choosing the best shopping cart for your store

26 September 2008 560 views 10 Comments

Starting an online store can be challenging, from setting up the business, selecting the right shopping cart system and for most selecting the right developer to bring your vision to life.

I am lucky enough to have a background in web design and development so I don’t have to worry about having someone build the site for me.

However, choosing the right shopping cart is a daunting task. When I first built the store I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on the design so I bought a CRE Loaded template from templatemonster.com (my first mistake). I even hired a programmer to assist me with some minor details. I uploaded the products and then the site was live in a matter of weeks.

That is until I received my first order. It turns out the attributes weren’t saving so I was never able to determine what size or color, a customer wanted this required me to call every customer for every sell. It turns out the template I purchased was missing files (oops), we spent countless hours trying to resolve the issue, uploading new files, reinstalling the shopping cart, consulting with CRE loaded, nothing worked.

After a couple of months on CRE loaded we were introduced to searchfit.com. This is shopping cart system that keeps search engines in mind, very SEO friendly. SEO friendly is exactly what I needed. So we coughed up the fees and had Search Fit create the store template based off my design. This new system allows me to create keyword friendly URL’s and made it much easier to set up products. However searchfit.com does come with a monthly price tag depending on what your needs are.

It’s not too much for the basic plan, but it got me thinking about other options. I’ve compiled some of the (free) open source shopping cart system that I like.

A friend suggested I look into Drupal with ubercart.com. Which is still a pretty young shopping cart compared to OS commerce. The most unique thing about Ubercart is that it integrates with Drupal which allows you to combine a fully-functional community, business or news website. Hmm, a LaLa Baby Community?

They have flexible product attributes, single page checkout, simple processing screens, and automatic user account creation.

I just completed the installation for Durpal with Ubercart and involved having to download and install several modules but once they were uploaded everything worked seamlessly.

Another shopping cart system I am looking at is PrestaShop, which is based in Paris. It comes with a slew of web 2.0 features like product tagging and tag clouds. You can create and product RSS feed and can send customers a PDF invoice.

I poked around their website and found some very stylish examples of their product in action. I wanted to try out their test site but I kept getting an error. I will probably install PrestaShop on my server and see how well works.

The final option is Zen Cart, which isn’t a new shopping cart system, but a very stable one based on the OS Commerce framework. We are using Zen Cart on another site so it won’t be anything new.

Zen Cart has a large community base that is eager to help create new modules and tools for the program. Their forums are updated constantly so you get plenty of community support.

Some people will even build new features just for you.

Installing Zen Cart is a bit daunting after all they have a list of folders and files that will have to have their permissions updated. In fact, I was trying to install it this morning but ran out of time because of this.

So those are the three systems I am considering. I’m hoping to make a decision by the end of the weekend. Hopefully these posts will help others make the right decision for their shopping cart system.

10 Comments »

Dominique Goh said:

Good luck on your shopping cart . I too am searching around for a suitable one. Have downloaded presta shop/ zen cart and am looking at Aspcart. Zen cart is really quite difficult to figure out. still figuring it.. have yet to put up presta shop too
Dominique Gohs last blog post..Dear Kid Thursday- Musical Beds

# 26 September 2008 at 1:26 am

Jill C said:

Good article! As a Zen-cart expert I can attest to the fact that Zen-Cart is the way to go-but DO NOT purchase templates to go with the shopping cart. Although the companies that sell these templates assure customers that they work with Zen-Cart there are more often than not coding issues that will not work with Zen and many of the modules that work with it. Zen out of the box is not a pretty cart and I do encourage customers to “make it their own through the stylesheet that comes with it. You can view samples of sites I have done at http://www.ilovephotogifts.com and http://www.modern9photodesign.com. It is a powerful cart with so many add-ons to make your customers experience a top-notch one! Good luck with your decision but I say Zen all the way!

Jill Cs last blog post..Photo Insert Purse Giveaway

# 26 September 2008 at 4:59 am

Marissa said:

That seems like a very daunting task. I hope it all works out for you!

Marissas last blog post..Thursday Thoughts

# 26 September 2008 at 11:51 am

Ed said:

Drupal & Ubercart, Zen & Presta are great solutions. SearchFit is a great choice if you want an application that works right out of the box with no complicated setup. Also, there are many great features that more than make up for the monthly cost (automated Google Base Feed, Compare Products, Product Reviews, etc). I’d be happy to answer any questions… ed@searchfit.us.com

# 26 September 2008 at 3:00 pm

Zen Cart Developer said:

If you are looking for a free and open source shopping cart that has all the bells and whistles, I recommend Zen Cart!

Make sure to work with a good consultant or a good hosting company that is familiar with Zen Cart.

There is a new ‘kid’ in this space and it is Magento. It is a bit early to say but it seems pretty promising. Here is a short comparison article I wrote about the two: http://www.activoinc.com/blog/2008/09/22/zencart-and-magento-for-ecommerce/

# 2 October 2008 at 10:45 pm

day 7 and Day 8 of 15 days of marketing | Bizzie Mommy said:

[...] Google Alerts explains how my hosting company found and commented on my post about choosing the right shopping cart. [...]

# 14 November 2008 at 12:48 am

Bill said:

Small business owners need a professional e-commerce alternative. FastCommerce.com is a low-cost, high powered e-commerce platform that is free for the first fifty products, and 29.95 for 2,000 products.

Beautiful templates, great back office tools, no set up costs, and no contract.

The Small Business e-Commerce Alternative: FastCommerce

# 1 December 2008 at 3:03 am

London Tours said:

I love oscommerce, its a great system thats free and easy to amend to your template. Its PHP and MySQL but you dont need to be a developer, if you know a bit of HTML and have good common sense its easy to work around.

# 4 January 2009 at 10:58 am

Devon Cottages said:

I agree oscommerce is a great tool and there are so many resources for it online and contributions. If you can make it not look like the oscommerce template then you are doing well because that is where it lets itself down IMHO.

Devon Cottages´s last blog post..Treetops, Torquay

# 19 January 2009 at 10:14 am

Lesya said:

For someone oscommerce is best choice while others choose paid platforms. Really, running e-commerce store is quite a challange. And sometimes you would need to switch e-commerce platforms. Now it’s easier. You may use cart2cae-rt online service. It automates data transfer. Hope it helps somebody http://www.shopping-cart-migration.com

# 9 June 2009 at 7:10 am