Free! - From the Ground Up: Shopping carts
In the last article, I offered you some ideas about whether to carry your own products or services, or whether you might consider third-party sales to make a profit with your Web site. In this article, I’ll look at some shopping cart sites to consider what makes some shopping sites work. Is the site successful because of its slick design, the “buzz” about its product or service, the great shopping cart program, or is it because some people just seem to have all the luck? In the article below, I’ll take you to sites that use five different shopping carts to understand what works for some and what may work for you…
Overview
Shopping Carts: Design-Wise Selling
Programming knowledge is essential to build a shopping cart or an online store, but even a programming klutz like me can understand simple systems like PayPal. However, what if I wanted to become more sophisticated with my sales approach? Which shopping cart program would I use? I could use free programs like Agora Cart, or I should spend a little cash for what appears to be “plug and play” programs? In an effort to understand the program that I might want to use, I did a search in Google. When I typed the words, “shopping cart” into the Google search engine, the following five businesses showed up on the first page in this order:
ShopFactory – The ShopFactory maintains three shopping cart options available, all for under $400. They tout their product as a “plug and play” easy-to-use program even for beginners.
AgoraCart – Available for free as an Open Source based e-commerce solution released under the GNU General Public License. “Originally targeting highly experienced webmasters and programmers, it has since matured to a solution that is easier to setup for beginners, powerful enough for experienced programmers, modular for flexibility, and one that is currently powering thousands live shops around the world.” Annual memberships cost money.
X-Cart – An e-commerce solution for under $200. Right up front, X-Cart states that their product is designed for “Software developers looking for a quality PHP shopping cart program at a low price.” They have other caveats that I’ll cover in a bit…
osCommerce (Open Source) – Another e-commerce solution under on going development by the open source community. The program source for this product is free.
Monster Commerce – “Get started for $99 a month…” They do have an annual plan, and it seems as though they also tout their product as “plug and play.”
While the five sites above all seem reasonable, I want to know what their demonstration sites look like. Why? Because I want to know how my site might look with their programming. Additionally, a look at the top clients for any given product might also tell me about the reliability of their product and whether I’ll receive immediate and satisfactory response to any problems. Last, but not least, I want to look at the sites from a nonprogrammer’s perspective to understand how these sites look to others who might want to use their services. After the reviews below, I’ll conclude with my opinions from that perspective to explain which site I might choose to build an e-commerce site…
ShopFactory
ShopFactory’s site is available in six different languages, and this tells me that they’re either spread very thin or that they maintain a professional international approach to their product. When I click on their menu options located at the top of their site, I see that they use resellers; that they offer free service with their product; that they’ve been in business since 1995; and that they might be using their own products, as two of their top shopping cart products allow clients to "create shops in any language."
ShopFactory
But, as a designer, I want to know how their program looks when integrated into a site. When I searched for site designs, I discovered that they included a demo that didn’t help this non-programmer see exactly what was going on. But one example was a big pull for me as a female…
AussieBum
ShopFactory pushes Sean Ashby’s site, AussieBum, as their prize client and prime example for their shopping cart products. While I spent a few mouth-watering moments enjoying the scenery (as many men might have enjoyed the DMX bikini doll on the front page Summer Sale discounts promo this past week), and while I discovered more about Ashby’s phenomenal sales story through other articles, his site didn’t convince me that I needed to use ShopFactory as my e-commerce tool. I needed more examples of how this tool might work. So I visited their online mall filled with sites all powered by ShopFactory.
Nini’s Favorites powered by ShopFactory
While many of the shops powered by ShopFactory seem different, most of the sites also seem powered by a two-column layout. But, they also seem distinctive – some seem professionally designed while others are a little less appealing. This tells me that designers and non-designers alike probably can use this programming with ease.
Agora Cart
AgoraCart
If I didn’t know a few programmers who had used Agora Cart for their clients, I would be turned off by the "members only" portion of the site and some of the technical jargon. What do the members know that I wouldn’t know if I didn’t join? Of course, I don’t know, as I’m not a member. However, I am a huge fan of Open Source, and I have to trust that any product that they push is good, and that support is available. They do include online manuals, and they also maintain a portion of the site for shopping cart demos. Additionally, they have a link that leads prospective downloaders a peek at an AgoraCart shopping mall.
The mall probably proves a huge pull for AgoraCart, as this addition implies community unlike their "members only" implication that might drive users away. A look through some of the "new" listings in the mall under various categories illustrates that many of the site owners either designed the sites themselves or used Web designers who were adept at programming. The designs, however, didn’t wow me – BUT, most of them were fairly simple to use, easy on the eyes, and efficient. If that’s all it takes to create sales, then go for it.
At this point, it might not hurt to mention Trenton Moss’s recent free article on ten ways to improve the usability of your ecommerce site. If you take his ten principles and apply them to the sites available through the AgoraCart mall site, what do you discover? After perusing some of the sites (and without ordering anything), I discovered that many of the sites followed most of Moss’s suggestions. While this might mean that the designers were savvy about these suggestions, I would think that AgoraCart builds these ideas into their programming for a more fool-proof and user-friendly program.
However, I’m still not convinced that I need to use AgoraCart for my e-commerce site…
Linda Goin carries an A.A. in graphic design, a B.F.A. in visual communications with a minor in business and marketing and an M.A. in American History with a minor in the Reformation. While the latter degree doesn't seem to fit with the first two educational experiences, Linda used her 25-year design expertise on archaeological digs and in the study of material culture. Now she uses her education and experiences in social media experiments.
Accolades for her work include fifteen first-place Colorado Press Association awards, numerous fine art and graphic design awards, and interviews about content development with The Wall St. Journal, Chicago Tribune, Psychology Today, and L.A. Times.
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Reviews
osCommerce
I have personally liked osCommerce. I am a beginning/Intermediate programmer & developer, and I liked being able to go in an modify the PHP scripting to my needs. There is a great version of osCommerce, that has common modules already added, so it is pretty much install and go. It is www.creloaded.com they have payment mondules and shipping modules already added into the osCommerce structure, so you can have your site up and running in a matter of minutes.
RE: osCommerce
Hey Ryan - thanks for your quick response on the article. I can usually wade through code if I have the time and space, but it's not my total love...so it's good to hear that osCommerce is a "plug and play" type e-commerce program. I'm anxious to hear from some other folks, too, about their experiences with different programs.
Thanks again!
Cheers,
Linda
I've checked a couple of those out too
I really am suprised you didn't cover Paypals' option(s) (cart, buy now), or is that for a follow-up article? This area has been one of my biggest hurdles when talking about solutions for clients. They want to know, "which works for me?", "can I sell all my widgets?" and "how much is the cart?"
I've installed a couple osCommerce's and really think it's a solid package. It's honestly as close to a mini-Amazon as I would like to get clients' sites.
X-Cart always seemed really good. A best-friend-developer I know has always held them high with reguard, so maybe one day I'll get into the admin area and see how it all works.
AgoraCart is really popular also, and some people have told me that's the way to go. Then again, this is from the mouth of developers. :)
I have never heard of the other two, but it's good to know who's available, at least to compare.
RE: I've checked a couple of those out too
Hey Chris - I was going to go PayPal, but wanted to see what was out there first. And - like you - I had the roughest time convincing clients to use PayPal initially. I'm grateful that clients can now pay without registering - what a boost that's been for my business.
Other than this, I'm happy that you, too, like osCommerce. I would like to hear from you whenever you try the X-Cart package. When I return from my summer trips, I'll probably utilize the PayPal option in one of my sites to see how it all works, and if it can be modified re: design aspects, etc. After I use it, I'll definitely report on it!
Thanks for your comments!
Cheers,
Linda
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