Shopping Carts and Ecommerce

With so many shopping cart options available, choosing one can sometimes be overwhelming. The professionals at Sedona Sky will make appropriate, budget-friendly recommendations based on how many products you intend to sell, how much control you want to have over the content, and overall design considerations.

Commercial Shopping Carts
Most shopping carts have fees associated with them that can range anywhere from $30 - $100+ per month. Each cart is unique and the features can vary significantly from cart to cart. So, it's important to research the options before making a commitment.

Free Shopping Carts
Did you know that there are some very good Open Source shopping carts available that require no monthly fees? These carts are also very user-friendly and the browser-based back end allows site owners to enter and update products with little to no web experience.

Paypal Shopping Carts
The simplest and least expensive way to set up your online store is with Paypal. Sites with only a few products or services may find that Paypal suits their needs just fine. However, if you intend for the number of products to grow over time, we may advise you to go with a more sustainable solution that may cost you a little more up front but save you a great deal in the long run.

Free SSL & Secure Server
Sedona Sky's hosting package includes a free SSL (secure certificate) that you will need in order to accept credit card payments securely on your site. Many hosting services charge up to $150 for this feature.

Merchant Accounts
Need help deciding on a merchant account provider? We can make some excellent recommendations to help streamline your decision-making process.

Do Your Market Research
You wouldn't open a brick and mortar store without doing some research to find out how much competition you can expect to have and how much of a market there is for your product or service. So, it only makes sense that the same research is done before you launch your online store. Sedona Sky can help you determine the answers to some key questions. Who are your customers going to be and how do you intend to reach them? If you intend to rely on being found in the search engines, you will need to invest in long term Search Engine Optimization and perhaps may need to even run paid ads until your site gains good organic placement in the search engines.

The Style Settings panel in the Gantry based theme administration interface provides several options for configuring the main built in stylistic aspects of the template.

Gantry also provides the ability for you to create your own custom presets based on any parameter in the theme administrator. You should determine which parameters you wish to configure to be a part of the presets.

Assigning a Style

With Gantry, the ability to assign a certain style to an individual page has never been easier and/or more efficient. Just follow these simple steps:

• Go to Extensions → Template Manager → rt_kirigami → Assignments → *Menu Item*
• Select your preset from Show Presets, configure and save.

After setting your defaults to the desired values, select the Menu Items button and choose the menu item you wish to modify the parameters for. You will then see a series of checkboxes on the left of all the supported parameters. Select the checkbox next to the parameter you wish to modify, it will then become active, and you can modify as you wish. Clicking “Save” or “Apply” in the toolbar will then save this configuration.