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Shopping Carts For The Faint Of Heart By: T. O' Donnell: The chief criteria for judging an ecommerce shopping cart are the number of credit card processors and shipping servic... a bit, but the main work is done by CGI scripts. It saves the credit card information on your server. It's for someone ... Search Engine Friendly Shopping Cart Software By: Andrey Milyan: Web stores are usually much harder to optimize then regular websites. The main reason for that is that most websites a... promotion codes to tracks buyers from magazines and newspapers). This shopping cart is very easy to use but there is no... IS YOUR SHOPPING CART COSTING YOU MONEY? By: Shannan Hearne-Fortner: They was a time when doing business on the internet simply meant hangingout your electronic shingle and raking in the ... Marketing, grass roots campaign developmentand internet wizardry combined with the Eastern-Western philosophies ofsuch ... Increase your web site conversion rates from 6% to 66%, in shopping carts and booking engines. By: Monte Huebsch: Increase your web site conversion rates from 6% to 66%, in shopping carts and booking engines. Find out how this can h... to browse and look around. See what is available. Maybe try something on. Once we are happy with our self-service we ma... eShopping Carts: Comparing Apples, Oranges and Tuna Fish! By: Mike Banks Valentine: Have you ever bought a book, then plopped down on a pillow onthe couch with a cup of coffee and some snacks ready to d... near) shopping cart software. Themajority of those articles are more than a year old. The balanceof the book is made up... Shopping Carts For The Weary T. O' DonnellTo choose the means whereby we put our products on the world-wide-web, we proceed by a process of elimination. The chief criteria for judging a shopping cart is the number of credit card processors and shipping services it supports, and the number of people that support *it*. Why? Because credit card processors and shipping services mutate all the time, and thus your cart will require updating. Which service works today may go out of business tomorrow, and leave you with the orders piling up. Other important criteria are how easy it is to set up, and add products, and how easy it is for the customer to use. (May I say parenthetically that I was introduced to Perl programming unwillingly by an early version of one of the carts below; it had a bug, and I had to learn some Perl to fix it. A shopkeeper should not have to learn bricklaying in order to open his store, therefore a bit of research is time well spent. ) When you set up your shop test it using a wide variety of the oldest and buggiest browsers you can find. If your web store works under them you're home and dry. So, having taken all the above into consideration, what are the options? Having gone though twenty-plus different sub $500 shopping cart software solutions, I now present, in order of preference, the cheapest, simplest, and most effective solutions: 1. Oscommerce (free) - http://www.oscommerce.com A very good, full-featured, cart. Uses Php and MySQL. Not easy to set up for a 'newbie'. Cookies are used to track the order. If you have PhpMyAdmin installed in your web account, it's easier. Requires a customer to register before they can make a purchase. Supports a wide range of credit-card processors and shipping services. Bad point: Technical support is limited to the Oscommerce forums, which are not helpful to newbies. You may need to pay a few bucks to an expert via a freelance site like Scriptlance.com, if you run into difficulties. Also, it may be a while before an update is available to a payment module. These are done by unpaid enthusiasts. Good point: Oscommerce is supported by thousands of unpaid enthusiasts; this means updates do eventually arrive, and it's less likely to go out of business, unlike a commercial cart. 2. X-cart (commercial) - http://www.x-cart.com Similar to Oscommerce. Commercial. Requires a customer to register before they can make a purchase. Lots of features and add-ons. Supports a wide range of credit-card processors and shipping services. Has an affiliate program add-on, and lets others sell products though your cart. 3. Dansie Cart (commercial) - http://www.dansie.net A well specified cart. Supports a wide range of credit-card processors and shipping services. Bad point: Apparently the Perl code is obscured, to make it harder to copy, which is annoying if you want to customise it. 3. Interchange (free) - http://www.icdevgroup.org A version of the old Akopia / Minivend carts. Complex product with lots of files and a lot of setting up to do. A complete solution, and includes the option of third party credit-card real-time order processing. Encrypts orders. 4. Agora (free) - http://www.agoracart.com A Web-Store/Commerce.cgi hybrid. 5. The Commission Cart (commercial) - http://www.siteinteractive.com A cgi-based shopping cart which also functions as an affiliate program. Other webmasters earn commissions by signing up and linking to your site. 6. ShopFactory (commercial) - http://www.shopfactory.Com Has a nice little wizard-based set-up. If you have a lot of items in your shop, this is an option worth checking out. This is a very valuable feature. A person who's set up cgi scripts before will get the most out of this. Supports a wide range of credit-card processors and shipping services. Bad points: It's ugly, awkward, and uses JavaScript too much. 7. WebGenie Shopping Cart Pro (commercial) - http://www.webgenie.com A simple, wizard-based option. Uses Javascript a bit, but the main work is done by cgi scripts. It saves the credit card information on your server. It's for someone who hasn't set up a cgi-script before. Expensive for what you get, but it works. Option to buy it on hire-purchase. 8. Actinic Catalog (commercial) - http://www.actinic.co.uk Most suitable if you have lots of items in your store. It's a 'wizard'-based PC program; you type in your information, and the program sets up the store. You should set up the default store as-is, then customise it later. Supports a wide range of credit-card processors and shipping services. A little complicated for an internet newbie; there's quite a lot in it. 9. Order Maven (commercial) - http://www.briggsoft.com A clever little program. It's a standalone Windows executable, which the customer downloads. The customer starts it up, chooses the product, enters their details, and sends off their order like an email, with the credit card details encrypted. It costs $29.00 at the time of writing. No secure server or order page needed; it's all done on the customer's pc at their leisure. You need to customise it, naturally. This isn't hard. Make sure you write your mail server URL into the code. For the customer, the order module is a 160kb download. Not too bad at all. 11. Selena Sol's Web Store (free) - http://www.extropia.com The mama of them all; the first internet shopping cart of note. Allows orders to be encrypted via PGP if you have PGP installed on your server. Very complex for an ecommerce newbie. 12. PerlShop (free) - http://www.perlshop.org PerlShop is a simple shop to set up. One of the first shopping carts. NOTE: Try to avoid carts that use cookies and javascript only, or that tie you into only one secure server and credit-card processor. Also avoid web-based services that you lease only. Having read the above you should have eliminated quite a few programs from your shopping list. They either won't work properly with all browsers, or they won't encrypt your order, or they want to tie you into their manufacturers' secure order system at $40+ per month. Another option is to get a bespoke system set up for you by a specialist company. These cost thousands of dollars. Aren't you glad you read this far? About The Author T. O' Donnell (http://www.tigertom.com/web-designer-london.shtml) is an ecommerce and web site design consultant in London, UK. COPYRIGHT: You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, free of charge, as long as the bylines are included. You must publish the article AS IS. Do not modify, alter or edit it. You are allowed to format the layout of the article for proper display in your website or ezine, so long as the text, hyperlinks and paragraph breaks are not changed or deleted. If presented in a HTML document, any hyperlinks present must be active, clickable, and go direct to the websites they represent i.e. no re-directs. Notifying the author is not required, but doing so is appreciated, at http://www.tigertom.com/contact.htm. Check below for additional Agora Shopping Cart Links and Information 1MerchantCart - Ecommerce Automation The All-in-One Merchant Shopping Cart and Affiliate Processing Software. Freebie Coupon Corner Imagine Free Groceries In Your Shopping Cart. |
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