Miva 5 consult-timevalue

[paracletepress]

We're looking for expertise in building a Miva 5 store. Look and feel is our top priority as we are working a a fine jewelry website.

What module should we buy to get the look and feel we need?
How do we set it up and control it?
What do the store controls mean and how should we set them?

The goal is to finish by the end of October, so this is definitely a fast track project.

We're expecting 4-6 hrs of over the phone time, but would love to keep it 2-4 to come under $budget.

Please let me know if there are any questions.

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

No offense, but you need to seriously re-adjust your expecations. While you don't necessarily need any modules to get the look and feel you want, but if you are serious about creating a "fine" jewelry web site, its going to take more than 4-6 hours of "over the phone" work.

[dotCOM_host]

What Bruce said... and your deadline expectations may be a bit unrealistic, too. While it's certainly possible to get a site up and running in well under 1 day, creating a great online store usually takes several weeks of work, if not longer. Having only 2-4 days before the end of October (depending on whether you work weekends or not), doesn't leave you a lot of time to go from concept to design to implementation and testing...

[dotCOM_host]

As a reminder... considering your deadlines... do you already have a merchant account and payment gateway? If not, you may want to start that process ASAP, as it can take a few days to get a merchant account established, then the gateway another day or three... Some can be set up quickly, others you have to wait for manual approval and verification, which can stretch into several days.

[paracletepress]

Yes, the merchant account is up, but I have setup the payment options. Any reccommendations, I'm not sure what I'm looking at back their... which ones take 1-3 days?

[paracletepress]

Yes, I see now that I may not neccesarily need any modules, due to SMT I should be able to make everything look exactly the way I want it using html. Very cool.

I'm not at all expecting any one to build a site in 4-6hrs over the phone, I'm expecting to take 65hrs in-house for implemantation and testing alone. Concepts and design are, or at least very soon :) (we love deadlines), already in place. I'm just looking for somebody who has experience to help me get where I want to go faster as obviously there isn't a whole lot of time and give a heads up on areas I need to pay attention to.


Case and point payment gateways:
Yes, I have a merchant setup, but I haven't setup a payment gateway. I don't know what I'm looking at with all the payment options. All I really want is to use credit cards. Obviously security is of import, I'm planning on buying an SSL, assuming this is must. Is "Credit Card Payment with Simple Validation" what I need? What options would take 1-3 days?

At this point there is no plan to work weekends so mon-wed is crunch time.
Thanks for the payment gateway heads up dotCOM_host.

[dotCOM_host]

You can generally get Payflow Pro set up same day, often within an hour of signup if you have entered all correct info for the merchant account settings. Other gateways can take anywhere from a day to a few days to set up. Authorize.net used to be quick, but they were bought out by Cybersource a few days ago and we have not been able to even contact them in over a week now, never mind get any new accounts set up. There are a few other gateways you can use, some better than others, but these were the top two recommended ones that a lot of clients use.