More 'Shopping Cart' questions

[pprryyssee]

Hello,

Firstly what a great forum! Some very interesting posts...

My situation is that I am comfortable designing static websites using xhtml, css etc... But I am considering creating an ecommerce website for a potential venture.

Ideally I would like to create my own be-spoke design and then 'bolt-on' a shopping cart system. As my potential product range is small (less than 10) I like the idea of designing the site from scratch and just applying a shopping cart to the site.

1). Which application would offer the best solution? I have seen Roman Cart and this seems reasonably suitable.

2). How easily customisable are the open source applications? As many of the sites seam very similar/ugly.

3). Which 'off the shelf' applications offer the highest level customization?

All comments are much appreciated....

Regards

[RedEvo]

Hi,

We've implemented Romancart on a few sites. We've bolted it onto the open source Joomla! CMS, works a treat. PM me if you want to see examples.

We've also implemented open source and non open source off the shelf systems.

On the one hand the capable dedicated ecom systems work very well, on the other I like running a separate cart so long as there are not too many products involved. With 10 products I wouldn't want to tie myself to a dedicated ecom system, I consider bespoke or open source cms site with RC bolted on.

d

[awebapart.com]

It looks like you are on the right track with external shopping baskets like Roman Cart, since these are best suited to people who:

1. want to keep in full control of their web design
2. want to keep their website limited to static web design technologies (i.e. HTML/XHTML/CSS not PHP/ASP)
3. have only a few simple products
4. dont mind having the basket running on an external site

As well as Roman Cart, it is also worth considering PayPal Basket:
http://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/xcl/rec/sc-intro-outside

Roman Cart will charge as soon as you want to take payments online, even if it is just with PayPal, whereas the PayPal Basket is free, but it only works with PayPal as the payment processor.

[asonda]

Sound Advice from members here as usual!

My little addition..

PayPal, as said above by Paul, is great for a few buy now buttons, a shopping basket etc...

However, if you want to go that step further...like you said this is a new venture, why not take a little look at something new for you..

I'd like to suggest that you should have a look into Joomla CMS, that way you have plenty of options, Virtuemart, Roman Cart etc...plus you can download and simply "install" with a few mouse clicks, gallarys, blogs, guestbooks and LOTS more.

I know it's PHP, however, there are a few websites that outline what and how you can change the PHP code very easily....plus you can always ask us lot if you get stuck!

Regards

JAmie

[pprryyssee]

Many thanks for your replies....

I will spend some time investigating the Joomla! options.

I like the PayPal option from a cost point of view but not sure how it looks from a customer’s perspective (i.e. if I see paypal my immediate thoughts are ebay trader etc, not that I have anything against ebay traders!).

I also like the Roman Cart option due to many of the points Paul raised but am slightly put-off by having running the basket on an external site (again from a perspective customers point of view).

[asonda]

You shouldn't be put off by PayPal, Millions of people have PayPal accounts, but you don't need to be a member to pay someone who requests payment via PayPal....

You associating Ebay with PayPal, that thought, you must remove from your mind, lots of companies, even large ones, are now offering PayPal as a payment options, as it's secure, you don't have to give out any credit card details to lots of random companies, and you can see historys of the person using PayPal!

External carts however, I agree, are a bit of a turn off...I really recommend having a look into Free Joomla and Virtuemart

[RedEvo]

You shouldn't be put off by PayPal, Millions of people have PayPal accounts, but you don't need to be a member to pay someone who requests payment via PayPal....

This is a good point well made! PayPal in fact provides an extra layer of security in many respects and I think it will enjoy a 'comeback' and shake off it's "you have to create an account" stigma.

I'm not as convinced about the argument concerning Roman Cart. I think it's a very slick system and users hardly notice they are moving to an external cart. We haven't noticed any adverse effects.

We've married Joomla! with Romancart on a few sites and it's a great combo. I understand VirtueMart is also a great product. We are heavily involved with Joomla! (for many years) but I'm just not keen on VM. Just my preference.

We've just implemented X-cart, that's VERY slick but not free.

Avoid at all costs Click Cart Pro 6. The new version is a disaster. Slick front end but a back end that will drive you to distraction.

d

[safesys]

I use PHPcart to do the checkout process and this encrypts the customer's card details which I then process offline using Paypal's virtual terminal which costs £20 a month. Stops people being put off by the Paypal aspect as all they see are screens relating to my company, but also saves going the whole merchant account route which can be very expensive for a startup.

[Poppy Design]

As a designer (not programmer/developer) I have used quite a few shopping carts but the one I use now for all my ecomm sites is ShopDirector (PHP based).

I would recommend this for for web designers if you want a decent finished result but as all pages are html based you can completely customise the HTML for all the shopping pages.

In fact I do not actually use their template pages - I design my sites then when I come to the cart pages I just pick alll the elements out of the code into my html page - this gives you complete control over the layout/design

I have also custom built Actinic sites but can be a real pain to get into pages behind the scene!

Joanne