Which e-commerce provider?

[jimbohodge]

Hi,
I was wondering if people can help me choose which e-commerce provider to go with.
I am going to be setting up an online shop, and my list of requirements are quite small.. . .
1) Paypal payment gateway
2) Shopping Cart & Catalogue
3) unlimited products/categories
4) unlimited (Or very large) memory/space
5) Easy to use + administer (Wizards?)
6) Cost effective (Cheap!)

Any ideas?
I have been looking at UK2.net and also Rentacart - anybody had any experience with these? Any other ideas?

Thanks for your help
Jim

 

[sdchown]

We do all of that and very cheaply too. I sent you a private message with the details.

Regards
Stephen Chown
Site Engine Ltd

 

Stay well away from UK2.net

 

Paul (awebapart.com), a member here offers a monthly website/shop builder if I remember correctly.

 

[EDS]

Hi,

Have a look at our product Tallia http://www.tallia.co.uk as part of accounts package we include an eCommerce solution, this is directly linked into your accounts so pricing and products are all in one place. We have a free trial available on the site so you can see how the accounts package works and the eCommerce.

The eCommerce solution is included as part of the monthly fee giving you a low cost solution to both your accounting and eCommerce.

Any questions please don't hesitate to contact me.

Michael.

 

[rss]

I've bookmarked http://shopify.com/ to look at in more detail. Free to set up, they just take a small cut of the sales...

Not sure about their reputation though ??

 

[Tommi]

There are many 'out of the box' solutions. Such as CubeCart, osCommerce, Zen Cart, and Monster Commerce. All of them are extremely cost effective (you are not required to pay anything, unless you want to remove there copy-right notices). They are worth a try and support is easy to come by as they are quite commonly used.

Tom.

 

[awebapart.com]

Thanks for the mention Carl.

Jim, if you are looking for a shop for your photographs business then I would advise against rentacart. Rentacart provide just a default installation of the free open source Zencart system, and with this there is no autothumbnailing feature, which means that the only way you could make your shop look good and load fast is to have product images the same size as the small thumbnail images, which isn't ideal for a shop where the photos are the products (people want to inspect the photos at least at a slightly larger size). You will find that default installations of Zencart and osCommerce both do not support this basic feature, and they require technical programmers to add the feature. Rentacart also host in the US, so if you must go with them be sure to choose a .co.uk domain in order to have the best chance of UK search engine ranking.

UK2 net use a commercial ecommerce system called Pinnacle cart provided by a US company. Pinnacle cart in its own right appears to be quite a highly polished product, although other people on this forum have mentioned problems with UK2's support. The Pinnacle system definitely looks stong in the easy to use/administer area.

You will also find that a lot of systems and suppliers will say they support unlimited products. But most of these refer to no technical limit on products, which is different to a practical limit on products which depends on how easy the system is to manage and upload products. osCommerce, Zencart, and our sitebuilder system (which is based on our customised version of osCommerce) all have practical limits on products, around several hundred products max, and I would say a lot less than this if you are thinking about different options for each product (like print size). Some systems cope better than others in this area, some offer bulk upload features some are just easier at setting up product options, so this is something you should investigate too, there was a recent thread on this subject on the startups forum.

 

[Christiane]

Does this one seem to good to be true? http://www.paceretail.co.uk/
Never heard of them before.

 

[quikshop]

It looks like there are quite a few 'added value' options with Pace that need paying for, but it certainly looks well presented

Kind regards,
Dave

www.internetretailer.biz

 

[awebapart.com]

The Pace solution looks like a custom version of ZenCart, so it is similar to rentacart in that respect, although better in at least one respect since it has UK hosting. Pace still shares the same problem as rentacart in that a default Zencart installation of thumbnailing is used, so no autothumbnailing. Pace has the large image and the thumbnail image as the same image file, with autothumbnailing, a separate thumbnail image is generated.

 

[jimbohodge]

Yes, I think that the customer being able to see a enlarged image of the photographs is important. Are there many that do this?
I think I would like an ecommerce system with an admin area, like rentacart and UK2.net do, so that everything is easy to control (Me being a beginner in this area )
Any further ideas?
Your help is much appreciated
Jim

 

[jimbohodge]

awebapart, you mentioned easywebstore on the link you referenced to in your post. What do you think of them. I've just checked out their site, and they seem OK (To be honest they all look the same).
- The controls?
- Thumbnails/images?
- Unlimited products???

Thanks
Jim

 

[awebapart.com]

awebapart, you mentioned easywebstore on the link you referenced to in your post. What do you think of them. I've just checked out their site, and they seem OK (To be honest they all look the same).
- The controls?
- Thumbnails/images?
- Unlimited products???

Easywebstore are a competitor to my company's sitebuilder service, as such the only things I know about them are what I do as competitor analysis - I haven't used their service to actually create a shop.

However, there is a lot of public information on the easywebstore site that can help you when evaluating their service, including an online demo of a shop and its admin system, links to customer sites (you could contact their clients to see what they think of the service), and a client's forum.

I mentioned easywebstore in another topic about large online shops, because looking at their online demo admin system, I think that it is better geared up for a large store with hundreds (possibly thousands) of products with lots of options, since it has features like bulk uploads, product search in admin, and the fast setting of simple options directly within the product setup screen. If you had several hundred photo products all with different sizes available, and you are not worried about users ordering out of stock items, then you will find it easier loading your content with easywebstore than with our service (using our custom version of osCommerce). That is not to say that our system is worse overall, different systems have different architectures and therefore different strengths and weaknesses. For instance, whilst easywebstore has quick set up of simple product options, if you want product option stock control (so the system will know whether you've run out of photo A in a particular size) - then you have to use the advanced product option feature which will slow the content loading process down more and make it more comparable with our system.

Easywebstore does support autothumbnailing. You can see this for yourself by looking at the client stores or uploading a product photo in the demo admin screens. It only supports one image per product (our system supports autothumbnailing and up to 10 images per product, which might be useful for photo products if you want to display one overall product image, and another image showing a zoomed in view of one particular area of the photo - this is common practice when selling photos/art online as it gives detail without giving away the whole image).

To get a better understanding of your requirements, how many different products are you thinking of, will your products have different size or other options, and do you want the system to prevent customers purchasing a product in a particular size when it is out of stock?

 

[jimbohodge]

Hi,
- I will be looking to have quite a large number of products, which is why this is important. Originally in the high 100's, and then possibly at some stage moving on to closer 1000.
- I am planning on having two different sizs options available, and also possibly an option of 'framing' (Yes/No style)
- Is there a way of having no limitations with stock, as they will basically be 'made to order'? And so that they are in stock the whole time?

Thanks for your help.
Jim

 

[awebapart.com]

- Is there a way of having no limitations with stock, as they will basically be 'made to order'? And so that they are in stock the whole time?

Yes! Having no stock control is the easiest requirement, which most ecommerce system can cope with. For a product range in the high hundreds, with simple options and no stock control, I do suggest that you investigate/evaluate easywebstore further.

 

[Shoptistic.com]

We can help you out with this. we offer a feature rich solution which is customised to your own branding, installed and fully set-up, tested and managed.

Set-up fee is £195! See my signature for the URL where you will find plenty of info and live help if you have any questions.

Good luck with the site!

 

[jimbohodge]

Hi,

What do people think of EKMPowershop? I have have been looking into them a lot more lately and have been impressed.

They seem to have what I want - Autothumbnailing, an unlimited number of products (No 'technical' limit), rich, easy to use features

Has anybody had any experience with them?
Does anybody have any concerns of how they may or may not fit my products?

Thanks
Jim

 

[Shoptistic.com]

Hi Jim,

You are certainly right to be researching this so closely!

Choosing the right e-commerce solution really can make or break your online business.

Obviously, I will not make any direct comments about EKMPowershop other than that you need to look to the future of your store as well. As time goes by you will probably see features on competing e-commerce sites and miss the fact that those features are not available to you.

You should look at the design implications. How flexible is your solution in design terms? Is it original, fresh and portraying the image you would like it to?

You should assess search-engine factors. You need your store to be seen on the search engines and there are ways and means of doing this.

Finally, consider what happens once your site is live. What then? You need to provider that will work WITH you on the marketing and progression of your site. As a wiseman once said... ' there is no point in having the best product in the store if it is stuck in a dark corner at the back of the store...'.

I would like to think that we could really help your business grow, but whatever your decision, good luck with the store!

 

[Christiane]

Dave is absolutely right! I went with a company whom I have outgrown and they're not bringing in changes/improvements fast enough, however I think there is more competition now and the choice of turnkey ecommerce provider is wider than it was a year ago.

 

Hi Jim
I have a friend who used ekmpowershop recently and so far they are no that impressed, they've had a lot of problems with their template and this has not been resolved so far, they also had no end of trouble with their psp integration. Also ekm did not honour some of their promises...such as their glorious submission claims. I looked at ekm myself when I was starting out 2 years ago and I demo'd it but wasn't overly impressed and I didn't find them either very personable or very flexible, and being in such a competitive business same as yourself (I sell made to order jewellery) I needed to feel I was with a provider whose service would grow with me.

Happy to discuss the solution I went with (www.internetretailer.biz) or if you just want to compare notes and ideas for your business then feel free to pm me

 

[SWServices]

Jim, if you are looking for a shop for your photographs business then I would advise against rentacart. Rentacart provide just a default installation of the free open source Zencart system, and with this there is no autothumbnailing feature, which means that the only way you could make your shop look good and load fast is to have product images the same size as the small thumbnail images, which isn't ideal for a shop where the photos are the products (people want to inspect the photos at least at a slightly larger size). You will find that default installations of Zencart and osCommerce both do not support this basic feature, and they require technical programmers to add the feature. Rentacart also host in the US, so if you must go with them be sure to choose a .co.uk domain in order to have the best chance of UK search engine ranking.

Just out of interest awebapart, do you have any information to back your comments and have you used the services rentacart.co.uk provide as I've seen you go on about this one image issue a few times now.

OK, so the image re-size doesn't come installed with rentacart but isnt it possible to download it free from zen-cart and add it to the store yourself?

I know for a fact that rentacart DO NOT offer a Standard installation of Zen-Cart.

The package has been changed from the standard version with many extra features, shop modules, templates & payment modules installed and ready to use.

I’ve just had a quick look at your site and I see you are using Os-commerce, a free shopping cart like Zen-Cart and your company is charging £250 per year (+VAT)!

That’s a lot more compared to the rentacart’s mega account at £99 per year even if your server is hosted in the UK.

For the record, just because a server is in the USA, It doesn't mean you will have problems being ranked. Try this for me.....

Go to google and search for 'secure ecommerce websites'

What website shows up at number one ranking? (Below the sponsored)

Talking about security, do you add the security patches yourself that are needed to protect your clients and their customers? I have heard about so many issues with OSC and unlike Zen-Cart they are not being fixed when they need to be.

I think the last update was nearly a year ago?, do correct me if I’m wrong.

Here is just one link I found, More can be found by searching google for 'oscommerce security issues.'

http://www.stonemind.net/blog/2007/05/04/hacker-safe-pci-compliance-in-oscommerce/

I have also noticed you don’t offer SSL Certificates with your ecommerce accounts, Not even a shared one. Your main Website doesn’t even have one. Not a good impression to be honest.

I could go on some more but I’m not that type of person. I personally think you should maybe look into your own issues for now rather than what other service providers do or don't offer and stop trying and put them down.

James
SWServices

 

[jimbohodge]

James,

I take it you are writing on behalf of Zen-cart or rentacart?

Awebapart was only advising me on what package I should go for based on my requirements. I feel as though he pointed me in the right direction, away from Rentacart. He made it very clear that he was'nt trying to point me in his direction.

But I geuss he will be able to stick up for himself.

I like Rentacart, and the features look very impressive. It is just the auto-thumbnailing feature that worries me. I tried thir online demo and, and true to awebapart's word, the image i uploaded (A rectangular shape), was squashed and strethed into a square. It looks awful.
But, James, you say a donwload can be made and installed to fix this? Can this really be done? All software is their end? Wouldn't it be them who have to install the software?

Jim

 

[awebapart.com]

James

Hands up, I know I go on a lot about autothumbnailing, probably so much that it gets tiresome, but IMO browser shrinking of images is a schoolboy error when it comes to HTML web design. It is what you expect from people producing their first website, it is not what you should get from professional development companies offering professional ecommerce solutions, especially not when those solutions are based on open source systems that have well published solutions to this problem.

Perhaps I focus too much on it, but out of the hundreds of factors that go into making an ecommerce solution, every solution provider has there own view of what is more important and what is less important. If every solution provider had the same view then every solution provider would offer the same solution, and there would be little choice for clients wanting ecommerce solutions.

It is possible to get by without autothumbnailing by just having product images roughly the same size as the thumbnail images, thus minimising browser image shrinkage.

For me, the issue of rentacart originally came up when I was trying to help a rentacart client on another forum, who had the problem of browser image shrinkage:
www.startups.co.uk/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=140955
I do not know whether rentacart would allow their clients to change their installations (but for the skillset of the user I was helping, i.e. novice, I wouldn't have advised her to install an autothumbnailing contribution as it is an advanced task)

You are right to question me about my 'just a default installation' comment. It was inaccurate for me to say that and I apologise. Whenever I see osCommerce/Zencart installations without autothumbnailing I automatically assume that not much else has been done too, only because that would be one of the first things I would do, but it is wrong of me to assume in this way.

Our sitebuilder service is based on our own content management system which is used for normal non-ecommerce websites, and our own custom version of osCommerce which can be used for the shop section of the website. We have implemented a number of contributions and changes which fits in with what we and our clients feel are important, and we continue to improve the system on an ongoing basis. With our service we limit the number of websites to 100 per server, and our service is much more of a handholding service offering initial and ongoing advice, design and setup, and our service is priced accordingly.

I did not say that US hosting will cause search engine ranking problems, I said that if you must go with US hosting you should use a .co.uk domain if you want to target the UK audience. The issue of US hosting has been discussed on this and other forums numerous times, and my impression of the general concensus is that it is very important for UK shops targeting a UK audience to have either UK hosting or a .co.uk domain. Some other people have mentioned that .co.uk hosting in the US also has some issues with the speed of being indexed. Google determines positioning based on around 200 factors, one of them being location. Therefore rentacart.co.uk (US hosted) does come 1st in google web results (which are still UK biased for UK searchers) for 'secure ecommerce websites', amazon.com (US hosted) comes 2nd for book, awebapart.com (UK hosted) comes 2nd for 'ecommerce sitebuilder'.

As for security we do not offer shop configurations where the credit card details are taken onsite. We do not recommend this, mainly because for our client base (small lesser-known shops) it is more appropriate that they send their customers off to a wellknown trusted site (like PayPal, WorldPay) to make the payment, and secondly because it means that both us and our clients don't have to put into place the stringent security measures and processes that are required for taking credit card details onsite. Since we do not take credit card details onsite this also makes us less of a target for hacker fraud (there's no point for fraud hackers to try to get into our websites since no credit card information is stored there). Our client's websites are more secure than some since they are on our dedicated server and we do not allow any clients to upload their own server side scripts (this is different to many shared hosting platforms). So far we have had no problems with security, it is something we try to keep on top of, but anyone would be foolish to say that they are 100% secure, which is why we backup too. We will be looking into providing SSL connections in the future for login pages but this is of a lower priority since we are not storing or taking credit card information - people are still OK to login to sites without SSL otherwise nobody would be posting in this forum.

 

[quikshop]

Paul,

I think your comments about autothumbnailing are valid in the context of the entire solution. Each feature makes up a whole and on a presentational level clarity of images is vital given that its the primary means for a customer to visualise what it is they might be buying.

We currently use a technique called dynamic thumbnailing which allows us to generate a thumbnail image from the primary product image to fit any size of 'box' we want.

The advantage is we can present a scaleable thumbnail image of a product for any size we need without the image being distorted, the disadvantage is that if the original product image is not a good quality image then the thumbnail output will reflect that with some lost of definition.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the latest presentational techniques such as flash-generated 3 dimensional product rotation, used to good effect for the 32" LCD tvs in Evesham Technologies shop.

As a footnote to James' post, I agree you can buy an osCommerce solution for a fraction of the price - you can get one off eBay for as little as £10, but if you want the added value services of reliable support and knowledgeable assistance then clients are generally happy to pay more.

Regards,
Dave

www.internetretailer.biz

 

[awebapart.com]

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the latest presentational techniques such as flash-generated 3 dimensional product rotation, used to good effect for the 32" LCD tvs in Evesham Technologies shop.

Hi Dave,

I think it is all about finding the best medium to show off the product, and this might be different for different products. My company started off in 1998 in the 3D games and applications field, but that does not mean I'm a big fan of 3D for the sake of it, in fact it makes me more aware of its issues and weaknesses (labour-intensive model construction, polygon approximation of curves, processing requirements, non-photorealistic realtime interaction, difficult for end-users to navigate).

The Evesham site has done well not to use 3D modelling, instead it looks like they have just placed the telly on a turn table and taken a succession of photos - this is a far more practical solution and it provides true photorealism. Personally I am more of fan of photographs than 3D. There is a member on this forum, da8iwr (NewWorldDesigns.co.uk), who is doing some very good work on the turntable photography method and is involved in other visualisations (3D and fake3D/photo):
www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=29681
(NewWorldDesigns also provide ecommerce shops, so for anybody wanting to open a shop with 3D style visualisations, they would be a good bet)

BTW, you don't necessarily need Flash to present a 3D rotating and user rotate-able succession of photos, it can be done in Javascript too using little more than mouseover technology.

This still begs the question of whether this medium helps or hinders product viewing. For televisions, all I need to see are photos of the telly (front, back, sides, top) and its sockets. The evesham animation prevents me from seeing some of this (rear sockets). For books I don't need to see a rotating book, I need to see front cover back cover, and perhaps some pages inside (contents). Different products will have different areas of interest that the customer wants to see. This is something you might be familiar with Dave, since you have a martial art shop client (paragon), I was recently looking at martial art foot guards/pads (boxing gloves for feet), I was surprised at the number of shops that do not show pictures of the straps underneath the foot pad (which is quite important for their intended customer base) - fortunately your client's shop does show this on some footguard products.

IMO the only simple generic solution that meets many product viewing needs, allowing the customer to inspect the specific areas of interest of a product, is to take photos of those specific areas of interest and provide multiple photos (the larger, up to say 640x480, the better) in the product description. That is why 1. I go on a lot about autothumbnailing to allow large photos, and 2. we made an improvement to our custom osCommerce system to allow up to 10 product images rather than just the 1 image, e.g. for jewellery or books. We also allow flash to be embedded in product descriptions if necessary (either for 3D/fake3D animations or video) but most of our clients just use the image features (and for our current clients, if they had the time to prepare their own turntable rotateable animations that time would probably be better spent improving textual content/copy for visitors and the search engines).

 

I agree, the advantage of using a hosted service is that I don't need to be the expert, I can focus my time on running my business.

It doesn't matter what you pay or who you use as long as you get the service that suits you and with all things you get what you pay for. I pay £29.95 a month, but there are no limitations to the service and support that I get, the updates and new features are added for free, I'm not limited as to how many products or the number of pages my site occupies.

There are plenty of positive stories out there on this forum as well as horror stories. I would always look closely at what you want your site to be able to do, and whether the package you choose is capable of growing with you without costing you more in the future. Always take a look at what other sites the provider is hosting and talk to a few about their experiences if you can.

 

Paul, just looking at the http://www.basicsgiftshop.co.uk you gave as an example for jewellery, the thing that is really noticeable with their images is the fact that they haven't edited the size down before uploading them, so most images open up with a chunk off the screen or just don't even fit onto the screen, which negates the benefit of being able to view a product in more detail. Is it possible to override this factor even further with the autothumbnailing you recommend so that it autorestricts the original image upload? Or at least warns that the image is above the max dimensions?

I see this error all the time on sites, particularly jewellery and fashion ones, and I've done it accidentally a few time myself where I've thought I'd get away without editing or just rushed to get a product on, but now I always go back and check the products I upload to ensure everything can be viewed properly, and I pre size my images so that they are no more than 500 pixels wide or more than 350 pixels tall, that way I know that the image produced is a nice clear size for viewing in more detail and also fits the screen.

Maybe one of the issues with clients using autothumbnails is that they see the nice even images they've uploaded and forget to check that these look as good when a customer clicks on 'more details' whereas those of us that don't use it, know to bear this in mind??

 

[awebapart.com]

the thing that is really noticeable with their images is the fact that they haven't edited the size down before uploading them, so most images open up with a chunk off the screen or just don't even fit onto the screen, which negates the benefit of being able to view a product in more detail. Is it possible to override this factor even further with the autothumbnailing you recommend so that it autorestricts the original image upload? Or at least warns that the image is above the max dimensions?

We recommend to our clients not to upload images that are wider than 640 or taller than 480, but we do not currently enforce this. I think some of the images you are talking about are 480 wide 640 tall, hence the problem on some machines. Thanks for pointing this out and I'll have a word with the client about this, and see if there is anything else we can do to alleviate this issue.

Enforcing sizes on upload is something that can be added and it is definitely something we are considering in the future, especially with digital cameras offering larger and larger sizes, we are also looking into an auto watermark feature too - we have already implemented this as an option in the content management side of our system, outside of the shop section, e.g. www.johnleaschool.com/home/Teachers_and_Pupils.

 

Hi Paul
Just taken a peek but not sure where I should be looking to see the watermarked images? Did find a spooky pic though.. http://www.johnleaschool.com/home/x339_image_c_2 looks like the background ghost stole the small childs head...eek!

Watermarks are something I'm in 2 minds about, whenever I've seen them on jewellery images they are generally very distracting, and I'm not a fan of the disable right click function some sites use to protect their images either. Perhaps a watermarked copywrite across the bottom of the images?

Nearly all of those things can be removed in Photoshop by someone who knows what they are doing though, so I don't bother. Afterall they can steal the image but they can't replicate my product, service, aftercare etc by doing it, so I don't really worry about it. I know it's very different depending on what market you're in though.

 

[Shoptistic.com]

http://www.johnleaschool.com/home/x339_image_c_2

Whooaaa that is scarey!

Oh and by the way, I agree with you boho, watermarks are distractive and look a little unprofessional. Oh, and theres the small point that they are nearly completely useless in preventing image theft.

 

[jimbohodge]

Watermarks are tough one. But I think I'm gonna need to use them as my products ARE the images!!

Jim

 

[awebapart.com]

Just taken a peek but not sure where I should be looking to see the watermarked images? Did find a spooky pic though.. http://www.johnleaschool.com/home/x339_image_c_2 looks like the background ghost stole the small childs head...eek!

Whooaaa that is scarey!

That's no ghost, it is the holy virgin mary - its a miracle! We noticed that too, and I'm sure at some point the site will run a competition to identify the owner of the missing head.

The watermark is the subtle image of the domain name further down on the bottom row where the children are sitting (.com on the right). If done subtly, watermarks don't have to be distracting, and if placed and blended right they can be a pain (but not impossible) to remove. They can help in providing proof of ownership/copyright. They can also be a viral marketing tool if competitors are silly enough to steal your pictures as is, and advertise you on their site. Here's another example for a demo shop where the photographer added the watermark in the centre before the images were uploaded, they are hardly noticeable. It all depends on whether the client wants to have some further protection of the time/money they have spent on the photographs, it gives a little extra security, but it is not foolproof.

We recommend to our clients not to upload images that are wider than 640 or taller than 480, but we do not currently enforce this. I think some of the images you are talking about are 480 wide 640 tall, hence the problem on some machines. Thanks for pointing this out and I'll have a word with the client about this, and see if there is anything else we can do to alleviate this issue.

BTW we have alleviated the issue of popup images fitting to screen, so thank you boho for your feedback raising this issue.

 

[jimbohodge]

Awebapart,
The main issue you raised with Rentacart was there is no auto-thumbnailing feature. Is there a way of getting around this? If I downloaded one of the many free software on the Internet that would make my images into thumbnails, and then I posted these images, would that get around it? Or would that not allow me to have a larger image available when the customer clicks on the picture? Or can I have both?

Jim

 

[awebapart.com]

The main issue you raised with Rentacart was there is no auto-thumbnailing feature. Is there a way of getting around this? If I downloaded one of the many free software on the Internet that would make my images into thumbnails, and then I posted these images, would that get around it? Or would that not allow me to have a larger image available when the customer clicks on the picture? Or can I have both?

I don't think there is an easy way around it, since the rentacart system, like default zencart and default osCommerce, only has the one product image which is used for both thumbnail and detail. Looking at the rentacart demo, it does have a WYSIWYG product description editor which supports embeddable images and hyperlinks, so you might be able to do it here, i.e. upload thumbnail in product image, upload larger image elsewhere (e.g. banner uploads) and find its address, then insert a hyperlink to it in the product description, but the user will be presented with a product thumbnail that clicks to enlarge onto a same size image, and a product description thumbnail or link that does click to enlarge on a larger image. This all sounds a bit time-consuming and error prone if you have many products.

The other option is to increase the thumbnail size in the configuration > images section and just have product images around the same size as thumbnails.

Just out of interest what is it that you like about rentacart? The reason I said our system (which is a custom build of osCommerce) was inappropriate for you was that it is not practical in handling hundreds or thousands of products, each with options, due to the way osCommerce currently manages products and options separately, but it seems like zencart (which is a derivative of osCommerce) and rentacart (which is a custom build of zencart) are similar in this respect (zencart and rentacart being only slightly better than osCommerce in this area). Did you look into the product options side when looking at the rentacart demo and then imagine what it would be like with hundreds or thousands of products? At least with easywebstore products and attributes are all in one place which makes it much easier. We are waiting for a stable osCommerce v3 (v3 is currently in alpha) before we can think about adding this feature to our system.

 

[jimbohodge]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply. It looks like I'll have to count Rentacart out then for good.

Just out of interest what is it that you like about rentacart?

When looking through all the solutions available, it just seemed to be the only one that does everything I wanted, and looked to be the easiest to use. But I gave the demo a go, and the images were terrible, as you had predicted. And this is crucial to MY business.

I also like EKMPowershop - seems nice and easy, and has all the features I need. When I tried the demo I saw how much better the images look. I presume it must have auto-thumbnailing enabled?

My two problems with EKMPowershop were:
1) No E-mail newsletter feature (That I could see?)
2) Domain name has to be registered seperately
As a novice, I wanted something that would be done all in one package!

Like all the others, EKMPowershop say they have unlimited products. Do you know where they stand in terms of this in reality?

Regards
Jim

 

Paul - glad to have been of help
The watermarks on the school site are pretty good and definitely not as much of an interference as they can be, not keen on the pink ones on the centre of the images on the mules on the demo site though, for me I do still find that a bit of an interference. I think if I do add a watermark at anytime I'll probably go with something more along the line of a copywrite at the very bottom of the image out of the way.

 

Jim
The dropout rate of users from EKMPowershop is really high, and I don't think all of their promises are actually honoured at all. I have friends who set up their shop with them recently and have experienced a fairly poor level of service so far, they've had a lot of teething problems with their template and their integration and the big problem with a service like that is your pretty much left to it, thats why its cheaper.

If you want a service where you actually can get proper help and support I'd advise going with a hosted solution where you get some personal support and can have input and help. Paul's solution seems really good and my own host whose another ukbf forum member (quikshop) www.internetretailer.biz is fantastic too.

I have no limit to the products or pages I use, no I don't have autothumbnailing, but it's on the list for future improvements (all of which get added at no extra cost) but I have no trouble with my dynamic thumnailing solution.

 

[awebapart.com]

problems with EKMPowershop were:
...
Domain name has to be registered seperately

That is not a problem it is a good thing. It puts you in control of your domain since you register it (from an established UK domain registrar like 123-reg.co.uk), and it means you can move away easier if you don't like the ecommerce service.

I think that you have fairly exacting requirements especially with the sheer quantity of products all with product options that affect price, and around the budget mark you are looking at some compromises will have to be made (most likely in using a system that isn't really geared up for that quantity of products with options). Autothumbnailing isn't crucial if you have large thumbnails and images the same size - you probably don't want images too big otherwise people might just use them for their desktop wallpaper.

Look at supplier demos where possible, or client sites. Try to have a chat with the suppliers you have narrowed the choice down to, who knows they might be able to offer workarounds or tell you about features of their system you don't know about, or features they intend to implement soon. This will also give you an idea of the support you will get.

 

[jimbohodge]

Thats cracked it!

By changing the product image size to be displayed, from the configuration panel I can make it so that the shape of the thumbnail is longer in width than height, like my pictures!

The product attributes hopefully wont be too much of a problem. You have to set them up like any other, but you can copy the same attributes to each entire category at the click of a button.

Jim