New business setup

Hi Everyone,

first post here, looks like a great forum.

I've built myself a machine called a cnc plasma cutting table. It's used for automated profile cutting of metal sheets. I'm looking at selling both fixed design and custom designed products. These are sheet metal goods so are not exactly light weight. I'm in Melbourne, Australia and can see me using couriers to get these items to the customers. I don't envisage any overseas orders LOL.

As an internet marketing beginner, my thoughts are along these lines. Please feel free to shoot me down and tell me I have it all wrong, I'm here to learn.

Despite the fees, I'm guessing Ebay should be a good way to start and to sell fixed products at "buy it now" prices. Plus the market is already there and set up, and it's a good channel to make some initial sales.

I'm also going to need my own e-commerce store. I've been looking into Shopify but don't know if the quantity of variants is enough in the cart area. I need my customers to be able to choose several different fields like size, colour, material, thickness, etc, then the price is calculated based on those variables. Then there needs to be capability for them to enter their custom text and font. The more I can automate this "custom" process the better.

The next level is full customisation where I take a bit of this, a bit of that, and stick it all together to give a finished image. This is where my next though comes to mind.

I've used Xsitepro in the past. I'm wondering how practical / impractical it is to have another website made with this software. It's purpose will be to show LOTS (hundreds) of examples of what is possible with my services. In this industry a common saying is the customer doesn't know what he/she wants until they see it. So I'm wanting a link from my e-commerce site (like Shopify) to my image display site (Xsitepro). Am I thinking along the right lines here ? I know Xsitepro is now dead (and Paul Smithson has even closed the forum !!) but is there any downside to using it to build a static site for the said purpose.

Cheers,

Keith.