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It also depends who else has relevant content for your branded term. If there are other remotely related pages from other domains, then I find that it is more difficult to get site links. But if you are the only one with say "eggplant laser cutting" then it is more likely for you to get site links.

I have added schema for my product sites that doesnt have reviews but is editorial focused. I implemented, itemprop="description", itemprop="name", itemprop="offers", itemprop="breadcrumb"

The text links definitely look better when listed on the serp page. Also I am ranking decent for a few products, and below the product listing is the category (brand) page that the product is organized within, then the main site page.

Like this on the search results:

1. -Product Page
2. - - Category Page
3. - - - Home Page

I think this brings up a great point about cost of ownership/maintenance. If you need to keep paying people to "fix things"- that really sucks.

Thats why I dont recommend magento to most people, cause I just hear it takes a ton of work to get it setup.

Simple is usually better, but attention needs to be paid on requirements like if you need special reporting, customer features, custom product templates, inventory management and other things that are critical to your business.

I havent looked at 3d cart in a while. I might check it out to see what they are doing.

1. It depends upon the level of solution integration. Volusion just uses a lame "share this" button. I actually might write a blog post on the different levels of social sharing. Not all share buttons are created equal. Either way yes, a developer can generally add on the proper integration if the ecommerce allows it. It sometimes requires some advanced changes to the template for all social button integration.

2. Yah I would say 50-1000 products is about the same. That is about 20 categories with 50 products in each category (about average).

3. My picks

#1 interspire

#2 volusion/big commerce

#3 shopify

#4 magento

Re "Forget about CMS"
My comment is in regards to getting an ecommerce solution that has a blog function built in. The Shopify blog system is worthless and has next to zero customizations. I would give it a D in terms of functionality. I meant forgot about the CMS when you want to run a separate blog.

Im confused again, are you adding a store onto an existing domain name, or is this a brand new store?

You never pass 100% of link juice if it is from 301's or canonical updates. I dont have a scientific answer but it is probably 65-80% depending upon factors like quality of links and number of links.

I used to work at Volusion and have decent experience with other platforms out there and do lots of seo for ecommerce.

A. Forgot about the CMS. Evaluate the ecommerce platform for its ecommerce, not for making blog posts. For content postings and stuff, make it a subdomain, or make the main site the CMS and the ecommerce a subdomain. (shop.stuffonsale.com)

B. For Great seo for ecommerce you need to run your own fully customizable platform. Volusion has very limeted SEO functions. They are decent for basic sites, but if you want to get into awesome customized category, product, plus other hierarchies then definitely dont go with a hosted cart solution. Companies like Shopfiy are great for selling like 50 t shirt SKUS, but have very limited flexibilty in how the site works.

C. Hosting carts main benefit is  you dont have to worry about uptime & tech changes. Hopefully you have someone technical on your team or you have access to a great developer. With ecommerce there is a very HIGH cost of changing platforms at some point in time. You will have hundreds of indexed pages at a given URL structure. If you change then the URL structure with all platforms is different so you would have a big drop in traffic as you start to 301 all the pages.

D. Most platforms now will allow custom design changes at varying levels. Most support custom CSS changes and template changes. Hosted carts will always still be less flexible than a self hosted cart because on self hosted you can truly edit any file that is part of the shopping site. Hosted carts you are limited to what they give you access to.

E. Your last couple questions are kinda vague. You have to have a dynamic ecommerce site, static shopping sites are a headache to manage unless you are talking about just a couple SKUs.

F. I would recommend you find a developer or another person that has created several successful ecommerce sites using different platforms.

Maybe I should write a blog post on how to pick a platform for shopping.