Advice needed on shopping cart selection

[ashcroft_s]

Can anyone recommend a shopping cart that offers all of the following:

• Open source PHP
• Multiple product options for a single product (e.g. size and colour)
• Stock control for each separate option combination
• Support for multiple images per product (not related to options, but different views of a product)
• Zoom on product images (e.g. using the jquery CloudZoom plugin)
• Optional customer registration
• Easy to customise layout including catalogue display, product pages etc.
• Coupon/Discount voucher support - including single use and multi use codes, and codes that can be limited to only certain products
• Easy for a merchant to learn how to manage

Any suggestions as to a cart that can do all of those bits would appreciated.

 

[Alan]

Open Cart or Prestashop

 

[smo]

For power, growth and functionality i'd go with Magento but the learning curve is steep.

For ease i'd second the opencart and prestashop approach.

 

[Tech4Homes]

EKM Powershop does all of that and some more. I'm quite happy with it so far, there are a number of features missing, however competitors that offer this are twice as much and then you'd need to start over again with site template etc.

It's a compromise I guess but I'm really happy with EKM so far, currently running two shops with them.

 

[Danny @ Source Servers Ltd]

Hi there,

if you can spare some time to really get to grips with Magento, I would say that without hesitation. If time is off the essence then Prestashop is probably the quickest. However I would really consider your mid term plans... because Magento will open new doors for you in terms of things you have not thought about yet, and new directions that you might want to take when the store is up and running....so if you can invest the time, do it and go with Magento. I am sure there are some good companies on here that can help you with magento installs etc.

 

[Bartek]

Everything has been said: presta if ease of use is an important factor and magento if you want to go big.

 

[WolfStores]

Hi There,

Another vote for Prestashop

It does exactly all of the jobs that you described.

Cheers

Tim

 

[Websitehandyman]

cs-cart does all that out the box.

Some sites https://www.cs-cart.com/live-stores.html

 

[ashcroft_s]

Prestashop seems to be getting the most votes so far on this, so I think I'll have a look round that over the next few days and see how it works out.

It's only a small site (a small specialist clothing store with a limited product range) and I think that Magento would be too complicated.

 

[Optegris]

Any reason why it has to be php based?

 

[ashcroft_s]

It's what the merchant has requested - I think he has some PHP experience and wants the option to be able to tinker with things himself in the future. I know he built his current website (the current design is actually pretty good) but that doesn't have an e-commerce aspect to it and he wants help on getting that part of it up and running, but will then take over himself.

Payments will not be taken directly on his site, but through a hosted payment page - so no card details etc in his systems.

Most sites I've helped people with before have been on stuff like BigCommerce, but he's not interested in going that way.

 

[Optegris]

Fair enough. The reason I asked is that most end users done tend to dig into the underlying code. For example ours is built using coldfusion but you don't need to know that to make template changes..

 

[iboxsecurity]

Another vote for Magento - its not a huge learning curve - but its a very powerful platform

 

[Holopainen]

PrestaShop or OpenCart are most likely to suit your needs.
Another good option is Joomla + VirtueMart but it is a bit more complicated since you have to get use to joomla. Or you can go with WordPress + WooCommerce but it is very basic and will be rather useful if you need a blog with opportunity to sell goods. Check this post for detailed review http://www.shopping-cart-migration....n-joomla-virtuemart-or-wordpress-woocommerce-

 

[antropy]

I would recommend OpenCart for this, with the caveat that you should check the options work how you need on their demo here:
http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route=demonstration/demonstration

 

[ashcroft_s]

Thanks for all the replies - I've had a look round Prestashop and I think it covers most of the merchants requirements out of the box (so to speak...)

It seems to be relatively simple to customise, it only took a few hours to get a basic theme up and running that had the main style aspects of the merchants existing site in place. There are a couple of things he wants to do which it doesn't do itself, but I don't think that it will be too hard to add some additional code to handle those requirements.

Given that I had not had any experience with Prestashop before, I found it fairly easy to get installed and running and to start exploring how the themes etc all work.

Think in future I'll add my vote for this should anyone be looking for a quick-and-easy solution!

 

[magento-advisory-board-uk]

We only work with Magento, we only recommend Magento, we have the hoody, the badges and a string of successful Magento projects behind us!

You could say we are biased! We just think it is better to focus on the best and be as good as you can on that. We have experience other carts as we migrate or integrate with client work, but Magento always beats other carts on the important things like customer conversion rate and sales.