What is a good shopping cart system for a small online business?

riffin

What is a good shopping cart system for a small online business?

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Vote Up (1)

Check out Volusion.

I have found that it features, the most important elements of an online marketing system combined within the shopping cart: a robust CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) and and email marketing module. I am a great fan of integrated solutions and of analytics. I want to know who comes to my shop and what they bought. I want to market to them. I want to communicate to them. Volusion helps me do that.

 

Also, read this post: 6 must-haves for a good shopping cart. I wrote it a couple of days ago and it is up-to-date information on what is a good shopping cart system for a small online business.

If you need help with it or if you just need to be pointed in the right direction, email me: alex@livewiremce.com. Best of luck, Alex

 

lsmall
Vote Up (6)

First, check your website host to see if it has a pre-installed shopping cart system. These are usually free. If so, activate it and see if it meets your needs. Go to the website administrator panel to activate it. If that doesn't work out for you, try osCommerce Online Market. Mozilla uses osCommerce for its store. osCommerce has a really good catalog system which lets your categorize your products, plus it has extra modules that you can add onto it. There is a shipping module which helps with shipping calculations and getting real-time price quotes from popular shippers. Zen Cart is another widely used free system. One downside is that there is no tech support for either osCommerce or Zen Cart. CS-Cart is another option that does offer tech support, but it is only free for the first 30 days. The "Community Version" of CS-Cart is free and the "Professional Version" is about $300. Magento has hosted programs for about $15 a month, and I believe it has a free trial period. Keep in mind that even after you get a shopping cart, you have to pick a compatible payment system. For example, you might sel3ect PayPal as your payment system and then select a shopping cart that doesn't work with PayPal. You have a lot of homework to do before you make your final decision. Hope this helps!

jimlynch
Vote Up (7)

Hi riffin,

Here's a roundup of shopping cart services that you might find helpful:

http://shopping-cart-review.toptenreviews.com/

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