Absolute beginner requires help

Hi there,

I wonder if anyone can please help me? I have opened my first online store: http://www.torches2go.co.uk I have invested all of my savings (what little I had) into this business venture. I have been up and running for around 7 months and I have had hardly any customers. Things are getting REALLY DESPERATE now as I have run out of money.

I am a complete novice and need help explained to me in very simple terms. Could anyone please offer any advice. (the few tips that I have picked up have been from 'zen cart Forum').

PLEASE HELP ME I am a complete beginner and I do not know what I can do by myself to attract customers to my site. The web designer who built my site for me will not volunteer any suggestions. He will only do exactly what I ask him to do and I don't know what kind of questions to ask. I am going around in circles getting very little done. Previously when I asked my web designer for help in doing anything he charges me a small fortune. Recently I bought a report of key words off him appropriate for my site and he charged me £200.00 + vat. I later found out I was able to get the same report free online.

I asked for alot of text to be added on all of my pages and he told me that he could improve on the amount of text on all of my web pages But because I was unable to afford such an expense in one lump sum he could do the job for me over the term of a year page, charging me £25.00 + vat a week for doing it.

One more thing I enquired over was including another large banner on my main page showing people that I also sell camping supplies. He wants £40.00 + vat to design a banner and to sort out all the coding nesded to put it on the site.

He will not tell me how to operate any basic functions on my site. I do not know what I can do to improve the site by myself. I am very keen on knowing more but it has to be explained very simply (I can't make anything worse).

In need of help.
:lamo:Peteronline

Buy the Zen Cart book (link above), either in hard copy or the eBook, which will explain to you how to do things in your Zen Cart control panel (you can ignore the part that deals with installing Zen Cart).

£40 to design a banner is very good value for money. As for deploying it - read the book and it'll explain that.

Vger

We can't explain the basics of operating and styling Zencart here in the forums. Read through the FAQ/Tutorials (link above) and explore all the options in your admin area. Come back here when you have specific questions.

Your hosting account will have a 'stats' area (often awstats). Look over that and see what the ratio is between unique visitors and sales.

The design of your site isn't bad. One problem I saw right away is that your prices are, in almost all cases, higher than those of your competitors for the same items.

One 'tough love' comment - if all it took was to throw up a website and wait for the money to roll in, everybody would be selling stuff online. It's no different than a brick-and-mortar store. Those who take the time and expend the effort to be better than the competition will succeed. The rest won't. You need to work harder to figure out how all this stuff works.

We were all once where you are now.

Thanks for the 'tough love' I guess I was feeling a little down today.

Peteronline
http://www.torches2go.co.uk