Is Shopping Cart needed to sell 10 items on site?

[johnnygphotography]

Hello all,

I'm putting together a site for a little company and they have about 10 items to sell. They want customers to have the ability to buy online with credit cards and secured checkout (obviously). Does it make sense to tackle this with a whole shopping cart software endeavor or is there a simpler way to do this?

I did read the other thread on shopping carts and checked out zen cart. Seems like the more popular choice but was a bit complicated for me at first glance.

Thanks for the help and if you do suggest a shopping cart which one would it be?

Tallyho!

[Arctic Fox]

PayPal's little cart combined with code from FatFreeCart (to fix PayPal's bugs) is about as small and simple as you can get.

[brentan0]

I was going to suggest PayPal as well. No SSL hassle, no liability for your customers' credit card numbers, you name it. In many ways its an excellent entry-level solution.

[weslinda]

Paypal is also a very unprofessional one. But of course, that is simply my opinion.

Worse case, use something like cartit, it's free and is a button based cart shipping with a full checkout system. Integrates with most gateways and such and is pretty easy to setup and configure.

Best of all it's free.

For an environment like this, with so few products, it's a great fit.

[Fitz]

Yep, for ten products I'd give PayPal a try too. You don't even need a separate cart because PayPal has a "button factory" - and it's free. For straightforward products which have no options (like drop-downs etc) lift the button factory code from PayPal once, have a good look at it and you'll see the obvious parts which you can manually alter for subsequent simple products (e.g. just change description, price, SKU code and leave the other bits as they are).

Watch out if using an old version of DreamWeaver, however, as copying and pasting the code can add spaces at the start of lines which can stop the script working.... so either remove any extra spaces DW puts in at the start of script snippet lines, or add and edit the snippets in a text editor outside of DW. Check all buttons work properly on the site too (sounds obvious I know but you really must check every button 'live' - I do this religiously with PayPal enabled stores).

One other thing... sign up for their "Virtual Terminal" (£20 GBP per month here in the UK) and they give you a virtual terminal (for phone or postal orders) too. Their blurb says you have to enable "express checkout" to use that but I've not done that (way too technical for my simple site).

Lastly, there is also an area on their site where a whizzkid has added further functionality in the form of free code downloads and a tutorial. That's for your drop-down options etc. and is useful if you really do, like me, want to avoid the hassle of combining PayPal with a third party cart.

[davidmg]

You can also use google checkout. You can create buy now buttons for each item if you don't want to use a cart. example of both paypal and google on same page Appalachian and Gemini Wood Stove Replacement Catalytic Combustor

[bj]

Paypal really is the simplest. Do be aware though that there are some security issues with it. The biggest is that prices can be mysteriously changed. But with only ten items it would seem that your person would have a handle on that.

For entry level it can't be beat, then if it does well for them they can bump up to CubeCart or ZenCart at some future point in time.

[dstott]

On sites with few items, we use a simple "order page" where the buyer enters the quantity desired of each item. When we send them off to pay for it, we've already calculated (in php) the total, including shipping, taxes, etc. Paypal isn't really good for that in many cases, if shipping is per item.

Some clients use paypal for final payment, some use Authorize.net, others run the cards manually (we collect the info on a secure page and store it securely, so that the seller has to collect the card info on a secure, password-protected page).

[advancedmerchant]

With so many people bashing Paypal (paypalsucks.org, suepaypal.com, etc), I would avoid the whole paypal mess and go with a small, hosted cart that takes care of your SSL and setup with no programming experience needed.

We use KingCart (Best shopping cart service for e-commerce business.. King Cart Solutions.. Secure shopping cart ecommerce online shopping carts service merchant account.), and they interface to dozens of gateways (and provide you a merchant account and gateway account with $0 startup if you need it), along with a 30 day free trial.

It runs 25 cents per sale up to 100 sales, a dime per sale after that. They do have a $10 buck monthly minimum, but if you go a month without sales, it is no charge.

We have been using them for 5 years, and Marshall Dudley (the owner) has been a ton of help when I built mine (my programmers were busy with other projects, so I told them where to go, and just built one myself at Kingcart.

BTW, his website is UGLY, but his cart is sweet.

[shannonlp]

Paypal or Google Checkout would get my vote. You could write a simple custom cart to handle this project. Security of infomration will be the most important thing to look at for a cart of this size.

CubeCart is pretty simple and the free version could also be a good fit for this projects needs.

[Peter (IMC)]

I would go with the Merchant Metrix Cart. (still on their old site: Shopping Cart Software SEO Rated #1)

Without trying to assume anything bad, it seems like building and maintaining a website shouldn't be the thing where your client or you should be spending most of your time at. Better to use a system that does all that work for you. When you want to add a page, update a page, update a product, add a product, update a category, create a category, add a product to more categories (without creating duplicate content on different URL's), create options for that product, create forms, create landing pages for the PPC purposes, etc. etc. etc., you do not want to spend most of your time on the technical aspects, but more on the marketing aspects.

So if you don't want to waste too much time on the technical aspects of building and maintaining the website it self, I would definitely go for Merchant Metrix. We´re using it on some client sites as well and its a blessing. Easy to learn how to use it. Only thing that requires HTML knowledge is to set up the templates (which they can do for you), after that it is smooth ride.

Ah, and best of it all is (from an SEO point of view) that it is all optimized. You can create custom titles and meta tags for each page, category page and product page. When you visit a site running on Merchant Metrix you'd think they're all hand made pages, even the whole checkout process uses static URL's. Not a single page that uses parameters in the URL's. Also they use ajax tecnology to prevent unnecessary page reloads. (great for monitoring visitor statistics).

The system automatically creates shopping feeds for sites like froogle and bizrate. Also you can add PPC tracking codes without messing in templates, it's all prepared for that. If you're building the site in an existing domain, you can setup 301 redirects without knowing how to technically do that. Just give the 2 URL's and the system does the rest for you. Discounts are easily added, from bulk discounts to discount coupons.

Ah I almost forgot to mention the automatically created XML sitemaps for Google Webmaster Tools. Automated shipping calculation I almost forgot as well,... actually there´s a lot more,.. It's really a complete system and you'll like the price too I think. Goes per month and not expensive for a small site like you are planning.

[chowell]

LiteCommerce may be a good solution if you just need something small. We've used it on several sites that use real-time credit card processing and it's done a good job so far.

[hs4u]

If they have a way of processing credit cards for on the phone sales they can use Mal's e-commerce, mal's ecommerce. This site captures the information, sends you an email so you can log in there and retrieve the info and process it yourself. I have a client who has used this system for over 7 years now without a hitch. Since she takes phone orders, she already has the ability to process credit cards.

and...IT IS FREE!

Good luck to you!

[Milo]

Agreed hs4u,
mal's ecommerce is very simply and also very reliable. I used it for years, but eventually grew out of it. Mal is also very good to work with if you have any issues. From memory can be used with G checkout and paypal as well.

[khurramali]

You can try 2Checkout.com — Merchant Account / Credit Card Processing Alternative

they offer $ 50 setup and low percentage on orders.

they have very easy copy and paste code to setup online store with small number of products as well.

[crossland]

Although they only have 10 items, chances are things are going to change. At some point there are bound to be new products, discontinued items etc. A proper ecommerce store makes all of this a lot easier.

osCommerce is an excellent FREE solution that also contains contributions to help you with search engine positioning amongst other things.

Tim
Ibanez Guitars

[sanver]

NOPCART can also be looked into. We used it at gurjari without a payment gateway.

Sanjay Verma
Sanver TRAVELS | Sanver HOSTING
Mumbai, India

[jasonweb]

Originally Posted by Arctic Fox

PayPal's little cart combined with code from FatFreeCart (to fix PayPal's bugs) is about as small and simple as you can get.

I'm a bit worried now after reading that. I have just finished designing a site for my Dad using the paypal shopping cart software and I'm now worried that people might be able to change the prices. How do I ensure this can't happen?

[Veikoh]

I have used the Complete Website Building and Hosting Solution! Complete Web Page Design FREE 10 DAY TRIAL - www.completewebpages.com. to setup any commercial website I have found clients here in belfast. Once I did research and found this site templates and service most cost-effective to do it. I have charged £5 per page which is damn low (everyone thinks so), but as it takes me around 10 minutes to setup a webpage, how can I charge more?

[venividi]

Originally Posted by johnnygphotography

Hello all,

Does it make sense to tackle this with a whole shopping cart software endeavor or is there a simpler way to do this?

Tallyho!

For the same type of problem I found a simple and perfectly workable solution. I just added a cart to a normal site and it works!

Quote from Mal's e-commerce
If you want to start selling goods or services on the internet then you probably need to add some sort of additional functionality to your website. Mal's free e-commerce service will help you do just that.
unquote

Valeria

[bunkbedking]

Hi

we have been using Mals for several years and it has worked well with our growing business + a real live person - Mal - will respond to your questions

Denis

Bunk Bed King - Bunk Beds with Free Shipping Nationwide

[Arctic Fox]

Originally Posted by jasonweb

I'm a bit worried now after reading that. I have just finished designing a site for my Dad using the paypal shopping cart software and I'm now worried that people might be able to change the prices. How do I ensure this can't happen?

I've never had someone change prices in all my e-commerce years on the internet (since 2003). The bugs I'm talking about are;

> PayPal's cart opening a new cart window, which doesn't close when clicking on [Continue Shopping] in tabbed browsers like Firefox and IE7.

> A Pay With Credit Card option may not show up (randomly), so customers may think they have to have a PayPal account.

> While on PayPal's cart, if you remove an item, the link that would take you back to your site may or may not be there.

All these just leave your customers hanging, wondering what's going on. If they're tech-savvy they might know how to get out of that problem, but why take the chance. I use FatFreeCart to fix all that. There's also FatFreeCartPro which starts at $5/month with way more options and features than I can handle.


Again, as for changing prices - it's possible, but unlikely. If you know the price of your items you should instantly tell when something's wrong.