Which Shopping Cart?

jbworldwide · Sep 26, 2013

I have been trawlling through google looking for a decent hosted shopping cart which is within my budget. (initially there will be about 12-16 types of products being sold, and I only expect to sell about 5 per month, but need scalable so £30 ish a month seems sensible)

I can do some basic coding so I am willing to explore setting up my own cart and try and put it onto my hosting service.

However I like some of the features of the paid hosting such as Amazon integration and eBay integration.

Then comes the question of taking payments, the items I will be selling will be between £100 to £1000 so I know my customers will want to have the option of taking credit card payments so I will need SSL in place but I am not sure about what fees these hosts want to take either (not clear). I suppose I could just run it through paypal and accept their fees, but we are going to need some sort of Fraud protection (e.g. VbV and MSC).

So in short;

What do I need to really care about?
And can you make any recommendations on carts?

Thanks

grantw · Sep 26, 2013

Not used it myself but shopify.com might be an option, the basic account is £20 a month and it's compatible with loads of payment gateways.

Grant

bensd · Sep 26, 2013

I would go for opencart

scooter · Sep 26, 2013

Zen Cart for me.
Superfast learning curve. Great admin back end. Loads of free templates and even more if you want to purchase.

Upload your product pages in html or install a wysiwyg plug in.
Easy to add additional html only pages without checkout

Very google friendly.

My sig runs on a free template.

Payment gateways:
I don't think there are any that are not covered.
http://www.zen-cart.com/downloads.php?do=cat&id=8

Payment:
PayPal for me all the way. They are huge now. Most high st stores now accepting.
Boots
JD sports
Argos
John Lewis
Oasis
Superdrug

Take a look here:
https://www.paypal.co.uk/Shopping/WhereToShop/#AllCategories

I honestly don't think there are many households that now don't have a paypal account.

Factor in the paypal fees to your costs and give your customers a hassle free checkout.

Checkout with Paypal on Zen Cart is superfast. Nothing for the customer to fill in on the site. Add to basket, click paypal button and they are off to paypal. Once payment has been made, they are taken back to zen cart site to print receipt (if they want) All customers details added to your sales database, stock level decreased and site account automatically made for the customer.

If they do not have a paypal account they can enter c/card details on the paypal page. Paypal do all VbV/MSC

For me, it is all about service. I always use paypal for payment whenever I can as I cannot be arsed to go get the c/card from my jacket and having to type the same shite over and over again.

It also pisses me off when I am on a site and they insist on taking all your details before they take you to paypal. What's the point? Set up properly, paypal callbacks all your details. To set it up on Zen Cart takes 2 clicks of a mouse. :-D

Here is another Zen Cart site I built for a customer and doing very well. (same free theme)
http://www.supercarsscotland.co.uk/

PM me if you want to know anything about Zen Cart.

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monaghan · Sep 27, 2013

scooter said:
It also pisses me off when I am on a site and they insist on taking all your details before they take you to paypal. What's the point?

Some insist on your details before even giving you the total cost including shipping! That's an even quicker way to get an abandoned cart.

I found the zencart documentation not very good if you want to get under the front end and start integrating with other systems (send to accounts, automated drop shipping and so on). I've recently integrated Shopify with a UK based fulfillment warehouse and that was quite nice to work with.

For something quite simple, Ecwid is quite quick to setup and does the job well if you want to just drop something in to an existing site or pop it on a Facebook account. This has a simple but usable API should you want to extend it.

scooter · Sep 27, 2013

I use Amazon for fulfillment now but still hold stock at home for the site. I used to use Shipwire full time for fulfillment both in the USA and the UK. It was a doddle to set up fulfillment in Zen Cart. It took me 10 mins.

I still send stock in to the UK centre when I go on holiday and switch it on for a fortnight. (Shipwire is good for this. No commitment. I only send in a fortnights worth of stock a year and thats it. No ongoing costs etc.)

http://www.shipwire.com/w/support/zen-cart/

Most UK fulfillment centres will not look at you if this is all you require. (I have tried). Too much hassle to set up. Shame that. A good business potential. Just like kennels.

jbworldwide is only expecting 5 sales per month. I dont think drop shipping or fulfillment are an issue at the moment.

Costs:
The minimum price for Shopify is £20 per month. With this they also take 2% of your gross sales total.

Sell at £1000 = £20 to shopify plus the £20 per month plus Paypal fees.

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jbworldwide · Sep 27, 2013

scooter said:
I use Amazon for fulfillment now but still hold stock at home for the site. I used to use Shipwire full time for fulfillment both in the USA and the UK. It was a doddle to set up fulfillment in Zen Cart. It took me 10 mins.

I still send stock in to the UK centre when I go on holiday and switch it on for a fortnight. (Shipwire is good for this. No commitment. I only send in a fortnights worth of stock a year and thats it. No ongoing costs etc.)

http://www.shipwire.com/w/support/zen-cart/

Most UK fulfillment centres will not look at you if this is all you require. (I have tried). Too much hassle to set up. Shame that. A good business potential. Just like kennels.

jbworldwide is only expecting 5 sales per month. I dont think drop shipping or fulfillment are an issue at the moment.

Costs:
The minimum price for Shopify is £20 per month. With this they also take 2% of your gross sales total.

Sell at £1000 = £20 to shopify plus the £20 per month plus Paypal fees.

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Thanks Scooter, the last part is the crux for me for Shopify, I'm trying to get the balance of getting established whilst looking professional and giving a great customer experience.

I have a supplier who will drop ship the items for me as they are large purchase items, which is why I cannot look shoddy, but at the same time I don't want to be giving shopify 2% of revenue, seems a bit steep given you are paying for the service already.

I suppose I should have listed a clear set of requirements in the OP.

I will be in a competitive environment (£1 approx ppc) and my competitors all seem to sell on eBay and Amazon as well. I will also have to work hard on SEO, but I am really hoping that my USP will be seen as customer service.

However given that my product range will be quite static I might not need to be so dynamic early on and a free cart with Paypal might be the answer.

tifosi · Sep 27, 2013

Paypal Express is the best way of using Paypal in a cart now. Bypasses the need for IPN and filling in the address / delivery details.

Button at show cart page sends to paypal where shopper fills in details, paypal confirms payment, sends back to cart where many details are autofilled.

Opencart has this as a default payment module in latest version. Also has support for openbay for amazon & ebay inventory.

scooter · Sep 28, 2013

In a long roundabout way this is what I was saying and you said it in 2 words. PayPal Express

There are lots of shopping cart software out there. I have tried oscommerce, opencart and I still have a site on the paid for x-cart but for me, the most user friendly I have come across by far is Zen Cart.

Everyone is different though and it all depends on what you need it to do.

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