E-commerce website with Miva Merchant

Miva Merchant is one of the best ecommerce solutions available around for SMB to start their online business. There are many steps involved in the complete development life cycle. They have been summarized below. I have taken special care to mention them in the correct order. If anything misses please help to make them better.



1. GET A DOMAIN NAME

You need to have a business name. Think of something that someway relates to your business. Best places to register your domain name may include:



• www.godaddy.com

• smallbusiness.yahoo.com/domains/

• www.networksolutions.com





2. GET A HOSTING SPACE

Miva Merchant requires few additional software and library files to run. So, you may need to get hosting from those hosts which support Miva Merchant. There are few good hosts in the market which can really provide you some good technical support related to Miva Merchant. So, a careful research on the host is a must step to avoid future hassles and downtime.



I mention few of these over here; rest research is upto you:

• Hostasaurus, Inc

• Hosting.com

• eMediaSales



You may also find the partners listed on the Miva Merchant website at:



http://www.mivamerchant.com/partners/ix_oldsys.mv?action=screen&xid=member1



3. GET A WEB DEVELOPMENT COMPANY

This step will be necessary if you do not feel comfortable with web development languages/scripting like HTML, CSS, JavaScript and most importantly MivaScript, the proprietary Miva Merchant language



There are lots of development companies in the market which can really help you get some good website designed/developed at very nominal charges. Some of them are listed below; rest will need some research on your part:



• www.WebStoreEngineers.com

• www.MRHR.com

• www.emediasales.com

• www.2computerchicks.com

• www.orlandowebdevelopment.com

• www.durranidesign.com



4. ADD MODULES TO YOUR STORE

Modules may be required if you have a requirement that is not fulfilled by the out-of-the-box software. The companies listed above also work in this sphere and can design the modules as per your requirement. Few more companies that develop majority of the Miva Merchant modules include:



• www.emporiumplus.com

• www.vikingcoders.com

• www.sebenza.com



Miva also has a platform where you may purchase modules from different vendors. This may be the best place to hunt for modules:



www.mivacentral.com



5. POINT DOMAIN TO THE WEB SPACE

Once the site is ready, you need to point the domain to the server address. Probably this is where your host may assist you in better way. You may also look for different posts in search engines to locate the steps involved in it. The following article on Godaddy may prove useful:



http://help.godaddy.com/article/664