Single Item eComm Site

[ackerley1]

I am working on a site that is currently selling 1 item, with plans to add several more over the next 18 to 24 months. Since they currently sell very few items, they want something a little more snazzy than a typical shopping cart setup.

They want to integrate with PayPal for simplicity.

I am curious to know if there is a 3rd party eComm app that can be customized for such a store.

Not much experience with this type of eComm, so any help would be appreciated.

Rob

[SG14]

hello,

if there will be only one fixed product (or a fixed number of products less then 5-10) then I would recommend to build a custom solution.

It will be unique. :)

[imvain2]

Since I custom build everything, I can't tell you which one is better for you but... Paypal does have an area dedicated to third party cart providers.

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/websc...utions-outside

[blueharvest]

Try www.storesprite.com this software easily integrates with Paypal.

[weslinda]

http://www.turnkeywebtools.com/produ...=phpsimpleshop

SimpleShop does this nicely, and you can simply integrate right into your current site. A little work and it looks like it fits right in.

I've done this for advertising at marriedinmaryland.com and it only took an afternoon to setup.

[SG14]

I think there should be no shopping cart software at all.

if there are only 1-2 products it is better to crete static pages for them and simple script for checkout procedure. PayPal is good for this kind of projects.

So any shopping cart in this case will bring you a bunch of redundant functionality.

In addition it would be a good point to add some traking/monitoring/live help software like Sales-n-Stats.

[weslinda]

Well, I would have to disagree with the fact that no shopping cart should be included, as shared in the original post, the # of products would grow over the next 18 months.

The functionality of using a product like the Turkey SimpleShop allows them to track orders, collect detailed customer information, easily add new products all without having to customize anything, and without sending paying customers to PayPal's site or anything along those lines.

This simple system reduces setup time and allows a site to get up and running very efficiently. Of course, you also have to think about the ease for the client long term, a custom coded system tied to Paypal forces a customer to only use them or redo the system.

[sub_kovert]

Hello all,

If you plan to add to more products in the future of course a cart makes sense! Order/customer management and product additions could all be managed through a back end control panel.

Most carts support Paypal so you just need to build a 'skin' and extra pages can be added dynamically 'on the fly'.

[unitecheddie]

If you want an off the shelf package for up to 25 products I have to recomend our UniTrader Lite package. OK its template driven software but its free to download and try so you can check it out at www.unitechnology.co.uk and this might make things a little easier. Also do bespoke solutions if thats required.

Good luck

[SG14]

Originally Posted by weslinda

Well, I would have to disagree with the fact that no shopping cart should be included, as shared in the original post, the # of products would grow over the next 18 months.

The functionality of using a product like the Turkey SimpleShop allows them to track orders, collect detailed customer information, easily add new products all without having to customize anything, and without sending paying customers to PayPal's site or anything along those lines.

This simple system reduces setup time and allows a site to get up and running very efficiently. Of course, you also have to think about the ease for the client long term, a custom coded system tied to Paypal forces a customer to only use them or redo the system.

Yea, actually you are right, good and profitable store should have all these options. But, once again, there is no need in shopping cart solution, you can simply write severeal PHP/ASP scripts and HTML pages to make store work. Even with far better performance then with most shopping carts :)

In this particular case it would be better because shopping carts bring a lof of redundant functionality.

Sure, if number of production will grow from 1 to several hundreds, then you should use a shopping cart solution.

[ackerley1]

Okay revisiting this.

Client has decided to go with a merchant processor instead of PayPal, So what I am looking for now, is a check out process only that does the following:

Gathers pertinent info from buyer, Stores what is not secure for shipping and further marketing purposes.
Sends info to processor for approval
Handles pass back from processor
Sends confirm email to buyer, email to admin, and informs the logistics handlers (Logistics can either be a daily procedure or a per pruchase proceedure.)

Are there any solutions out there that fit this bill?

Thanks for the help.

[sub_kovert]

Are there any solutions out there that fit this bill?

I do not know of a cart that will not do this.

[ackerley1]

Hmmm... I realize that, but they come with the full shopping display, product info pages etc etc... We are not quite at that point yet.
Take a look at: www.bcowwoutfitters.com/index.php

This is still in progress, but you can see the simple cart window on the right hand side. I want something that will do the next steps in the ordering process:
Gather info
Send for processing
Handle passback
notify customer, seller and logistics.
Keep customer info for future reference.
Track sales traffic.

I don't want a full blown shopping cart system like oscommerce and I don't quite have the scripting knowledge to cook this up on my own - at least not in a timely manner.

I was looking at www.finalwebsites.com/snippets.php?id=32

But really am not sure. Is there a set of scripts/modules (not full programs) that I can take and apply as required?

Thanks

Rob