Please recommend a zencart design company for me.

Please recommend a zencart design company for me. the cheaper is better.

I strongly recommend you try working with Zen Cart yourself because it's good to know how to do things yourself. There are lots of free templates which can give you a jumpstart on your design.

fanisme:

Please recommend a zencart design company for me. the cheaper is better.

No one will do a better job as cheaply as doing it yourself. :)

It is true that zenCart can have a very steep learning curve, but spending a few weeks learning the ropes (and making mistakes along the way) is going to save you a small fortune in the longer term (and you'll get the site you want).

Many people have many regrets over their choice of a design company (both cheap and very expensive).

No one has ever regretted investing their own time to do it themselves.

Cheers
Rod

"Cheap" will buy you nothing but trouble. There are THOUSANDS of people out there who claim to be able to design a zencart site for under $50, and these people will give you a lifetime of headaches.

As has been said, you should have a go yourself - especially if you have very little to spend on professional help. If you hire a cheap freelancer you will be throwing your money away.

Go get one of the nice free templates and you will have 95% of your design done for you.

Thank you, guys. I'm really excited by your suggestion and I dream to design a website which absolutely meet my requirement. But do you think I really can do that, even I have no idea about PHP, MYSQL things?

fanisme:

Thank you, guys. I'm really excited by your suggestion and I dream to design a website which absolutely meet my requirement. But do you think I really can do that, even I have no idea about PHP, MYSQL things?

That depends on how willing you are and how much time you have to devote to getting through the learning curve. I knew nothing about any of it either, including HTML, when I first started but can now do the vast majority of code changes I need.

I strongly urge you to focus your main efforts on the usability aspect of the site first. Including intelligently structuring the categories so users can find what they want quickly, streamline the checkout process to minimize the number of clicks, create well-crafted category and product descriptions, eliminate unneeded sideboxes and other features, etc. If you haven't already, get Steve Krug's book "Don't Make Me Think", it will be a valuable resource for making your site easier to use for your customers.

Once you have these aspects completed, then focus on the look and feel of the site by tweaking one of the free or commercial templates that you like. I have found that the majority of things you may want to accomplish can be done from the free modules and templates, either the way they come or tweaked for your specific needs.

Hang in there, it's a bit tough at first, but pretty soon you will start understanding the code enough to make changes you want. And this forum is incredibly awesomely helpful when you get stuck. The search feature here will be able to answer many questions that may arise and if you can't find what you need someone will very likely answer you questions.

Last tips: the developers toolkit in the Tools section of the admin is indispensable for finding code snippets that you want to work on. And use Firefox's many excellent developer tools, you will find Firebug to be a huge resource for locating different page (template-related) elements that you can then find in the code with the ZC developers toolkit.

fanisme:

Thank you, guys. I'm really excited by your suggestion and I dream to design a website which absolutely meet my requirement. But do you think I really can do that, even I have no idea about PHP, MYSQL things?

You don't need any of these skills to install and configure a zencart site.

My suggestions (which is somewhat in conflict to what lankeeyankee has suggested in places).

First and foremost. DO NOT install ZenCart with any of the 'one click' installer programs. These will certainly give you a working store, BUT they will deprive of learning one of the most important aspects developing and maintaining the store.

The MANUAL installation of a ZenCart store is an essential part of the learning process. Don't skip this. don't underestimate the need for it.

Ensure that you install the 'demo' products during the installation. This will give you a fully functional store that you can experiemnt/play with to your hearts content.

At this stage make a full backup of the site.

My next suggestion (in conflict to YankeeLankee preference) is to locate/identify a template that best suits your needs. When doing this only consider the layout of the pages. Don't worry if you don't like the colours, icons, etc, at this stage you are only interested in the LAYOUT.

The installation of the templates will vary from template to template. Avoid commercial offerings, avoid any that require you to modify existing files. There are many good templates available that require little more than just uploading the files to the correct place on the server. Again, treat this as a learning process.

If possible try to screw this up so your site becomes non functional (seriously). Then restore from the backup. Repeat until you are comfortable with the process. If you have a problem with the restore, delete the installation and start again. This may sound silly, and/or a total waste of time, but if you learn how to restore a broken site early in the piece and things go wrong you won't have wasted too much time at all. There is nothing worse than than spending day/weeks creating a site (making backup along the way) only to find you don't know how to use the backups when you need them, and sooner or later you WILL need them.

At this stage you'll have a working store that will look a lot like you want, except for possibly the colours and/or icons.
Changing the icons is as easy as replacing the existing ones with your own creations (or whatever). Your experience with the installation of ZenCart and the template file will make this a trivial task.

From here, you'll have several ways you can go, depending on what you feel is the most important for you.
A) Change the colors to suit your needs. This is quite possibly the only time you'll ever need to look at anything that comes close to resembling 'code'. To do this you'll need to edit one or more of the .css style sheets. This may appear daunting to think about, but in practice it involves little more than identifying where the existing colors are defined, and changing them to suit. All you'll need for this is a simple text editor.

B) Have a GOOD think about how you want to lay out your categories and products. Careful consideration here will save you a lot of work by not having to re-do it all in a different way later.

C). EXPERIMENT with adding/editing and deleting products.

When you are quite happy with your work so far, make another backup and then start to consider what functions/features you wish to add. These are the things like the payment and shipping modules, a better editor, image handler, etc. Try not to overdo it. Only install what you are going to need. It is the installation of the various 'add-ons' where most people seem to run into troubles (and the only time where you may be required to make code changes).

By the time you get to this stage you'll be pretty much ready for anything.

I will stress that although none of these things are difficult in themselves, when putting it all together it is still quite a steep learning curve because there appears to be a lot to learn at once. Just take things slow and one step at a time, and learn as much as you can while you go. A common mistake people make is trying to do it all in one sitting/session, just blindly following instructions, but not actually 'learning' as they go. This will certainly give them a functioning store, but since they haven't learned how they got there when things do go wrong they don't even know where to look. Such folk are also very reluctant to perform any upgrades (essential for any eCommerce store) which is why there are still many people running ZenCart 1.3.8 (and older). Not a good thing.

Finally, always remember, if you have problems or questions (even if they seem 'stupid') don't hesitate to ask in these forums. There will always be someone willing to help.

Cheers
Rod

just to chip in...
I too started with trembling fingers a few years ago, I didn't even sign up to the forum for at least a year as I found all my questions had been asked and answered already so I simply didn't need to ask anything for ages. But it proves that anyone with reasonable logical abilities and the ability to read and follow instructions and advice can do it.
As well as the tools mentioned previously you will also need a file merging program. Personally I couldn't have done much without one, I recommend 'beyond compare' it's commercial I'm afraid but worth EVERY penny imho, there's a fee trial anyway. Or 'winmerge' a free piece of software.

Anyway go forth and create (your site) and as they all state, backup, backup BACKUP :wink:

picandnix:

As well as the tools mentioned previously you will also need a file merging program.

Agreed, but probably not needed when 1st starting out. I'd consider the need to use this would fall more into the 'advanced' rather than 'beginner' category/requirements. (one less thing for a newby to worry about)

Cheers
Rod

RodG:

Agreed, but probably not needed when 1st starting out. I'd consider the need to use this would fall more into the 'advanced' rather than 'beginner' category/requirements. (one less thing for a newby to worry about)

Cheers
Rod

Very true. Maybe save this tip for next week :wink:

picandnix:

Very true. Maybe save this tip for next week :wink:

Yeah. We gotta hook this fish before we can reel him in. :)

Cheers
Rod

Yes, follow what Rod said. I forget sometimes these very first steps. If you are patient and dedicated you will pick it up and be happy because you can make everything the way you want it to be. w3schools is a good resource for learning basics about changing css styles when you get to that point.

fanisme:

Please recommend a zencart design company for me. the cheaper is better.

Start learning by yourself if time , business , age allows you . I never built a web site since 4 years ago and now I'm using zencart for my business with many other non-zen-cart technologies like oracle database , pls/sql , Apex , linux shell and a zurb foundation template on the way .
Here you have a fantastic forum with fantastic people always giving you a hand by sharing their experience .

Good luck !