[thelist] dynamic sites

[Roger Newbrook]

Chris said

"Am I making sense? Anyone got any experience with Actinic? (my impression :
it will take too much control) Do you know of any good shopping solutions?
(not a low end solution)."

I suppose it depends on how much control you want to take. Have had a little
experience with actinic (about 2 yrs ago) and it is very straightforward to
use/populate/update etc and created the database for you depending on
specifications you input during setup. it uses standard templates which, to
be honest are a little dull, they can be altered to fit within your own
corporate branding (once you have played with it, you'll be surprised at how
many other sites use it from recognising the templates!) though this was
rather fiddly if i remember correctly and the documentation as to how to
customise was a little minimal shall we say.

I think they have an evaluation copy you can download and play around with
and also several of their client's site links that you can browse to give
you an idea of how flexible a tool it is re graphics and layout.

check that you company's bank account is with an acceptable bank for actinic
to work as, at the time, they couldn't support HSBC (if i remember
correctly) accounts for some reason (this was a couple of years ago as i say
so it might all have been sorted now).

www.lush.co.uk uses shop assistant. I put in a bid a couple of years ago
which i didn't get :( for the bespoke development of their site. they
decided to have a go themselves with shop assistant after seeing the cost
(not just mine but all of them) of bespoke development. think they did
quite a good job too.

hth

roger