Shopping Carts

[L.T.]

I'm in the middle stages of setting up an online business, I'm currently looking at shopping cart systems.

I am considering Ashop, Gate 13 and a couple others.

Can anyone give positive feedback for the two I have mentioned or offer me others to add to my list?

As I am new to business and also quite new to web design I am looking for something that is easy to set up, relatively inexpensive but look appealing to my customers..

Any advice?

[PCC_Support]

Hi there L.T,

Ashop is a great solution without bending the budget too much, but their hosted solutions could get a little pricey.

I have had a few clients that have switched from AShop solutions to the open source project called OSCommerce and have hosted this on a server that they have owned or paid for.

OSCommerce has a great support community, being free software, as alot of people use this.

I have worked on a few OSCommerce jobs and can show you an example where OSCommerce was highly customised to suit the clients needs.

http://www.cwear.com.au

If you have any direct queries about oscommerce feel free to email me.

Kind Regards and Hope this assisted you.
Nick

[Chris Bates]

Hey Buddy,

I recently setup a store a family member using Magento, you can see it at http://www.jjskidsclothing.com.au

She wanted it on the cheap, so there was no major customisation or anything, really basic setup.

My thoughts on it... VERY difficult to set up. I don't know whether it's the nature of eCommerce stores, but it was fiddly and a nightmare to figure things out. Support is average, and because it's backed by a commercial company, a majority of the decent plugins are commercial based.

My next eCommerce job will be OSCommerce based or VirtueMart (based on Joomla).

Nick, I'd be interested on hearing your comparison if you've used Magento before. I certainly wont walk into another eCommerce job so cheap.

Cheers,
Chris

[Dartshop]

I dont think that any shopping cart site is "easy" to setup, you certainly need experience in html, smarty and css.

My thoughts would be go for one that has a very strong forum, this provides support.....go for one that has aftermarket mods, as believe me, they save time, enhance the cart immensily and dont cost that much. They do however make a HUGE difference, especially with seo.

I recommend xcart, purely because my site (in my siggie) is an xcart. Check it out. Obviously you may not like the colours, the layout etc, but for what it cost as compared to what it can do.....its amazing.

Cart cost around $300, mods, the skin (theme) and other stuff, about $800 over 12 months.

One prime example, seo mod was around $40 and $50 install. I have achieved Top serps for EVERY keyword i want in Australia. The mods responsible 70% and me 30%.

Google reviews on shopping carts, perhaps visit the xcart forums but i dont know how much you can access. You can take a look at Zen Cart, ive heard thats quite good, but i know nothing else.

If you want any more indepth info or discussion of details i cant post in an open forum, feel free to PM me.

Regards

[JulieA]

My name is Juliea, and I'm addicted to shopping carts!
Not quite a joke...I've tried/tested/used virtually the whole alphabet of carts- from Avactis to Zencart, Cubecart to Xcart, Virtue Mart to Prestashop, and, most recently, Seber, which is a Joomla component cart, and is about 1000 times better than Virtue Mart ( which was bloated and unwieldy/unsupported when I first used it 4 years ago, and has gone downhill since then from the reading I've done on JED lately).
My ABS Shop uses Prestashop, with a custom template ( cost was $150, so that's basically all the cart cost).
If I had a magic wand, I'd take the best features from ALL the carts, and combine them into the perfect one!
Overall? I lean towards Presta, and I will now be using Seber on my Joomla sites where people want a simple EASY cart.
I'm also pretty impressed with the WP eCommerce plugin, and can see it being used by me for folk who want the whole Blog/Shop site.
I better end this now, I can rabbit on for ages about carts *grins*

[Chris Bates]

I think I'm going to try avoid eCommerce jobs :P

I thought it would be so simple to set up a clothing store. While Prestashop looks a lot simpler (I just looked at the demo), there's still no easy way to set different sizes for one item. I guess it's just a case of "one size doesn't fit all" when it comes to eCommerce software.

Seber looks interesting too, for a Joomla based system.

Feel free to ramble Julie, I'll read it all :P

[King]

Look at mals-e.com Has a great range of features and can be integrated into your standard html pages, so will not have the look of a bog standard thing like oscommerce et al.

Free, secure and requires minimal html knowledge.

I have been using for 5+ years over several websites.

Excellent support forum as well

[L.T.]

Originally Posted by King

Look at mals-e.com Has a great range of features and can be integrated into your standard html pages, so will not have the look of a bog standard thing like oscommerce et al.

Free, secure and requires minimal html knowledge.

I have been using for 5+ years over several websites.

Excellent support forum as well

Thanks....

This is just what I have been looking for...

[JulieA]

Originally Posted by Chris Bates

While Prestashop looks a lot simpler (I just looked at the demo), there's still no easy way to set different sizes for one item.
Seber looks interesting too, for a Joomla based system.

Feel free to ramble Julie, I'll read it all :P

Presta does have a very NON-intuitive set up where attributes are concerned. Took me ages to actually figure it out! If you are looking to add ONLY one attibute...e.g. different sizes, then Presta can do that easly. You just add the name of your attribute ( size/colour etc.), then for each of those you add the attribute value- a tedious process when you have many values because the process requires a lot of "clicks", and really could be refined/improved.

It runs into trouble when you want to do something like :
Shirt- choose size AND colour....the way Presta handles combinations is terrible! There are a lot of posts on Presta forum about it...and no resolutions yet.
I have run into this combinations problem with my body jewellery...gauge and length AND diameter ( haven't quite solved it yet, which is why the only products on my site so far are ones that don't have those combos LOL)
My jerryrig will probably be asking customers to enter length and diameter in the textbox at checkout( which is fine, because those attributes don't cost extra). My dream/fantasy was to have/find a cart where customers could view all the parts of a piece of body jewellery, select the ones they wanted, and see a picture of it "assembled", then buy it....never gonna happen for me LOL

Today I've been messing about seriously with Seber, and it's still looking good...especially when you combine a Stallholder with only Manager rights...keeps backend of J! safe, yet allows manager to do everything on the Stall with Seber, AND allows them to do articles/manage images etc. The only limiting factor I've found with Seber is the free version only allows for 20 products total...which will be fine for most of my Stallholders. The pro version s $99 apparently. As long as your postage config is not complex, it does ok too.
One of these days I'll have enough readies to buy iBoutique...the simple solution to my needs:-)
I'll plead "no comment" on Mals cart *grins* ( Different strokes and all that)

[DanR]

I have been using osCommerce for years although it's been extensively modified for my own needs/wants/dreams.

If you want an open source solution that you can modify to your hearts content then go osCommerce.