Ecommerce Solution

Hi Sonya, Have you taken a look at Shopify.com? I keep hearing good things about it, but haven't used it myself.

If your needs are simple, try E-junkie with paypal and google checkout options, or (even better!) try Fat Free Cart, which is basic e-junkie, but FREE!

I've used osCommerce and Joomla's VirtueMart. Both of these are opensource and free (ofcourse).

As I've mentioned to others;

Always read the forums and check out reviews. See what people are complaining about AND how quickly there is an answer and resolution. Is there plenty of support and an active community?

One concern that I have with going with a proprietary shopping cart is that, if you don't like their service or how things operate, it can be very hard to take your data and go elsewhere.

All of the big opensource shopping carts; oscommerce, Cube Cart, Zen Cart, Joomla and Drupal addons, have ways of making them SE friendly.

The nice thing about Drupal and Joomla are that they are fully functioning CMS and everything is modular (unlike some of the others mentioned). You don't need to modify the main code, just install and run the modules. If you don't like them, disable and uninstall. Drupal is said to have a high learning curve, but more capabilities than Joomla. Both are very well supported.

If you need help with design or functionality all of the big ones have plenty of people that are willing to help you out.

Wow! This question comes with a lot of caveats. Like Captain Kirk when he asks Scotty about life on a distant planet...Scotty pushes a magic button where green means yes and red means no. The question is simple--the answer is straightforward. The technology just does not happen to exist.

I am currently working with three clients who wish to market goods and services through the internet. Past ecommerce engagements exceeded $750k. Selecting a program should follow development of a technology plan derived from a solid business plan.

Avoid dissappointment and possible economic disaster. Plan ahead and know what you are getting for what you pay. Setting up ecommerce can range from simply listing items on ebay to custom development of a distributed datastore on co-located servers with thousands or millions in distributed inventory. After all, Amazon is just an ecommerce operation.

i am about to implement WP ecommerce .. i'll let you know how it goes. if you go to their site they have some example carts up.

you can get much more SEO or user friendly than wordpress in my opinion. if you already have a wordpress site, getting it working is as easy as dropping it under your plug-in folder.

you can't get much more seo...i meant..

I've done a few sites with Zen Cart and it's Free. The best part is all the contributions by users including like 60 different themes to chose from for an easy start.

Mal's ecommerce -handle digital downloads -integrate shipping from usps or ups -custom cart to match your site -great community -supports many merchant processors -can do a lot with the freebie

http://www.mals-e.com/

My vote goes for Zencart...

We use 1ShoppingCart. It has a great package if you want to do email marketing and also, great for ebooks sales.

so far, wp commerce is going together pretty smoothly.. check back in on this thread weekly and let you know how it's progressing.

just

Most of the web sites I build are either based in Wordpress or Joomla.

I typically recommend one of the cart systems for Joomla for e-commerce. When you have a site that is advanced enough to include a shopping cart it is also advanced enough to have a full blown Content Management System. While I know Word Press works for many of you as a primary site engine, it is just not quite flexible enough more me to recommend it for this purpose.

So my Joomla shopping carts recommendations include Virtuemart and ECJC. Virtuemart is the most widely used cart within Joomla, but ECJC is an entirely revamped version of OS Commerce written specifically for Joomla and it includes many add-ons and advanced features.

Hi Sonya,

I can't help you with your original question, but I am curious to learn more about your new site. Please e-mail when you get a chance (GreenDiamondConsulting@comcast.net). Best, Gina

I've tried two solutions and both work well. If you like GoDaddy (www.godaddy.com) as your ISP provider they have a very easy to integrate shopping cart application which I used to successfully test selling a $225 information product online. The second solution which I use now, because of it's scalability and flexibility is 1shopping cart (www.1shoppingcart.com). You may want to use both vendors. A rule of thumb that works well in business is having at least two vendors for critical supplies or functions.

The thing you really need to look at here is total cost. You can go with open source. The applications are free but who is going to set it up, maintain it, fix it when it breaks? You can find yourself in a ton of debt dealing with open source.

Now don't get me wrong, I love open source. But it is not without its problems. Zen cart is very hard to set-up and maintain if you don't know it. oscommerce is a bit easier but still has issues. When you are dealing with open source you are dealing with coders that think they can design. UI design is not easy. It takes research, study and methodology's that developers don't normally learn or use. So open source, while free up front, can be costly in the long run.

If you are an established company, and are looking to upgrade to something better than what you have, I suggest going with a licensed application. it can be hosted by the provider or sold as a stand alone application. But hosting is the easy part. The hard part is all the planning, design and research that went into the development of the product you are actually going to pay for up front which will usually end up being cheaper in the long run.

The strongest e-commerce apps are going to be developed on the ASP.NET platform. I have used several and they are much easier to step-up, build out and maintain.

Remember, it is not the initial cost you need to be concerned about. It's the labor cost afterwards that are associated with the decision you make.

I hope this helps.

Zou hao.

Another consideration...where to host the site? Loading hundreds of items remotely can be quite a challenge if not actually impossible. Any comments regarding bulk upload and bandwidth issues? One of my clients wants to move a store from its present installation...no obvious solution occurs yet.

Hi Sonya, I did quite a bit of research into this about 1.5 years ago, including talking to a number of big names in info-marketing like Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero, Fred Gleek, etc. and they all use 1shoppingcart or a privatly branded version of it.

After a bit more research I chose it too for a number of reasons:

It's an industry standard so it's easy to find people who know how to work with it, and they regularly update and improve the system.

It's got integrated email autoresponders, newsletter broadcasting, affiliate programs and more so I can create customized follow up campaigns to different customers and stay in touch with everyone via my newsletter.

Because it offers so many features, it's a good system to grow with. You can start with a lower-priced version then upgrade as needed.

It's reasonable priced, and even their credit card provider is quite inexpensive (cost me the same or less than using PayPals virtual terminal to accept cc's.

You can use it on as many Websites as you want. I beleive the only limit is your list cannot exceed 10,000 or you have to pay more.

Tech support has been really, really good. This alone is worth paying a little extra in my book since it saves me hours of frustration.

I've been very happy with the system and plan to keep using it for some time to come.

Best of luck, Stacy