Where do I go from here?

[Dan Healthcare4all]

My website healthcare4all dot co dot uk has now been live for over 2 years and I want to make some upgrades. I get asked by customers on a daily basis if they can buy without creating an account - I gather that for OSCommerce (which is what the site is programmed in) there are some modules (cheers Paul for your PMs) that would enable purchase without account. Is this the way forward? DO you think that it will really improve our conversion rate? Or are there other more pressing issues?
My problem is to find a web designer that can do this for me and I also want to have a method of selling certain lines VAT free for those customers who qualify and can complete an online declaration - I gather this is quite difficult to do.
My site has quite a few bugs in it due to bad initial programming so I don't know whether to go for a complete redesign and perhaps change away from OSCommerce or do I get the upgrades done or an OSCommerce re-write? Thanks in advance.

 

[nickpp]

you could always look at other shopping carts such as magento, prestashop or x cart, and import your current products in a new cart in csv format

 

[Galway]

If selling products is important make sure you choose something that is truly search friendly, so much of ecommerce is advertised as so but most of it is really poor when you publish and then analyse.

there would be nothing worse than losing a ton of search positions just because you switched to a platform that was crappy for search engines.

 

[Dan Healthcare4all]

I am prepared to start from scratch (assuming I can transfer my catalogue and customer database) - which shopping cart should I consider?
Do I stick with OSCommerce or change to Magento or X-Cart or similar?

 

[mke]

Dan, OSCommerce is a good product, but development etc seems to have floundered a bit over the last few years.

Magento is a good product, seems to be going places and looks well written, but relatively new. I'd certainly bear it in mind.

Zen Cart had it's roots in OSCommerce some years back, but has been actively developed since. It can import OSC database tables, and it has a COWOA module as well as wholesale pricing and no VAT modules, so the major effort would probably be the 'look and feel' templates etc which are considerably different to OSC. However, version 4 of Zen Cart is due out shortly. If you change to it now it could mean another considerable redesign in the near future.

Finally, you may perhaps like to consider what other modules are loaded on your OSC shop and what custom programming, if any, you have had done? These should be taken into account in any move you may make.

To answer your first question, yes it is well proven and documented that more people will buy if they do not have to "join" with their full details first.

Good luck with the project.

 

[gibby]

not sure if customers order more by not having an account.
We use cube cart and they have to enter the same details either way but they only have to add in a password & click an extra box to create the account.

We are considering stopping customers from not creating accounts as we get 30 odd emails a week from those customers who don't create accounts, as they can't track their order.

I would imagine if its alot more work to create an account it will reduce orders.

If you looking for a new cart - cubecart works very well for us.
we have tried several others, some of them costs a bit too but CC was pretty easy for us to handle & there is a big community of developers too

G

 

[Galway]

I am prepared to start from scratch (assuming I can transfer my catalogue and customer database) - which shopping cart should I consider?
Do I stick with OSCommerce or change to Magento or X-Cart or similar?

Why not go bespoke??

That way you can dictate the framework and the functionality for SEO.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

If I have to enter my details before I put anything in the checkout, then I walk, working on the prinsible that why should I give them my details if I havn't brought anything, and anyway why do I need to open an account for maybe one off purchase, I will never remember the password etc

 

[Galway]

Before making any decision ask for a number of example sites and we can test their SEO friendliness too.

 

[Dan Healthcare4all]

Thank you. How can you decide between say Magento and OSCommerce. I have come to know OSC but I don't want to make an expensive mistake again. I want the site to grow with me and be very user-friendly for purchasing. Has anyone got any comparisons of these?

 

If I had an oSCommerce question, I'd be getting in touch with Paul from Awebapart, what he doesn't know about it is not worth knowing

 

[zone1creative]

you could always look at other shopping carts such as magento, prestashop or x cart, and import your current products in a new cart in csv format

I have seen the following service to migrate store data from one application to another.

Its a new service so I have not used it yet, but have used the x-cart modules.

http://www.shopping-cart-migration.com/

 

[msimplay]

My website healthcare4all dot co dot uk has now been live for over 2 years and I want to make some upgrades. I get asked by customers on a daily basis if they can buy without creating an account - I gather that for OSCommerce (which is what the site is programmed in) there are some modules (cheers Paul for your PMs) that would enable purchase without account. Is this the way forward? DO you think that it will really improve our conversion rate? Or are there other more pressing issues?
My problem is to find a web designer that can do this for me and I also want to have a method of selling certain lines VAT free for those customers who qualify and can complete an online declaration - I gather this is quite difficult to do.
My site has quite a few bugs in it due to bad initial programming so I don't know whether to go for a complete redesign and perhaps change away from OSCommerce or do I get the upgrades done or an OSCommerce re-write? Thanks in advance.

I think maybe changing your cart will improve conversation rates.
There are easier carts out there which let you use simple html to change the look and feel of the cart yourself.

I know OScommerce has many fans and businesses that advocate Oscommerce but when I looked at Oscommerce it's one of those carts that would have never let me be independant from a developer even for simple template changes like adding google analytics to your shopping cart.

I personally will not go with any application that uses tables for design as it slows down speed of the site overall and it's said that using design without tables will improve SEO and to be honest I have to say for me it has

I've had great experience with carts that allow for easy customisation.

My personal favourite is
Jshop simply because it does for me what no other cart can do which is have dynamic grid like catergories. It was a must for the design I was looking to do at the time.

However I recommend cscart or interspire they have great communities and very easy to use plus they have development teams that will implement custom features that you require to their already feature rich carts.

I know that that CS-CART Team does custom development
and so does interspire but that can be a bit pricey but its your call.

I'm sharing my personal experience with you and what I looked for when I was testing carts out was ease of use and features.
I needed it to have the most out of the box features so that I would have to do the least amount of work to get my store online and run so that I would be able to use the store software for years to come not just for that short period of startup time

 

[bestforsextoys]

I would recommend getting your own back office built so you can put whatever you want in the backend and its all your the company that can do that for you is pomdesign.co.uk cheap too

Austin