Shopping carts

**Slowdive** · September 20th, 2011, 03:32 AM

Not the most significant post in the history of internet forums, however I am curious what shopping cart options people favour.
I am not looking for a store front solution just a cart so something like Roman cart. My biggest complaint about Roman cart is that it takes users away from the site to check cart contents.
There are of course a lot of self hosted options but picking one that is easy to customize and wont require on going maintenance, that is easy enough for any one to use is tricky.

So what are people using and any suggestions for a shopping cart that has inventory control (all our items are once offs) and just slots into a html page. No need or desire for a catalogue or store front unless it can be made secondary to the html pages.

**JJMcClure** · September 20th, 2011, 04:51 AM

I mostly use a Joomla/Virtumart combination. It's out of the box, free and therefore has some limitations but it's pretty good and fairly easy to customise. For trickier stuff I hire in programmers using sites like Elance.com.

Which of course is no use to you if you just want to slot a cart into an HTML page but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

For HTML, I've used Paypal in the past but it's not scalable since you have to cut and paste the buttons into your code and you get taken to paypal.com AND if the user has a paypal account they can't use the credit card linked to that account without logging in to paypal.

**Slowdive** · September 20th, 2011, 05:10 AM

Yes in a perfect world a CMS cart would be perfect. However some of the sites would require a major rebuild to become CMS based just not worth my time. More over as I am going to be working with them daily may as well be in a platform I enjoy which I am a fossil so that's good old html.
Shopintegrator seems like a nice option, although price is always a concern for this specific market one sale covers any monthly fees so a $30 or so a month is rather neither here nor there. As I find options I will mention them here so the thread at least has some value by the end and if any one has any other ideas, share away.

**grynge** · September 20th, 2011, 05:43 PM

In the past I used OSC, and then the fork Cre-Loaded which had sef urls. Now I use prestashop and my own personally coded shopping cart which I prefer. My personal opinion is Google does prefer unique shopping carts over major shopping carts (but again that is from my personal opinion only based on sales made from my cart over major shopping carts)

I have used joomla/virtumart but I didn't like joomla so migrated everything over to wordpress/wp ecommerce and tribulant shopping cart plugins but then I find Wordpress much easier to work with than other cms's

**Slowdive** · September 21st, 2011, 01:50 AM

Originally Posted by grynge

(but again that is from my personal opinion only based on sales made from my cart over major shopping carts)

Sales or traffic? I ask only as surely Googles preference would dictate traffic and sales would be decided by peoples click through rate. I can certainly agree that picking a shopping cart is one of the most important decisions an ecom site can make. My first e-commerce site went up elven years ago using a great little cart called Ezstores after around eight years they finally closed up shop and I had to look for a new cart. After all those years I had a lot of stats regarding conversion rate, up sale, coupon use the works it took me months and numerous carts to replicate my previous rate of turn over. The interesting thing was that solutions I felt were superior yielded poor results and eventually a cart I did not like overly much ended up working wonders.

I think a big part of it is understanding your market and customer demographic, the above site drew in an older crowd who were apparently less computer savvy and perhaps sceptical of the internet in general. So it was very much about finding the solution that suited their comfort zone. With times having changed so dramatically and amazon, Ebay and the spin off of thousands of online shopping locations perhaps this is less of a concern these days? However I can definitely attest that different systems convert better on some sites than others.
For example we found a very "quick and dirty" cart (product loaded, click to checkout, upsale tick box and take cash worked extremely well on a site aimed at bargain pc accessories. Where as on a jewellery site we found a check out process that reassured buyers about the money back, reminded them of the TOS and invited them to find out about us and made the entire process personal performed far better.

One thing I will say is that Shopintegrator so far seem awesome, the cart has relatively robust features, nifty styling options and integrates well. Tech support has so far been a pleasure, even taking a look at the site I wanted to connect their cart too and trouble shooting a few issues I had not even really noticed yet. So far they have my business as call me old fashioned but it is such a treat these days to contact a company that actually seems to care about their clients, even a potential one.

**grynge** · September 21st, 2011, 02:40 AM

Originally Posted by Slowdive

Sales or traffic? I ask only as surely Googles preference would dictate traffic and sales would be decided by peoples click through rate. I can certainly agree that picking a shopping cart is one of the most important decisions an ecom site can make. My first e-commerce site went up elven years ago using a great little cart called Ezstores after around eight years they finally closed up shop and I had to look for a new cart. After all those years I had a lot of stats regarding conversion rate, up sale, coupon use the works it took me months and numerous carts to replicate my previous rate of turn over. The interesting thing was that solutions I felt were superior yielded poor results and eventually a cart I did not like overly much ended up working wonders.

Definitely my own shopping cart sells more than my sites with major scripts. Out of the major scripts I have found Prestashop to be the friendliest, though it is a fork from magento which I just find to massive for my sites. With traffic I find the prestashops seem to do ok once you fix the duplicated content. (I must admit though prestashop was hacked a month ago which is not good, luckily during my mods I had already fixed the problem that allowed it to get hacked.) I like the wordpress carts because they are small and so easy to update compared to the other scripts but then I haven't put them on what I call an ecom site more just a blog with some small sales.

Originally Posted by Slowdive

I think a big part of it is understanding your market and customer demographic, the above site drew in an older crowd who were apparently less computer savvy and perhaps sceptical of the internet in general. So it was very much about finding the solution that suited their comfort zone. With times having changed so dramatically and amazon, Ebay and the spin off of thousands of online shopping locations perhaps this is less of a concern these days? However I can definitely attest that different systems convert better on some sites than others.
For example we found a very "quick and dirty" cart (product loaded, click to checkout, upsale tick box and take cash worked extremely well on a site aimed at bargain pc accessories. Where as on a jewellery site we found a check out process that reassured buyers about the money back, reminded them of the TOS and invited them to find out about us and made the entire process personal performed far better.

Yeah I can't agree more with you, you really need to test stuff, it also has a huge impact on countries as well. I have found Australians tend to like to send an enquiry first to the site and once you have responded and they realise it's a real person they will purchase and I have found once Australians buy from a site once they tend to be repeat customers, where as what I have seen from US sales they tend to be more one off's and purchase without prior contact.

Originally Posted by Slowdive

One thing I will say is that Shopintegrator so far seem awesome, the cart has relatively robust features, nifty styling options and integrates well. Tech support has so far been a pleasure, even taking a look at the site I wanted to connect their cart too and trouble shooting a few issues I had not even really noticed yet. So far they have my business as call me old fashioned but it is such a treat these days to contact a company that actually seems to care about their clients, even a potential one.

I haven't had anything to do with them but if I get a chance to check them out I will.

**Slowdive** · December 14th, 2011, 02:32 AM

Just an update, as much as I loath wordpress and am currently fighting the need to slit my own wrists as a result of working with it :P
Woocommerce is free and pretty amazing, some plugins cost around $50 however for a once off plugin to payment gateway of choice is really not an issue.
Features worth noting.
Easily handles digital product delivery.
Account management user signup or detail changes handled neatly on site.
Great stat tracking
Easy to add products that look great (a few nice zoom effects and built in light box)
Very easy product and inventory management.

Downside its wordpress.....

The latest incarnation of wordpress seems more obfuscated than ever, right down to basically demanding I hand code put making it difficult to really get into the code from the dashboard. Meh...
Just thought I would share the solution, I have eventually opted to go with after trying quiet a few indeed.

**JJMcClure** · December 14th, 2011, 03:31 AM

Originally Posted by Slowdive

Downside its wordpress.....

Don't often hear people being negative out WP, you don't like it?

**Slowdive** · December 14th, 2011, 04:18 AM

Not in the least, however in this instance I have to acknowledge its usefulness. The plugins also have come a long way from the early days and some of the suites are frankly powerful.
One must of course accept some of my negative feelings towards wordpress probably stem from my own inexperience with it and a lack of full understanding, even so I think some are valid.
That said what I do not like about it....

Its relatively hard to customize and theme, at least in comparison to some of the lesser known CMS systems out there. I can make a concrete 5 them in around a day or two allowing for intial html/css design.

I do not find the interface at dashboard that intuitive, I guess that depends on the theme your using. However you do still need to do a few silly steps like add a bunch of page ID's at times, why wouldn't a list of existing pages serve? That sort of thing grates me as I feel I have to learn a step that is simply obfuscated as opposed to easiest route from a to b.

Unreliable updates which due to security are mandatory, if wordpress has a bad build your stuck till they fix it or at risk of being hacked. Similarly if it breaks all your plugins you might just be in a pickle. Smaller markets/systems may have less choice but when it breaks there are a lot more of you in the same boat. Before anyone says a bad version is rare, I think we all thought that about fire-fox before the latest updates.

Its relatively slow and often I feel so unnecessarily but then again its inner workings are largely a mystery to me. However the sheer number of caching plugins and tips and tricks with some step by steps offering 76% speed increase, tells me its getting bloated.

It is becoming more and more complex and at this stage I would not feel entirely happy letting an end user who is not wordpress/tech savvy loose in the back end. As far as clients who need an easy CMS without getting a computer science degree I am not touching WP.

Wordpress is open source and although it will always find support its future is ever uncertain, I return to likening it to Fire Fox my favourite browser for years, which now I wont touch due to memory leaks and slow browser performance. Its nerve wracking to commit to a system that one has no actual control over. At least with static sites, custom CMS or really accessible ones I am not reliant on anyone else, except googles whims :P

Of course there is a solution to nearly all my gripes, however I am a slow adopter and these still niggle me. I am also getting accustomed to silly creature I am sure after a few months when I am typing out most of my code instead of using the silly kitchen sink I may feel happier. Also what is the deal with HTML view showing me a dumbed down version of the code? Is that a new feature or my theme? As really sometimes I just want to hack out some html without having to ftp files back and forward....

**eddiebooth** · December 15th, 2011, 11:58 AM

I use oscMax to build my sites and it comes complete with a built-in shopping cart. The support via the forum is great and being Open Source you quickly feel part of a family, rather than dealing with people who's only interest is how much money they can make out of you.
Payment methods a-plenty are already built in, just choose your preferred selection(s) and off you go. There are not a lot of ready made templates but those that they have are easily personailsed via CSS stylesheets.