Any idea what shopping cart this is?

Yes it does look nice and parts of its looks are something for us to aspire to with maybe the next version of our online shop sitebuilder service (we like to keep an eye on other online shop solutions to see what the competition can do and what they do not do).

I suspect that it was custom developed from scratch (because I cant see any evidence of it being a customised existing system), so it probably cost the owners a hell of a lot more than £800.

It is still not without its faults, for instance there aren't any product images for products in the basket, and you cannot click on a product in the basket to review its details.

I think that the search is limited too, it is not a full-text search since it gives a result for:

talking silk rose

but nothing for:

talking rose

But apart from these minor things, it does look good.

Mrjibbles said:

Hi All

Any idea what shopping cart this is , or a custom built site?

redsave

Looking to find a cart like this without having to spend £800 at the moment as im just starting up.

Using EKMPowershop at the moment , but thinking of switching to Actnic Express

Anywya, any info or advice would be great as i love the clean look of it

Cheers

Rob

Click to expand...

The main point is the design aspect.
If it is just the design look and feel that you like for a modest budget like yours you could easilly get a custom template for an open source shopping cart / budget price range shopping cart.

Somewhere like templatemonster will give you a cleanlook template for a free shopping cart like oscommerce for under £100

Just be careful with the oscommerce template route, here's an oscommerce template checklist:

1. Is the template a fully working oscommerce installation or just a graphic picture of what the design should look like. If it's the latter then you will have your work cut out customising oscommerce to look like the design and it may not even be feasible (people can easily draw things that aren't feasible). At least templatemonster lets you see the template in action in a live demo, this is a lot better than some template providers.

2. Even if its a fully working oscommerce installation you will still have to install this on a website, and it is not straightforward, especially for those with little experience of PHP/MySQL/Apache/FTP etc.

3. Is the template a UK business one. If not you will have further customising work to do, most templatemonster templates, like oscommerce itself, have a US slant/feel (e.g. 'cart' rather than 'basket').

4. Is the template a professional one, rather than one that just looks good in a screenshot. If not you will have further customising work to do, e.g. adding security to ensure than the admin area is password protected, adding other contributions required for a professional site

5. Does the template include other oscommerce modules (e.g. auto thumbnail), if not then it will still require further techie customisation to add these features. With most templatemonster templates you cannot tell whether autothumbnailing is present, in most cases it isn't, and they hide this in the live demo by just having nice small thumbnails that enlarge onto nice small thumbnails again (not larger images)

6. Does the template include stock photos you intend to use, if so make sure it is from a reputable source and the template designer has the license to redistribute these images, otherwise you could end up getting sued by the image owner, e.g. gettyimages. (This is something to be aware of when buying any cheap template). Templatemonster was actually sued by Microsoft (Corbis) for this a few months ago.

7. Does the template include support. With an oscommerce template you are buying a system based on default oscommerce code that has subsequently been changed. If the template supplier doesn't support this code, then who does? It will be difficult to get help from the oscommerce forums since not only do you not have a standard oscommerce setup, you also dont know exactly what is different about your code from the standard code.

8. Be aware that oscommerce templates are a bit of a misnomer, they are not like a skin for your media player, or a theme, or wallpaper, they are complicated changes to already complicated oscommerce code. In most cases an oscommerce template is a customised oscommerce system, not a plug and play design theme added on (default osCommerce does not have this capability).

9. Are there any other oscommerce modules you need to add on (e.g. PayPal IPN). If so this will be even more difficult since the installation instructions are based on installing to a default oscommerce setup not a custom 'template' one.

10.Check that the template has customers using it, and contact those customers to see what they think of the template, how easy it was to setup, what was the true cost including support further customisation by the tempate owner etc.

11. As with most templates, never assume that because a picture of a system looks cool, or even a demo looks cool, it will actually work in the real world or is a working system.

12. Be aware that with the default osCommerce setup, even what appears to be the simplest of confuration changes, e.g. switch off the currencies box since I'm only selling in the UK, usually requires a PHP code change!

13. Some webhosting packages include osCommerce already installed, this doesn't necessarily mean that the web host will support your osCommerce setup, and they definitely wont support it if you overwrite it with a template setup.

14. Is there a money back guarantee if you find the template unusable or it is just 'sold as seen'

For a small initial outlay for a 'look' you could end up spending a lot more using the services of PHP/osCommerce professionals trying to get the system you actually want.

Personally I do not recommend templates, unless you know what you are doing with osCommerce, PHP, MySQL, etc.

Hi awebapart

Nice comprehensive list.

I agree with all of your points.

Personally I do not recommend templates, unless you know what you are doing with osCommerce, PHP, MySQL, etc.

Click to expand...

Again I agree with this.
The suggestion I made with the template + oscommerce was through my experience as I have had many years with all of the above.

The point of my post was to illustrate that it is possible to generate a 'clean' looking shopping cart without a team of coders and a huge budget.

I would go further to say that it shouldnbe possible to get a very nice looking, fully functional shopping cart for less than £800.

Hi Scifind

I agree, it certainly is possibly to get a clean looking professionally customised advanced online shop based on osCommerce for less than £800, since that is what my company is offering with our sitebuilder service for £250+VAT per annum which includes professional hosting, and you dont need to know anything about PHP/MySQL, nor pay someone who does, since the service is aimed at business people.

Whether the 'look' a client can get with our 'off-the-shelf' service is right for the client, that is another matter. As with most end-user off-the-shelf systems, you do have to make certain compromises, we cannot mimic the exact look of RedSave yet, but we continue to work on making our sitebuilder more flexible with different design options and customisations, and it can certainly adapt now to different colour schemes and branding (even the button colours).

If you are non-technical (i.e. not a PHP/MySQL/HTML/CSS developer) and you must go the osCommerce template route then at a stretch, and if you are very lucky, you may find a competent experienced professional who can install it on your server, and then code/install all the extra contributions necessary to make your site workable and professional for less than £700, after you've paid £100 for your template. (Tip: if you really want to buy a templatemonster template, rather than buy full-price, set yourself up as an affiliate first, elect to give your customers 20% off rather than taking 20% commission, then buy from yourself to save 20%.)

But there's also ongoing webhosting costs to consider too. A good shop cannot be placed on the cheapest of webhost plans because they dont normally provide everything required for the system (e.g. MySQL, PHP with graphics extensions installed for autothumbnailing). A good shop should have pages and images that load quickly, which you wont get on a lot of the cheap/medium hosting plans because the cheaper the hosting, the more websites they stuff on the same box, and the slower your pages load.

And finally there's the ongoing financial maintenance costs involved with taking ownership and responsibility for an advanced and complex software system which you now have and by now is unique and different to any other osCommerce system due to the customisations you have made to make it professional (a software system containing over 500 php files, a relational database with 50 tables, and over 40000 lines of codes). Get a system working today and you should be planning how to migrate it to a system based on v3 of osCommerce in the near future (it wont be a simple upgrade because v3 will only be backwards compatible with the v2.2 default osCommerce installation, which you dont have because you've bought a custom template installation and then added to and customised that).

I paint a black picture, but really I think osCommerce is great if you know what you are doing and what you are letting yourself in for. It is great because it is open source and that can give you freedom if you know what you are doing. It also has a great community of people making it better, not just one company.

Going back to the redsave example, if their developers chose the osCommerce customisation route rather than the custom development from scratch route they probably could have saved themselves thousands (perhaps even tens of thousands) in development costs and ended up with a better system that had a brighter future ahead.

Mrjibbles said:

Hi All

Any idea what shopping cart this is , or a custom built site?

www.redsave.com

Looking to find a cart like this without having to spend £800 at the moment as im just starting up.

Using EKMPowershop at the moment , but thinking of switching to Actnic Express

Anywya, any info or advice would be great as i love the clean look of it

Cheers

Rob

Click to expand...

I don't know anything about this site or it's software except that it is running ASP which requires a Windows server.

If you are just starting up and trying to save on costs this might not be your best option.

Regards

Dotty

Windows and Linux systems are as good as each other nowadays, my hosting company solid host, say that they have less tickets for the windows machines than their Linux machines, even considering they have more Linux accounts, the proportions are still Linux has more tickets.

I have been using windows for about 7yrs now and at the beginning yes it was buggy and terrible, but now I'm very pleased with it, I have 2 VPS accounts with solid host one Linux, one windows, and it is a great way of working, using both. If you are going to use PHP though, use Linux, as its designed for, but Windows does the same job, just has a few problems with windows that you can work around, but nothing you will notice as a none programmer.

The comments on Oscommerce are a little biased. You will find people who have used it for a long time to love it, but if they went open and looked at the new versions of Joomla and Virtue mart, you will see it is light-years ahead of Oscommerce. Here is a huge conversation about it, where even the Osco guys realized that virtue mart isn't the buggy component it was a few years back, and is a serious competitor to OSC
http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=25891

I can make you a site with the full ecommerce system to any supplied design you like (including one you find on template-monster) to be totally W3 valitable (which Osco wont, rendering it illegal due to the disability discrimination act as Braille readers can t see it) for about £250 set up and about £20 per month afterwards.

http://www.entouragemodels.com/
That's a modeling site where I used Virtue mart as a catalogue for the models, only went live on Thursday evening.

http://www.newworlddesigns.co.uk/homeandgarden
That design was supplied to me, so I didn't have the design options of it, but you can see it's not bad, it only went live on my test account this morning so it's very empty. This is what they had, which is using actinic and doesn't work correctly http://www.shophomeandgarden.co.uk/acatalog/Furniture.html (I never made this)

http://www.spot-ontv.co.uk/
This guy makes a fortune out of this site, but spends just as much on price runner and other stuff.

http://www.gavinwebster.co.uk/
The comedian who writes the jokes for VIZ, allows you to buy his CD with his VM shop.

£800 is a lot of money, but you DO get what you pay for, and if you want a system that grow with your company, Osco is def not the solution for you, as

• you need programming knowledge to move or adjust anything, not in VM
• If somebody signs up with ask and then you have a forum as well, the databases aren't linked, so the client will have to sign up again in the forum, not in VM, they use the same database, so one registration log into everything in the site
• You can add in forums, Blogs, shops, diaries etc with absolutely NO programming skills by install a simple file; the system does the rest for you.
• The Osco system has no SEO URL rewriting *so the web address looks like English rather loads of question marks etc), Joomla and VM does on Linux servers automatically (which is where I would host yours).

I'm sure there will be a few comments now; it always rubs up the OSC guys when you go against their dinosaur of a system

Regards
Ian

da8iwr said:

Windows and Linux systems are as good as each other nowadays, my hosting company solid host, say that they have less tickets for the windows machines than their Linux machines, even considering they have more Linux accounts, the proportions are still Linux has more tickets.

I have been using windows for about 7yrs now and at the beginning yes it was buggy and terrible, but now I'm very pleased with it

Click to expand...

LOL Completely agree, I am a .NET programmer and use nothing but Windows servers nowadays. My comments where just to point out that this isn't always the best option, especially when you are just starting out.

Regards

Dotty

Please have a look at our shopping cart system, it is packed full of features and the content management system is very simple to use. www.absoluteshoppingcart.co.uk

A full custom site design like ones in our portfolio will cost you less than £600 - well a pound less anyway. You can see samples in our portfolio here http://www.absoluteshoppingcart.co.uk/prod1.asp?ID=212

Google " RedSave complaint "

Ouch

AndYc42 said:

Please have a look at our shopping cart system, it is packed full of features and the content management system is very simple to use. www.absoluteshoppingcart.co.uk

A full custom site design like ones in our portfolio will cost you less than £600 - well a pound less anyway. You can see samples in our portfolio here http://www.absoluteshoppingcart.co.uk/prod1.asp?ID=212

Click to expand...

Just a few quick questions

Does it have SEF URLs?

I notice you say "Our interpretation of 'search engine friendly'
is quite different".
Well from the top example of your portfolio link, i think your right it is quite different
http://www.limenatural.co.uk/

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.limenatural.co.uk
considering you dont even have a doctype at the top of that page and 441 other failures thats a hell of a statement to make.

I would love to support an ecom system, espeically a uk developer, if it was better or equal to others, but compared against the latest version of Virtuemart and Joomla which are both free, I cant as its no where near.

Here is the Virtuemart system being validated
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://demo.virtuemart.net
Only one failure (which is the template not the system) and its free.

Your source starts with
line 1 <html>
Then on line 18 has the body tag <body>
then on line 39 closes the body tag </body>
and on line 40 closes the HTML tag </html>

But for people who dont know what that means, the whole page needs to be between the <body> and </body> tags, but there is then 1189 lines of code after it where it shouldn't be

The whole thing is in Tables, rather than DIV tags, so braille readers cant read it correctly and wont know in what order the page works.

Also if your client wants to add a forum or blog in a years time as their site expands, is it possible where the same user can log in from the registered details in the shop, or will they have to sign up again, twice like using the 10 yr old oscommerce script and a crashed in forum like phpbb or blog like word press?

Sorry for being harsh, but as your post was a blatant self promotion post, i needed to point these things out.

Mrjibbles said:

Hi All

Any idea what shopping cart this is , or a custom built site?

www.redsave.com

Looking to find a cart like this without having to spend £800 at the moment as im just starting up.

Click to expand...

I really don't see why that shopping cart is considered good - it's actually awful from the usability perspective!

Seems like you have pointed a a few minor problems which can easily be fixed.

Have you tried the validator on any other sites, its almost impossible to get a site that validates 100%. We could spend a whole lot of time doing that but if you talk to any of our customers they will tell you that it is sales that count.

You are right it is a hell of a statement to make but we can back it up with hard evidence. We have some customers on the first page of Google (if not at the very top then at least in the top 5) for virtually every product they sell. And I'm not talking about highly specific targeted keywords but generic ones as well.

With reference to your blog question, logging in from the customer area it would require a small amount of programming to do this and possibly ftp access to the blog system itself but it should be quite simple to facilitate.

We are adding more functionaity all the time, we are working on a built in affiliate package and a live chat feature that will enable you to chat to site visitors and provide usage stats.