Give your views on shopping cart

[Parvez]

Dear All,

Appreciate if you can share your views on the following shopping cart.
cubecart.com

Although we create the shopping carts for our clients, however; it seems to be recommendable to use cubecart as well.

Lets share our views and also better options, if you know.

Cheers!:)

[nsdesign]

You'll get mixed reviewes on Cubecart (as with any other cheap/free off the shelf package)... But our experience is good.

It's extremely customisable, and with some advanced PHP programming knowledge you can build in lots of extra functionality above and beyond the normal (although there's also a very active community where lots of free and paid for "mods" can be sourced also).

A few people think it's quite restrictive and that all cubecart sites look the same.. we don't share that view, but that's probably due to the time/effort we've spent getting to know the details and specifics of the "inner workings" and how to enhance/modify it...

The good thing is, it's free to try (you can later pay to remove the branding etc, and get better support) so give it a go, and see how well it performs for you... In my opinion, it's definately one of the better systems (compared to the likes of OSC, and Zencart etc) and uses mostly clean accessibility compliant code which is a big plus.

Hope this helps...

Gary

[gnaldrett]

I totally agree with Gary, I had a play with CubeCart for a while when I was working on another project. If you are willing to spend the time learning how it works it is the most professional of the lowcost systems.

Whilst brushing up on my skills to customise it though, I decided that due to my specific needs I would develop my own CMS/Ecommerce site. This is now more relevant as I have since closed Computec and am now working towards an online venture.

I would certainly give it a try, even if it is on a testing server for a while and see how you get on. Visually it is far more flexible than the likes of osc etc.

Regards,

Gordon

[nsdesign]

Gordon,

if you get the chance... drop me some details on your own cms/ecommerce system...

thanks
Gary

[sirearl]

From a SEO point of view all shopping carts are a pain.
I always put up feeder sites in HTML to obtain high rankings on search engines

[sirearl]

oops further info here http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769

look at technical info

[nsdesign]

Sirearl,

Not sure that I agree with you there.... With proper customisation, compliant xhtml/css code, and good use of titles, headers, and content etc - it's perfectly possible to get "shopping cart" systems (such as cubecart) to get very get Search engine results....

Gary

[sirearl]

You don't have to agree with me Gary There are thousands of us SEO who would gladly dump every shopping cart ever built :)

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2004/02/12/evaluating-a-search-engine-friendly-shopping-cart

[gnaldrett]

if you get the chance... drop me some details on your own cms/ecommerce system...


It is still very much a work in progress, after using a bodged system for Computec I decided to write an app from the ground up specific to my new venture's needs.

It is (as most are) a PHP/MySQL web application, predominately ecommerce, but with facility for content to be changed and managed via an online admin interface. The other reason for this is that it requires a rather unique cart system - for reasons I can't go into yet. (my idea is still at a rather hush hush stage until the software is complete).

As you mentioned above, I am working hard on making it as SEO friendly and compliant as possible via heavy use of CSS and xhtml.

Is that what you meant by telling you more, or were you after more specific info?

Regards,

Gordon

[sirearl]

Hi Parvez I see your based in India.I must admit to being a bit worried about the amount of Indian based SEO that is hitting the web ,and the extremely low rates you are able to offer £5.00 an hour and below as against a top SEO in the UK charging £600.00 per day plus,I just don't see how we can compete.Especialy as the quality of work improves along with the profound understanding of the english language needed.I can only wish you well as the west has had it to easy for to long :)