shopping cart, e-commerce

[wood1e2]

Hello, Just been thinking about e-commerce/shopping cart solutions. Now I know there are millions out, but I was wondering if there was room for a service that provided

Bespoke website
hosting
Stock control
invoice control
onsite seo (possibly keywords/titles/descriptions/dynamic URLs)
product control
x number of photos
thumbnails and larger pics
merchant service integtration
All for a small monthly fee
CSV export/import.
delivery charge admin
currency admin (if needed)

I am sure I have forgotton or miss something out.

Oh and this isn't a sales pitch, this is just a public thought :)

[belliez]

I have experience in many different types of e-commerce stores and the one I recommend is x-cart. This is not free but you get what you pay for - excellent support from both the x-cart team and the forums and a professional looking cart that ticks all your requirements.

As for free carts, I recommend Magento. Although it is a nightmare to install on most web hosting services it is almost what you want (no CSV import however).

(Incidentally, I am developing software at the moment that will allow you to upload any CSV files directly into this and any other e-commerce store).

I am not in anyway affiliated with any of these carts, these are just my recommendations from my experience.

If you need help and advice let me know. I can even get you a e-commerce site up and running within a day or two. PM me for me details.

Kind regards

Paul

[helenwilson]

I dont know how to handle online shopping carts. But I have bought and use many products through online shopping. We can get products on reasonable prices. I also know about many online furniture stores UK, who provide massive collection of modern furniture such as furniturenet.co.uk
They are really have very good home delivery service.

[wood1e2]

Thanks for that, but I was asking from the point of view of looking at developing a solution. :) To then sell at a monthly fee.

So what I was looking for was peoples, opinions, thoughts of space in the market, what facilities would be added value or would it be the case of having to provide an all singing all dancing e-commerce/shapping cart to provide a unique selling point.... ?

[belliez]

There are quite a few websites that already offer this. Seach google for free commerce stores and you will see.

Otherwise, cubecart v3 and oscommerce which are both free offers all of these features (although in my opinion both don't look very professional).

Next up would be Magento, difficult and incompatible on most hosting but looks the part (although lacks the csv options afaik).


Hope this helps.

regards

Paul

[Coderea]

Magento is the latest open source ecommerce solution and Yes..installation is not that easy until/unless you have the control over the server..
We have successfully installed magento i.e at http://www.shoppingpile.com on our server..to show some demos to the clientbase..and are working on the backend now..

[scifind]

Try CRE loaded - oscommerce with a load of contributions and hacks pre installed. The free version includes all of the above, except the SEO URLS, which can be installed in about 30 mins if you have an understanding of PHP/Mysql

[wood1e2]

So in other words the market IS crowded and not worth looking into developing a solution to sell?

Or none of the above provide totally what a e-commerce solution needs to be?

Maybe I should move this post to the business section?

[belliez]

Using Xcart, Cubecart (v3) and Magento quite a bit recently these are my thoughts based on your requirements in your original post:

Bespoke website: all carts offer templating systems plus loads of developers will develop custom templates. Xcart is partculary great because it makes use of the Smarty templating system

hosting: loads of ecommerce hosting packages and almost all hosting providers offer some form of ecommerce automated script for setting up a webstore


Stock control: standard in all carts and some have plugins for working with Sage etc

invoice control: standard in all carts, some have plugins for working with Sage etc

onsite seo (possibly keywords/titles/descriptions/dynamic URLs): Standard in most carts (definitely available in Magento, xcart and latest cubecart)

product control: standard in all carts, allows you to add/remove/edit everything related to your inventory. Xcart and Magento are very very good and have loads of options.

x number of photos: standard in most carts

thumbnails and larger pics: stancard in most carts

merchant service integtration: most carts offer standard payment processors such as paypal, google checkout, protx.. etc etc Xcart is very very good, magento is ok, cube cart is also ok (v3). However there are loads of addon payment processors available for all carts if your partcular payment processor is not part of the standard install. The only thing that would make you stand out from the crowd is if you offer your own payment processor that allows cart owners to get paid using all major credit/debit cards and then instantly make the funds available to the cart owner (see next point below).

All for a small monthly fee: you can have all this for free by searching on google or by taking out some webhosting. Many of the free/non-free ones offer payment processing etc also.

CSV export/import: xcart is pretty good, cube cart is ok, magento does not have this feature. I am currently writing windows app that allows you to import any type of CSV file and export it into any cart format for CSV importing. Eventually this will connect directly to the carts database thus avoiding the CSV importing into ther cart! This will be available shortly. PM for more details.

delivery charge admin: standard in all carts

currency admin (if needed): standard in all carts

Hope this helps, PM if you need help etc

regards

Paul

[wood1e2]

So no point in setting up/developing a competitor then?

[awebapart.com]

I was wondering if there was room for a service that provided:

Bespoke website
hosting
...
All for a small monthly fee

I think that what you are describing are hosted managed ecommerce (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=hosted+managed+ecommerce+site%3Awww.ukbusinessfo rums.co.uk&meta=) solutions, there are a number of companies that offer these services and these solutions get discussed quite a bit on these forums. These solutions are rarely fully-bespoke, more like semi-bespoke (http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=278560) or customisable to a certain extent. Off the top of my head, UK companies offering these solutions include internetretailer (quickshop on this forum), ekmpowershop, easywebstore, paceretail, BT e-shop, rentacart, store2go, doyourownsite and our ecommerce sitebuilder (http://www.awebapart.com) service (we only offer yearly payments) - to name but a few of what is a very long list. Hosting companies also offer similar solutions like 123-reg, UK2, 1and1, Easily and some hosting companies will offer one-click default installs of open source ecommerce systems. With each supplier, the system features will be different, along with the level of consultation, handholding, support etc.

[wood1e2]

I realise there are rarly bespoke, but that doesn't stop companys advertising themselves as bespoke..

The ones that come with hosting account tend to be completely template driven and cheap...hence their price!!

I will have a look at the ones you have suggested.

I presume the toughest element is dealing with customer issues 24/7?

[belliez]

competition is always good... (for the consumer off course!).

[peterstagg]

Belliez has pretty much summed up my thoughts too.
X-cart pro has the ability to act as a Shopping mall which in some ways is what you are looking to do but without the "hosted" bit to it.

I have looked at many hosted ones and found that most of these are more trouble than they are worth.

The x-cart pro could possibly be what you need if you just basically want to sell "store space" rather then the cost of the hosting and set up etc.

peter

[Red Eye Media]

It certainly is becoming quite a suturated market place for us providers.
I know this because we have been offering our systems for the last 6 years and lots of new systems have become available since then.

You would have 2 mountains to climb in my opinion.

1: Building a system that will do everything that is required / expected these days. Probably around 1 years work for a single person.

2: Getting enough clients to make it worthwhile bearing in mind most start-ups want a system for less than £30 per month. Anything above this price would be too expensive for the average start-up. We get people trying to knock us down and we only charge £29.99 per month for a Rackspace hosted system.

I wish you all the best though as competition is always good. Not only for the consumer, but for keeping existing providers on their toes.

[CatchFriday]

I just had HSBC bank on the phone to me - my programmer did an excellent job with my shopping cart (http://www.catchfriday.com/payment.php?c=gbp)API which works with both paypal and hsbc.

The reason I went for hsbc merchant account was because I found paypal so restrictive, and tedious.....

HSBC told me that I've paid for CPI, and API is inferior....... I'm using godaddy for hosting.

[wood1e2]

Many thanks for your input... :)