Finding website developers for multi-site e-commerce integration

You should essentially say what you wrote above, and let the developer ask you the questions they see as being pertinent. If you incorporate the comments from Jay, then you would have a good opening post.

As for where to find developers, you can post on Craig's List, or Elance, or Rent-A-Coder, or one of many other outsourcing sites. Or you can respond to someone on this site (shameless plug for myself here) asking for a quote to develop such a site.

See The Monster List of Freelance Job Sites

I don't believe that the type of web service you are asking for can be found as an "off the shelf" type application - it needs to be developed to meet your goals. That said, the "application" that would "be best" would be dependent on the toolset the developer(s) you choose.

I would focus on documenting what the customer should experience when they visit your new site. Referencing other sites is good, but be specific: what will they see when they first arrive to the site? will they need to sign in before searching? etc.

you also may want to create a mockup of what the site will be using a tool like Balsamiq Mockups The more information you can provide about what you want, the better.

Andy,

I think, you need someone who is apt at designing API's (Application Programming Interfaces).

From your description, it is evident that you'd get the relevant info from the individual vendors. You'd also need a buy-in from those vendors to provide you the relevant details so that you can legally show those on your web pages. In order to keep the displayed information 'always current' building API's or exposing webservices is envisaged. The other non-ethical way is to 'crawl+scrape' the websites of these vendors. STRICTLY REFRAIN from doing so.

Check with your potential candidate for proper competency in the above area.

How these companies that you are associated with provide data is going to be a huge factor in the cost of this site. If they willingly provide timely access to their data in as standard of a format as possible (webservice, api, etc), this shouldn't be too hard.

If you have no relationship with these people and need to hire someone to scrape these data off of their websites periodically, you may need a lot more coding.

You need to start contacting web developers who have done this type of thing before and start getting some quotes.

jay - as jeff says above - a REST API guru is something you will almost certainly need...we were screen scraping myspace 5 years ago and it is by no means an exact science - having run artists first - and been involved in tech builds for nearly 10 years - I've got a pretty good idea of what's involved - but as others have said - its by no means an easy task - especially if the people who's sites you are effectively becoming an affiliate for - don't have decent API's themselves

before any of this though - a business plan and a decent set of financials is (in my experience) your first port of call - do you have those?

mark

First, you need to develop a sitemap or flowchart that details as much as possible all of the functionality that you want in the web site. Have it setup so that is follows a customer as he uses each feature of the site. This will help you to think more clearly about what functionality needs to be in the site. It will also be a good document to share with potential developers you interview. Doing your homework in this way helps you to think clearly about your needs and present a better picture of the requirements to a potential developer.

There are a lot of avenues available to you for finding individuals with the skills needed to build a web application, some of which were mentioned in the other answers. But beyond finding candidates you need to be able to filter them: which ones are good at what they do? Which ones are worth the cost? It's going to be very difficult for you to answer these questions because you're unfamiliar with the domain.

Here are a couple of strategies for filtering the many options when choosing developers, designers, etc:

1. Ask someone you trust, and who is knowledgeable about the domain, to review your candidate's website, resume, or even talk to the candidate. Ask his opinion of the candidate and the work he or she does.
2. Require references, and check on them. Ask the people who had previously worked with the candidate if they would use him or her again.
3. Require example work. If you're trying to find a designer make sure you like his or her examples. If you're trying to find a developer make sure the example work approximates the size and complexity of what you want to build
4. Make sure your personalities are compatible. Can the candidate explain things in a way that you understand? Do you find yourself wanting to disagree with him or her?

The hard part of finding a developer or designer to work with is picking the right one, hopefully this helps.