looking to set up ecommerce site. what is the best and most economical way to do it?

well you can use a something like oscomemrce or some other shopping cart software.

if you use something like oscommerce the frontend would just involve adding products to sell and change prices etc, user registration and order processing can also be managed.

it depends really how big you want your ecommerce site to be, or what you intend to sell.

if you need hosting I can help you out, http://ilobby.co.uk./

bearing in mind you would also need to understand tax as well.

You can get everything you need at http://www.dakotawebhosting.com/ They have domains, SSL certificates, and a quick shopping cart that makes it easy to set up an e-commerce site without needing to know the programming end of it. They also have merchant accounts there to process the credit cards and deposit the proceeds into your account.

It depends on what do you intend to sell. Yahoo Merchant solutions has good prices and they are very user friendly, but you need to define the product or service you are going to offer.

Please fell free to message me with any questions