What Shooping Cart To Use?
-
Hi
Any recommendations on shopping carts? I’m looking for something pretty cheap, not over $150 a month. But I don't want to sacrifice quality to save on loose change.
Any suggestions?
-
AWESOME! Thank you everyone for all your help. We truely have a fantastic community here at SEOmoz!
Thanks everyone!!
-
SearchFit is a very powerful shopping cart software and one of the best out there. Starts with $79 per month with $39 for 1st month. They also have 14 days trial.
-
Recommendations need to be based purely on your specific requirements (and budget)...
Undoubtedly, opting for a cheap solution, will sacrifice on quality - as with many things in life.
Are you planning on using a website design / development agency to build and design your store or are you just looking for an off the shelf platform with pre-built templates?
What is the $150 per month for? Hosting? Monthly transaction commissions on self hosted solutions or just monthly fee for usage of the ecommerce solution?
First identify whether an open source platform or a self hosted platform is best for you. If you want everything taken care for you and aren't worried about the endless limitations you will face, then a self hosted solution such as Shopify or Big Commerce may be best.
We've got many years experience in ecommerce having worked with lots of ecommerce providers and there really isn't any case of one size fits all nor are there many that we recommend as the majority have flaws.
Generally we'll recommend Magento as it's open source, extendible, flexible, robust, powerful - but it is also bulky so needs experts to fine tune and configure server, site and a decent hosting package - preferably in a dedicated environment - but this won't always be the best or cheap option for some etailers.
Some questions you may want to be asking before going with a recommendation include:-
- What is the reasons for upgrading / switching if you already have an ecommerce website?
- How many products do you need to upload and will the filters/options be complex at all?
- Can you design, code or work around PHP, MySQL databases, HTML and CSS (typically)?
- What ecommerce features do you require?
- How extendible does your solution need to be?
Other noteworthy subjects to consider:-
- Support & Service
- Themes & Extensions
- Maintenance & Updates
- SEO / Core Optimisation
You may also find this article on Killer eCommerce Tips for Online Retailers useful too. Whether before you have chosen an ecommerce solution or after...
-
Only with joomla, but they're free... and with a big community sharing new components, plugins, and modules... ZenCart is other good option.
-
ZenCart is a popular shopping cart system as well and its free open source. Ive been happy using zencart and virtuemart for my shopping cart applications. Virtuemart Ive only used in conjunction with Joomla CMS websites. Not sure if it works as a stand a lone.
-
If you want to recommend CART66 150usd SO and there is little free version.
Flex
-
Hi waayne
We're using Virtuemart 2.0.6. Free and easy to use. You can download it from www.virtuemart.net.
I hope this can help you.
-
Hi Wayne,
I've recently had a friend launch a ecommerce site on Big Commerce. From everything I've read, and everything my friend tells me, they are fantastic. I had a bit of a play around with the backend and it's really easy to use too.
Prices start at around $25 a month and I'm pretty sure there are no locked in contracts.
Cheers
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Using Multiple links/names for the same product?
I am being asked to change these product links on the home page: Home/Condo
Web Design | | RoxBrock
Watercraft/Boat to Home
Condo
Watercraft
Boat (Along with several other product links) How does this affect the customer experience/usability, and SEO? Is it a good idea or is it confusing? Thank you.0 -
Sitemap Question - Very Old Ecommerce Site, Never Used A Map
I help manage a family website, that has about 10,000 products... It was top ranked since 1996, then got smacked by Penguin and recovered but its still receiving only a fraction of the natural traffic it used to get. Something we have never used... Is a sitemap. I'm curious if anyone knows reliable software that will generate a sitemap? My cart is custom built, website uses html pages across the board. Dynamic content and parameters are set up properly, onsite seo is in the excellent range. The only thing that I haven't been utilizing is a sitemap. Because the cart was hand built, it would a huge convenience to use a lightweight program thats compatible with any website, has parameter settings, exclusions and anything else useful to negate any duplicate content. I have a few highly dynamic pages as well... If anyone knows a product or a possible solution, it would be much appreciated. Working it up myself would be very time consuming. Thx
Web Design | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants0 -
The impact of using directories without target keyword on our Rankings
Hello all, I have a question regarding a website I am working on. I’ve read a lot of Q en A’s but couldn’t really find the best answer. For one of our new websites we are thinking about the structure of this website and the corresponding URL-structure. Basically we have a main product (and a few main keywords) which should drive the most traffic to our website, and for which we want to optimize our homepage. Besides those main keywords, we have an enormous base of long-tail keywords from which we would like to generate traffic. This means we want to create a lot of specific pages which are optimized. My main question is the following: We are thinking of two options: Option 1: www.example.com/example-keyword-one Option 2: www.example.com/directory/example-keyword-one With option 1 we will link directly from our homepage to the most important pages (which represent our most important keywords). All the pages with the long tail content will be linked from another section on our website, which is one click away from our homepage (specifically a /solutions page which is linked from the footer). All the pages with long-tail content will have this structure www.example.com/example-keyword-one so the URLs will not contain the directory /solutions With option 2 we will use more subdirectories in our URLs. Specifically, for all the long tail content we would use URLs like this: www.example.com/solutions/example-keyword-one
Web Design | | NielsB
The directories we want to use wouldn't really have added value in terms of SEO, since they don’t represent important keywords. So what is the best way to go? Option 1, straightforward, short URL’s which don’t really represent the linking structure of our website, but only contain important keywords. Or option 2, choose for more directories in our URLs which represent the linking structure of our website, but contain directories which don’t represent important keywords. Would the keyword ‘solutions’ in the directory (which doesn’t really relate to the content on the page) have a negative impact on our rankings for that URL?0 -
Does anyone know how much a wordpress site can store (in terms of data) I want to put all my movies on it and use it as a personal global external hard drive! Thanks!!
So basically, I have about 500 GB of movies on my computer and I don't want to buy an external hardrive. I don't want to spend the money A website I could access anytime, and anywhere, without having to carry my external with me everywhere I go. Thanks in advance for any help/ references.
Web Design | | TylerAbernethy1 -
Examples of e-commerce sites using ajax faceted navigation?
Does anyone have examples of e-commerce sites successfully using ajax to power faceted navigation?
Web Design | | ao.com0 -
Using "#" anchors to display different content
If I have a page that has an area on the page that acts like a widget and has three different tabs. These tabs provide 3 different types of information relevant to the page subject matter. By default when someone goes to the page one of the tabs is showing but you have to click on the others to see the info on them. Is it OK to use domain.com/topic#TAB1, domain.com/topic#TAB2, domain.com/topic#TAB3 to create shortcut links so that people can land on the page and have that predetermined tab showing. I'm wondering what search engines might think. Essentially all the content of all three tabs is there for people to see but they'd have to click to see the other tabs. I don't consider the content to be hidden. But I'd like to hear people's thoughts.
Web Design | | Business.com0 -
?3dCart, Magento, Volusion, Zen Cart? Looking for recommendations based on my situation.
I have done a ton of research trying to figure this out but still need help and clarification. My strength is marketing and not the technical aspects of ecommerce cms etc. I am ignorant in this area and don't mind if you explain to me like a 5 year old. I am ready to take my marketing knowledge and creativity to ecommerce but this one aspect is stopping me. I really want to understand this and would be appreciative of the option to do a skype instant message session where I would pay you for your time to ask for clarification. I will explain my situation so you can better understand where I am coming from and can recommend something appropriately. My ecommerce stores run between my own and my clients range from motorcycle, supplement and fitness equipment stores. None of the stores are very large with the biggest one having about 150 products. Mainly I am looking for a mix between an economical solution combined with being easy to use and great for search engine visibility. I have a lot of questions here and appreciate in advance anyone reading all of this and helping. Am I correct in my understanding that I basically have 3 options when doing ecommerce. One is I can go to a company like 3d cart or volusion and they can provide the merchant account, ssl cert, the cart and free and paid templates ready to go? Two is getting free cart software such as Magento or OScommerce etc. The third option is paid cart software like zen cart or others. Is that my main options? Let's say I was to use 3d cart. What kind of cart platform will I be using then? One they created? Or do they use a (free/paid) solution like I talked about in question 1? Is the main advantage of using a company like 3dcart and volusion the fact that they integrate many things into one? With Magento would I need a developer to customize my theme to integrate all those things? Are there some major disadvantages to using companies like 3d cart? How does the process and advantages work when using a solution like Magento or OScommerce. So for example I decide to use the Magento free platform. Am I then able to hire a designer to create a site from scratch that will work with the Magento platform? Or I could also go to template monster and purchase a theme already made and have it customized by someone? Also what about paid cart software like zen cart etc? Why would I use that over the others? Would I also then hire a designer to create a site that works with zen cart or purchase a template made then customize? Are you able to create almost ANY structure and design for a site no matter what its cart platform is? For example, although I would make a few changes to this site I think it's very close to a great site from a design/conversion standpoint. http://www.spiderofficechairs.com/ . Lets say for example I was using any one of the options I have so far mentioned. Would I be able to just tell a designer/developer that I have magento,3dcart, zencart etc and tell him I would like that type of layout for example? How would I know how certain cart platforms are coded? Does that even make sense? For example I have created and ranked many sites and tested quite a bit also. I have always noticed that very clean basic static html sites have almost always ranked better and faster for me. Do these platforms come built a certain way such as html or (I don't even know what the names of other options are). Or does it not come as anything and when I have the site built I determine how I want it built? Also if you have any suggested reading for me I would be appreciative. Thank you for the help. Jake
Web Design | | PEnterprises0 -
Is there any difference in using an underscore vs. a dash in the directory portion of the url?
A friend who is a software developer asked this question regarding the directory portion of the url: Is it better to use dashes or underscores? I know in the domain name Matt Cutts recommends dashes, but what about the directory extension?
Web Design | | RobertFisher0