Searching for the Perfect Shopping Cart

Merchant-friendly store solutions are an ongoing preoccupation among folks on the ISP-Ecommerce discussion list. Here are come recent thoughts on the subject.

[March 8, 2000]

Requests for "shopping cart" recommendations are a perennial topic among wannabe hosting providers and others on the ISP-Ecommerce list: Queries on the subject tend to spawn lengthy threads. In November 1999, for example CL posted this question:

"I'm a medium-size ISP looking for a way to give my customers the ability to make their online stores and catalogs quickly and easily. Storefront software is very expensive, is there some low-cost shopping cart solution available?"

In February 2000, FD again raised the issue, with this query:

"I'm looking for a shopping cart that will let my customer simply upload new pictures, access a Web-based product database of some kind and make other product changes. I have seen a few that claim to do this, but they are far too much work and a little too 'step' intensive for some of our clients."

[Ed. Note: While we've always thought of "shopping cart" as referring to software designed to help online shoppers buy goods, in this context it's clearly being used to refer to online store solutions - especially those that user a Web-based update interface. So who are we to argue?]

 

A number of respondents suggested contacting online hosting companies:

[FL, for example, suggested] "Try CSP Source."

Others directed attention toward companies that provide billing services and credit card solutions:

[P suggested] "Look at Verza and Verotel."

Several respondents offered solutions that were operating-system specific.

[JL wrote] "Do a search for keywords 'shopping cart' at Fresh Meat."

[Ed. Note: Freshmeat.net provides LINUX-based applications. A search for "shopping cart" resulted in 26 matches on the "appindex" with descriptions of the products.]

[JPM countered with] "INEX is also very good if you are using NT."

[Ed. Note: INEX provides e-commerce applications that leverage Microsoft technologies like Site Server and MS Commercial Internet System.]

 

One respondent wrote a mini-testimonial to his favorite shopping cart:

[JH enthused] "About two years ago, I wanted something that empowered my clients to be able to change a price or add a product without having to call me. I found ShopSite from Open Market. This shopping cart is compatible with all browsers, provides lots of power to the client to change things, and yet powerful enough for you to create some fairly decent web stores."

[Ed. Note: ShopSite is sold through authorized resellers and the pricing varies from provider to provider. There is a link to resellers on the "Purchasing ShopSite" page.]

 

Yet another respondent suggested a customizable storefront app-development system:

[M wrote] "We've built several custom applications for this around Cartit, which allows for custom integration regardless of product details."

[Ed. Note: Cart It's Web site claims to have solutions that are "Easy enough for the end user, powerful enough for the most complex product line and technical enough for even the most advanced Webmaster."]

 

One respondent plugged his own company's product, which seemed to fill the bill to a T.

[GS wrote] "N2Plushas integrated solutions that are Web-based, so there is no need to know HTML or any programming. We take our solution and brand it with your look and feel, and we share in the revenue generated from the credit card transactions, and the one time set-up fees."

 —End