It's no secret, a shopping cart site takes a lot of planning. Before you even think of hiring a web designer, make sure that you have all of your ducks in a row. Where do I begin? 1. Website Name & Domain Registration. Everybody uses GoDaddy. You should, too. 2. Web Host which supports PHP and MYSQL. We recommend Blue Host. 3. Company logo 4. Color scheme. If you just want a template site, check out Template Monster. 5. Labeled product images in size 450X450 pixels, jpg. format 6. Product descriptions: Size, weight, price, care instructions, manufacturer/designer, shipping options, available colors & sizes, where is the product made and a full product description. 7. Website copy: About Us, Contact Us, Privacy Policy, Legal, Return Policy, Shipping, Payment Options, Newsletter, and Home page. 8. Shipping policies: Will you drop ship or ship to customers directly from your current in-house stock? Will you ship via USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL? Will you be shipping internationally? If you are going to ship internationally, do you know how? 9. Contracts for Drop Shippers, if applicable: Are you using Drop Shippers? What percentage of sale will you pay them for each product sold? 10. Merchant Account: How are you going to take payment? You must secure a Merchant Account from your bank as well as a payment gateway such as Authorize.net. Are you going to take PayPal as a form of payment? Make sure you do your homework. 11. Taxes: What state are you from? What percentage of tax do you pay per transaction? Are you going to charge taxes on your site? 12. Business License: Buying and selling online requires you to be established. 13. Accounting: Are you going to hire an accountant or do all accounting on your own? Will you send out receipts with each order? 14. Returns: What is your return policy? Will you require your customer to pay for shipping in order to return their damaged or undesired item? How would you like to be treated by an online merchant? 15. Budget: How much money are you willing to pay for a website? How will you purchase stock? Can you afford advertising? Are you going to have a Blog? Do you have time to maintain a Blog? Can you afford a webmaster? Can you afford a marketing representative? Will you send out Press Releases and SWAG to magazines, newspapers and even celebrities? 16. Who will update the products on your site? New stock means new updates! How much time do you have set aside in a day to add and take down products? Can you hire someone to do this for you? Do you know how to use Photoshop? Can you re-size an image? Can you make a .jpg? What is your level of expertise? If you cannot re-size images, you must factor in the need to hire a webmaster. 17. What is your expected return on investment? If you don't advertise in the right places, people will not know about your site. How do you think people will find you on search engines? There are millions of ecommerce sites on the web, how will you make your website stand out? Don't be mistaken, just because you have a website with a shopping cart and you offer amazing products, this does not mean that you will automatically make sales. Before you even think of hiring a web designer, please take the above 17 points into consideration. Once you can answer all of the questions, and can deliver on all needs, then you are ready to start your adventure. Good Luck!