anyone used romancart?

[alan888]

Anyone used this before? i need a ecommerce website that is simple, something i can easily change. I don't want that looks like oscommerce or zencart

[Spire]

Hi

I did use it a little a year or 2 back, but decided to learn coding and I have since build my own.

I think these day's Roman Cart have got a little expensive, and in addtion it can be a bit of a do setting it up, they keep adding functinallity which in my view makes it more and more complex.

I think it's the age old problem of 1 product trying to be all things to all people.

[Pilfo]

Brilliant!

We've been using them for a number of years and would certainly recommend them!

Pilfo

[awebapart.com]

RomanCart works in a similar way to the PayPal shopping basket, in that it provides the basket functionality as a service on its exterior website (the roman cart website). You integrate this with your website by cutting and pasting HTML form code into your site, so that when users click on 'add to basket' on your site they are taken to the romancart site for the basket.

This does have the advantage that you can control to a certain extent what your site looks likes, how the products are navigated etc, more so than with osCommerce or ZenCart.

However you really are back to a templated and constrained design when it comes to what appears on your RomanCart basket website, and it is fairly basic (no product images in the basket). So whilst you gain better control of the looks of your site, you can lose control in other areas with a basic basket design.

You asked for something easy to change. I would say that the RomanCart type solution is easy to customise on your site, but not easy to change (reduce prices, offers, add products, etc) on a regular basis since it involves either cutting and pasting HTML code or editing HTML code. For this reason, integrating RomanCart or PayPal basket to a static HTML site is only practical for sites with a few products that don't change often (for example Pilfo's site).

There is the other issue of user experience and online shopping trust. A user visits your site, likes what they see, and decides to buy. They are then taken to a romancart site with roman powered branding where they are asked to provide address details (they probably haven't heard of romancart so this could be worrying and offputting) before they are then sent to third website for payment (e.g. protx, paypal). At least with the PayPal basket more people have heard of PayPal and there are only 2 websites involved not 3. The problem with the PayPal basket is it limits you to PayPal as the only paying option (although if you have a free Paypal business account your customers dont have to have PayPal accounts to pay you, they can make direct credit/debit card payments).

RomanCart and PayPal basket are worth considering for static HTML sites selling a small number of products. If you are happy with just PayPal processing your customers credit/debit cards then I personally would opt for the PayPal Basket, there are no setup/ongoing fees with PayPal apart from the cut they take processing your transactions.

If you have complicated product options associated with a product, e.g. options that affect price, then you may find that RomanCart can cope better with these requirements.

If you have a lot of products, or products that need changing on a regular basis (prices, reductions, offers, discounts, etc), or if you have complicated pricing options, or if you have other advanced e-commerce needs (e.g. stock control), or if you want a 2 website payment solution (with the basket fully integrated and resident on your site), then osCommerce and Zencart are more appropriate solutions.

osCommerce and Zencart are customisable, in fact ZenCart is a customised version of osCommerce, and if you use the right supplier, your site need not look like the standard osCommerce and Zencart sites you see. For instance our sitebuilder solution uses our own customised (and customisable) version of osCommerce, and it allows our sitebuilder clients to have a shop (with a much more simple interface) as a section within their normal website.

[Sue F]

My in laws had been using Roman Cart for about a year when they recommended it to me ... I've been using it for six months.

I really like it.

If you want to take electronic payments you pay a subscription ... mine was about £50 for a year if I remember rightly.

I do my own stock control but if you pay more your cart does that for you.

I've found it very easy to use and it's customisable (for example I've got my own add to basket graphic and my emails and payment screens etc have my shop logo on them).

It's ideal for what I want, I haven't had any problems and it's been reliable too.

When I signed up I was given an email address for new users to iron out any issues you have ... only used it a couple of times but they were quick to answer and solved my questions.

[.Spiralling.]

I use Roman Cart and I really like it. What I really like about it, and what other solutions I looked at didn't offer in an easy-to-use way, is the shipping section. I can specify a weight for each product and specify weight bands for shipping. I can specify different costs for different shipping zones. That's important to me - I sell quite a lot to people in the States and need to be able to differentiate the shipping without charging a fee per item (customer invariably gets over charged) or flat fee per basket (store invariably loses out).

[kayemdesign]

Have a word with Phil at Open Mind Commerce as he's soon to be launching a very good eCommerce product which i've had the pleasure to beta test. It's a simple no fuss eCommerce solution that i'm sure will fit your needs. If you need any help with skinning the software please let me know :)

Steve

[.Spiralling.]

Just re-read some of this and want to correct a couple of things:

would say that the RomanCart type solution is easy to customise on your site, but not easy to change (reduce prices, offers, add products, etc) on a regular basis since it involves either cutting and pasting HTML code or editing HTML code.

Not true. you can , as I do, choose to use the product manager. This means that the code you put on your wensite contains only the product code and your shop code. The basket take everything else it needs from your product manager. This is where you enter the price, title, weight, tax and whatever else you need (such as size and colour options etc). If you want to change something, you simply open the product manager, make the change and save. No html, no uploading etc.

They are then taken to a romancart site with roman powered branding where they are asked to provide address details

Again, not necessarily. You can customise the look of the basket and checkout pages, choose what the text says, choose whether or not to have the RomanCart branding on there or not.

[awebapart.com]

you can , as I do, choose to use the product manager. This means that the code you put on your wensite contains only the product code and your shop code. The basket take everything else it needs from your product manager. This is where you enter the price, title, weight, tax and whatever else you need (such as size and colour options etc).
Interesting, so does that mean if you want to reduce the price of say your first item on your home page from £11 to £10 and visibily show that you have reduced the price, you don't need to touch your site at all? And does that mean you can have a "this month's specials category" where you can move products in and out without changing your site? And can you add products without changing your site?

You can customise the look of the basket and checkout pages, choose what the text says, choose whether or not to have the RomanCart branding on there or not.

I agree you can change it to a certain extent but what I was getting at here is that the website address of your basket is still displayed as www . romancart ... and you are still moving from a freeform design of your HTML website which you have total control over to a constrained design of an external cart, which you have limited control over. I made this point because people sometimes go the HTML/romancart/paypal cart because they think it will give them complete control over the look of their site, avoiding other shop systems because they think other sites look boring. It does give you great control over your website product browsing interface but when it gets to the cart part you are back to the normal constrained design of other systems.

[awebapart.com]

Roman cart's product is taking a step in the right direction allowing products to be managed to a certain extent in one place on the romancart server, and have some information fed into to your static HTML site in real time using Javascript (e.g. prices, stock numbers), but it will never be as flexible as having an integrated advanced dynamic e-commerce on a server. If they choose to do so, it is technically feasible for the developers of Roman Cart to go a step further in future releases and take control of the whole category and product listings and provide Javascript feeds of all of this to your static HTML website, however the more they feed at runtime via Javascript, the less control you will have over the visuals, and the less will be picked up by the search engines, so they might not do it for this reason.

It does go to show, however, that the RomanCart solution is a lot more sophisticated than the PayPal basket solution - it should be since that's what they specialise in. But I would still recommend an integrated shopping solution (e.g. osCommerce and Zencart) for shops with lots of products and shops which want to encourage sales with regular offers, discounts, price reductions, new products etc and for shop owners who dont want to get involved with cutting and pasting HTML (even when initially setting up products).

[mercurywebdesign]

Also consider Mals basket system (www.mals-e.com (http://www.mals-e.com)). Some of my clients use this system and have never had any issues with it. Very similar to roman cart I believe, it is free to use, script is remotely hosted by them and you can pay something like £50 to upgrade to use Worlpay, ProTX etc. It's worth a look as another option for you.