Frustrated...

[Curve Appeal]

I haven't been a member long, but I have been reading a lot and have found some helpful people on this forum with great advice.

What do you do when you like the ease of use and the price of your shopping cart, but you're frustrated with a couple things about them.

My host is citymax, and I get frustrated that I don't have a search option or that I can't control my navigation that much.

I have spent hours and several dollars trying out other shopping carts, and I really like the ease and price of this one, yet I hate these two things that we don't get.

I guess my question is, how important is it to have a "search" button on your webstore, and if is it possible to put one in there?

Thank you in advance for any advice.

[weslinda]

Search is paramount...it's really quite important to have in a site. As is full control of layout and functionality.

If you have the ability to code and change the actual layout of your site, you should be able to incorporate some type of search into your site, if not, I would look for another shopping system.

For ease of use, management and control, the PinnacleCart system is at the forefront in that category in my opinion. Great functionality built in and easy to develop for.

[Curve Appeal]

Thank you.. I am checking Pinnacle out right now.

[weslinda]

Great to hear, if you are looking to move, and you would be interested, I can save you some money on the cart and help you in the transition if you would like.

Don't hesitate to contact me with any questions or if there is any way we can help.

[Dubbya]

I use a search field on my site. Web-savvy users will almost always go straight for it to find exactly what they're looking for. It's simply the fastest way to find a specific item. (It needs some tweaking but works pretty well.)

Besides being a useful tool for shoppers, keeping track of the search queries they enter is extremely useful when considering which new products to add.

[RegDCP]

CRELoaded, open source contentmangement system has both simple and advanced search options.
Demo at http://dotcom-productions.com/cms/index.php?cPath=71_72

Reg

[Orion]

depending on how the site and data is laid out google and yahoo have free site search options you can easily integrate into the pages.

'course you have to be able to edit the pages to insert their code...

[wpriley]

I'd say very, very important. I have a number of eCommerce sites all with search. I see from my web stats that over a third (38%) of my site visitors use the search function. While there's other ways to find product on the sites (drill down by category, browse by price range, new arrivals, Web specials, etc.), I assume most of the visitors using the search function would leave the site if it wasn't there.

I use a third-party search solution (PicoSearch) that I highly recommend. It allows me to not index non-product pages, control what portions of the page content is indexed, format results pages to exactly match my site, and (my favorite) displays product thumbnail photos on each search result.

PicoSearch also keeps statistics on each search allowing me to review repeat searches for products not on the site and consider adding them.

There's a huge list of additional features. PicoSearch is free (with typical limitations) or reasonably priced for the full-featured version. I use the paid version on all of the 11 sites I employee PicoSearch on.

If you want to see it, here are links to several of my sites:

www.KeyRingCentral.com (search for "carabiner")
www.RealEstatePromoProducts.com (search for "calendar")
www.DrinkwareCentral.com (search for "latte")
www.GolfPromoProducts.com (search for "cap")
www.TradeShowExhibitor.com (search for "chocilite" misspelled)
www.PromoBagWorld.com (search for "beach")

Good luck!

[puamana]

Have you considered installing your own shopping cart, instead of using a remotely hosted one?

One of the best in my opinion is Agora.cgi (Shopping Cart Software Free Ecommerce Shopping Cart AgoraCart)
and best of all, it's free. You'll need cgi-bin access and a linux server (or
a Winhost capable of handling perl scripts).

The documentation is excellent. I've used this cart for the past
10 years in all its incarnations, and it's the easiest to install and manage
I've yet found. It does not require SQL (uses a flat file database) and is
completely configurable to integrate with your site design (uses header/footer
files). Supports most major payment gateways, including OFFLINE/SSL.

It's also one of the easiest to manage (though the manager interface) and
you don't have to be a rocket-scientist to do it.

A subscription to Pro Membership will give you access to the PRO version which
has wonderful extra features (like invoices/packing slips and statistics to name a few).
Oh yes, and it does have a search feature.

Give it a shot.
Puamana

[bobchrist]

A search button is good to emphasize your service and let the users know how your services differ from your key competitors, but there are more chances that your users land to competitor site through using search button and may not back to your site if they find any good offer out of your site.