-30 product site up and running. In addition, I will pay about $1,000 dollars for online help with this project. When I am done, I will write a manual that people can understand.

Cool.

I have built 1 website, Mine. Found opencart very good to work with.
Throw me the $1000 and ill get you one going in a few hours, with your 30 products on it.

If you're gonna drop $1,000 getting your store set up, I'll gladly do it for you.

clr06160 wrote: 5- The store would not show any of the products in it. Then, I read that I shouldn't mess with the default install folders. So, I read about how to install a new template and it seems to be not that difficult. Still, not quite sure whether I can use the default one or not. I like it, but it says not to use it.

not sure where you read this, but it is simply blatantly wrong. I'm not sure why your products didn't show up, but if you do a default install then go add a product it should show up just fine, and there is no problem using the default template.

It's not just getting the site up. It's getting the site done well enough to get a top five placement in Google for a difficult keyword. To do this, requires understanding the whole thing quite well. I would love to hire someone that can set up and run the stores and answer questions as I go, but the problem is that every part timer I have hired doesn't seem to care a lot about doing it right and sticking with it. It seems like the good computer people want an open book of $100.00 per hour and that's just not in my budget.

If you haven't got the time yourself or the know how (many haven't and I include myself in some areas such as SEO), then professionals will be required

Services to use:

Copywriter to write page content, product description, and blog articles
SEO Expert to analyse your target audience, competitor sites, keywords, back-links, etc

Getting in the top 5 is no easy task, especially if you are in a saturated market, staying in the top 5 is an even greater a task and requires ongoing work, analysis.

You probably wont come anywhere near page 5, let alone number 5 for the first 3 to 6 months.

Especially if your site/domain is new. There are many factors that go towards achieving a good ranking.

I'm not saying you can't do it yourself, of course you can, but it is going to take a hell of a lot of time for you to first learn the ins and outs of SEO etc, time better spent concentrating on other areas of your business no doubt.

Just my two-penneth

Thanks for the Info. I have actually found success getting the rankings. What I can't seem to do is get any product sold because I can't build stores.

There are many issues to face. Most templates are not written well for SEO and so some modification must be done there. Then, the URLs must be correct. Finally, the content must also be showcased properly. These things all require some custom modification. Now, that's great if it eventually turns out a good product for the search engine. However, I wonder if opencart can truly deliver without spending a fortune hiring programmers to tweak it and run it. Because, I don't just want a store. I want a store Google will love and that I can easily manage and tweak for the search engines. Do you know of any opencart stores doing well in organic search (difficult keywords) that didn't require thousands of dollars in modifications and programming?

i know you worked out how much your time would have cost, that was spent getting the site where it was, but really, you didnt actually physically spend that money, so its kinda a false illusion to say you spent $450 of your time. Your time is free when building your own website.

Perhaps a lot of your points were down to being new to opencart, but i can get a site up and running to a reasonable standed between 1 to 2 weeks. Thats not including seo tweeks, thats just a top of the range website with all products and details.

well it all depends on who works on that website ,
if you dont have many products i would suggest wordpress with a theme that looks like a store
ex http://diamedshop.ro/
i am changing the base to opencart, but as you said there is allot of work for seo , & you dint find as many plungins as you do with wp so you can get your job done , but now we need something more like a store than a presentation websites
this is what im working on ( trying to keep the same appearance, but is very hard with the open cart structure to make a cool look )
http://100.diacenamedical.ro/dotare-ambulanta

as the seo , well i just started it but it seems to be indexed well but it includes allot of custom seo work in it

my work until now :4 weeks & still 4000+ products & some tweaks to go )))

clr06160 wrote:Do you know of any opencart stores doing well in organic search (difficult keywords) that didn't require thousands of dollars in modifications and programming?

That really is a hard question to answer, "difficult keywords"

I have a client who sells Personalised Printed Ribbon, and Personalised Cake Toppers etc among other things.

The keywords rank fairly well. The domain is about 4 or 5 years old and the site is on OC 1.5.0.5

Now regarding tweaks, sure I have added bits and bobs, but regarding the content, nothing special other than my extensions for assisting with generating the SEO Keyword automatically, Google Sitemaps, Google Image Sitemaps

Other than that it is pretty much default OC. Not even a blog which I keep on advising of the import of having.

From the many keywords that can be used to find their products, here are few I just randomly tapped in to google:

Birthday Cake Ribbon
Personalised Printed Ribbon
Cupcake Photo Toppers
Personalised Ribbon
Personalised Hen Night Sashes

All the above are page 1 results.

Difficult Keywords (i dont know if they are or are not)

Xsecrets wrote:

clr06160 wrote: 5- The store would not show any of the products in it. Then, I read that I shouldn't mess with the default install folders. So, I read about how to install a new template and it seems to be not that difficult. Still, not quite sure whether I can use the default one or not. I like it, but it says not to use it.

not sure where you read this, but it is simply blatantly wrong. I'm not sure why your products didn't show up, but if you do a default install then go add a product it should show up just fine, and there is no problem using the default template.

I think he meant the "default" theme folders.. in which he is completely correct. But that is unrelated to products not showing up.

The products likely aren't showing up because you don't have them linked to the default store when you added them.
When adding a new product, be sure on the "Links" tab you have the default store checked

Qphoria wrote: The products likely aren't showing up because you don't have them linked to the default store when you added them.
When adding a new product, be sure on the "Links" tab you have the default store checked

isn't the default store checked by default, or is that one of the changes that Daniel lost along the way to 1.5?

Xsecrets wrote:

Qphoria wrote: The products likely aren't showing up because you don't have them linked to the default store when you added them.
When adding a new product, be sure on the "Links" tab you have the default store checked

isn't the default store checked by default, or is that one of the changes that Daniel lost along the way to 1.5?

I just tried. yea it is checked by default. so its hard to say the issue then without a link or admin access

clr06160 wrote:When I am done, I will write a manual that people can understand.

I predict writing a 20 to 30 page manual will take 150-250 hours and cost $1000.

$4 / hour - Want a job ?

Yes, but I require a quarter of the time upfront.

I added a product and it actually showed up in the store. I think perhaps the host installation does not set it up properly as this is a new installation.

When I click on the product, I get the following errors.

Notice: Could not connect to server in /home2/majorcom/public_html/libs/Database/MySQL.php on line 80

Warning: mysql_query(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /home2/majorcom/public_html/libs/Database/MySQL.php on line 111

Warning: mysql_error(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /home2/majorcom/public_html/libs/Database/MySQL.php on line 112

Notice: Query failed: SQL: SELECT user_id, email, firstName, lastName, state, disabled FROM user WHERE login='' in /home2/majorcom/public_html/libs/Database/MySQL.php on line 113

Warning: mysql_fetch_array(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home2/majorcom/public_html/libs/Database/MySQL.php on line 157

Warning: mysql_num_rows(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home2/majorcom/public_html/libs/Database/MySQL.php on line 173

Anybody know how to fix these errors.

Those aren't OpenCart files or SQL queries so you messed something up quite spectacularly somewhere.

Host tried to help. They reinstalled opencart and now I only get one error message saying footer won't load....

Not much use without the error. I'm guessing you have a lowend host who keeps trying to inject their own junk into webpages/footers.