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I have a client who wants a little online store, it will have relatively few items, no categorization (maybe something very basic, maybe tags). Expected market is all over the world (US, Canada, UK, Israel, Russia, Ukraine, Japan). So the store needs to be able to accept as much payment methods as possible. (Paypal is not widespread in Russia, for example, due to certain limitations with its service.) Accepting credit cards (visas, master cards, etc.) is an absolute must.

I am weighing different paths. Possible solutions I've thought of were: http://www.shopify.com/ or http://bigcartel.com/ build something on my own.

While I am a front-end developer, I don't fear back-end programming and I've experience with Django, Rails, Sinatra and all kinds of PHP (though I would prefer to not work with PHP again). I have also worked with liquid templates so theming Big Cartel or Shoppify is not a problem too.

What are the things I need to consider if I will decide to build the store myself? What are the problems I will face when implementing different paying methods? What are typical problems with online stores?

Thanks!

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There are three questions here and all of the are very broad. You should do some research on these topics first and then if you have specific questions about something you've learned ask them here. – John Conde♦ Jun 10 '11 at 12:10
I have done some research, I have also built a store using Big Cartel. I wanted to see some kind of a list of things that are needed to be implemented when building a store, and to compare the costs to the hosted solutions. – gryzzly Jun 10 '11 at 13:45
You can research the costs of hosted solutions easily online. If you had any questions about terminology or "does plan x from company y meet the needs of requirement z?" that would meet the criteria set forth in the faq. But the list of things needed in a store is too broad and also not possible to answer as it is specific to an individual store's needs/goals. – John Conde♦ Jun 10 '11 at 13:52
This type of question almost always gets closed. My consensus is that these types of questions are better suited for a paid consultant than stackexchange. – JMC Jun 10 '11 at 17:09
No problem, guys :-) – gryzzly Jun 11 '11 at 18:29

closed as not a real question by John Conde♦ Jun 10 '11 at 12:09

It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ.

1 Answer

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Although it's a small store, I'd go with building one store for each target country. Chances are you're going to confuse your visitors with several payment methods.

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