Shopping Cart

[loubycee]

Hi

Don't shoot me down if this question contradicts itself - I'm a sensitive soul!

Do you know of any free basic software I can use for a shopping cart, I want to add it to a site and play about with it, a learning curve.... if you can offer advice or links then I'd be delighted

Thanks
L

[NetConneXions]

http://www.zencart.com
http://www.oscommerce.com
http://www.magentocommerce.com

3 of many

although you want to add a cart to a shop. You could just use paypal buy buttons to the site.

[Steve2507]

Hi

Don't shoot me down if this question contradicts itself - I'm a sensitive soul!

Do you know of any free basic software I can use for a shopping cart, I want to add it to a site and play about with it, a learning curve.... if you can offer advice or links then I'd be delighted

Thanks
L
First question is how many products are you selling?

If you have one or two items that fit nicely in your site then basic PayPal buttons will probably be sufficient. After all why go to the expense (and hassle) of a fully fledged e-commerce set up when the ROI could be years.

However if you are going to have dozens of products then a fully fledged set up may be better.

Does your current set up use a CMS like Joomla etc? If it does then you may find something which can be added to it.

Otherwise rather than finding software to plug into your site you may need to plug your site into the software.

We use VPASP (www.vpasp.com (http://www.vpasp.com)) and are very happy with it. Would definitely recommend it, but make sure a full system is really what you need first.

[loubycee]

Hi

We have a few sites, something that we should have learned earlier actually - do you mind if I pm you as there are a few details that I don't want to launch here? Thanks in advance

L

[mke]

loubycee, shopping cart software is simply CMS for ecommerce. Any of those suggested by PhillipH, and many others, too, will live quite happily as a folder/subdirectory within a web site as well as being quite happy to have non-cart parts of the site as its own subsidiary pages or drectories.

The major CMSs such as Joomla and Drupal have dedicated plug-in carts and third party interfaces to match with the better known independent carts such as Zencart and osCommerce.

The word basic may hold some shocks, though. Most CMS packages are sophisticated and ecommerce CMS tends to be even more so. Be aware of the required learning curve and the required patience to match.

On a happier note, all of these are indeed free to download, install and use.

Good luck with it.

[Steve2507]

Hi

We have a few sites, something that we should have learned earlier actually - do you mind if I pm you as there are a few details that I don't want to launch here? Thanks in advance

LNo problem, pm me anytime.

[FitnessandHealth]

we used ekmpowershop many times, and quite happy with them