I need Ecommerce Solution Suggestions

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Rasta_Cook

Rasta_Cook

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Apr 4, 2007
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Montreal
Hi,
There are many options out there, and honestly I dont know what to choose...Here is a list of things to consider...

***Must Have***
  • Paypal will probably not allow me to sell what I want to sell, Id like to offer credit card at least, other methods are nice to have. ( the product is illegal in some retarded countries... but safe in us/can, ive seen most competing websites saying they no longer accept payment with paypal because they closed their account )
  • English and French front-end ( admin in english )
  • Affiliate Friendly... I think using affiliate is a great way to grow my business, especially considering the fact that very few of my competition offer affiliate programs ( the ones that do, kinda suck ).
  • Client Friendly, easy shopping process
  • Inventory... Overall I will have about 12 different product a launch, but I will also make "package deals" product A + B for a special price, so this package will become a product, but it will need to impact inventory of A and B... I will also want to offer a few options for each product that could impact the price ( product A white = 10$ , product A black = 15$ , 3 x product A Black = 35$ , and so on )
  • SEO Friendly
***Nice to Have***
  • Fees : setup/license/fees Should be as cheap as possible, 100% Free solution is best, Id rather spend money in marketing then if all goes well I might consider upgrading to a paying solution if the benefits are worth it.
  • Design flexibility... Ability to integrate the ecommerce solution to my design, rather than modify a template that came with the shop. This is a preference but it is debatable, id be willing to pay 150$ for a NICE zencart template ( if it has the layout that would work for me, most of them dont )
  • Keep the user on my website has much has possible during payment process, although I never had a ecommerce site So I dont know all that is required for security, hackers n stuff... soo whatever trick there is to keep em as long as possible...
  • During Checkout, giving the returning client the option to put his user/pass instead of filling a big form again
  • Allow me to choose to which country state/region I can ship and set different pricing for country/shipping method IF I want to.
So there you have it,
Ive looked at Shopify, ZenCart, OsCommerce, and Mal , these are the top ones on my list so far, but its just overwhelming to look at all the details / features, I just need some advices... What would you do ?

PS : Id like my shop to also have a community aspect, not just look like a template default oscommerce site that has "no feel", Im thinking about having a "blog" section where I could post interesting articles , or maybe just a "articles" section where client can get informations , i would use this also for SEO purpose... A forum or "community" section for user to post is also something id like... If all these thing could work within 1 site that would be great, altho I doubt it.
 


I've always used OSCommerce as the e-commerce solution for my clients. It's quite easy to skin and customize, and it has a lot of options and features.

However, if you only have 12 products, or even less than like 50 then you really don't even need a script to manage your products. Just set up a simple PHP template system and add the products manually. You'll probably need three pages - an index page, category and subcategory page, and a product page. Then you can call the individual products using query strings. You can find some really good tutorials on creating your own small store by using query strings to pull your info from a database.
 
However, if you only have 12 products, or even less than like 50 then you really don't even need a script to manage your products.
Click to expand...

I would agree with this too for such a small inventory. I use ZenCart for about the same reasons as OSCommerce. For that matter, there's no harm in using zencart for a small store either. It's simple to install. I think zencart is probably the updated version of OSCommerce. You can integrate a ton of add-ons created by the community like wishlists, SEO URLs, cross-sell features, lightbox, FAQ, ratings, wordpress blog addon, and a zillion others. Getting a decent commercial template is worth the purchase for a large project.

For a paid solution, cscart is one of the best I've seen. The other commercial carts always seemed to be missing something I want or you have to pay extra for the good addons, like a wishlist, for example.

At first, zencart was a pain in the butt for me to customize, but once you understand the logic of the design, it's not bad & future sites are easy to replicate. :D
 
I had tried x-cart (demo) and it looks pretty freakin' cool. Might wanna look into that.
 
However, if you only have 12 products, or even less than like 50 then you really don't even need a script to manage your products. Just set up a simple PHP template system and add the products manually. You'll probably need three pages - an index page, category and subcategory page, and a product page. Then you can call the individual products using query strings. You can find some really good tutorials on creating your own small store by using query strings to pull your info from a database.
Click to expand...

Well i suck at programming, i can customize shit and do css, table integration n stuff but php / database stuff is out of my knowledge scope... Even if i did what you said... How would i do a shopping cart, How would i handle payments , How would I handle Inventory, Currency convertions etc... I cant do this shit by myself lol...

Id rather go with something a bit "overkill" and be sure that everything works, than breaking my head to make my custom shop work...

storesuit looks nice but is not out yet...
 
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