LPD Auto Parts – ecommerce store

Written on Friday, October 9th, 2009 | Filed under: Featured, Projects

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One of my first projects was to help a friend who wanted to start an ecommerce site to sell auto parts.  He wanted a simple shopping cart with low maintenance so I recommended Yahoo! Small Business Merchant (SBM) shopping cart solution.  I really did not help set up the website as much since Yahoo SBM is a user-friendly way of getting an online ecommerce site going without too much configuration.

My contribution is the header image and the lettering.  I used Photoshop to crop a stock image of an NSX.  Then used Illustrator to paint it two color to keep the style simple and clean.  Also was the lettering for the store name.  The letters LPD are actually initials of the owners but they do not run together as well.  I made several attempts but in the end, felt having the letters kerned so it overlapped with three different distinct tones of gray color would complement the background of the store.

Over, it was a simple project and everyone is satisfied.  From this experience I do have several pro’s and con’s I want to share in regards to the Yahoo! Small Business Merchant option:

Pros:

  1. Easy set up for a shopping cart solution.
  2. Reasonable pricing starting at about $30 a month.
  3. Payment gateway integrated.
  4. Management of inventory has numerous options.

Cons:

  1. RTML – Yahoo’s own web language is a disaster and is limited in terms of providing a more appealing theme.
  2. Adding modules or components to the page and changing the layout is difficult as the RTML editor is web-based and it is very slow.  There is hardly any documentation even provided from Yahoo! and the only other solution is to hire someone who actually knows this language or uses special software to develop for it in an IDE (internal development environment).

I would say if you just want a simple store, then Yahoo’s solution is not a bad choice.  However, if you a huge catalog and want to have an unique look and ability to customize the site more thoroughly, I would recommend you staying away from this option.

For a look at some the site, please visit http://lpdautoparts.com

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