Selling a new invention to the world...suggestions on shopping carts and cc processing?

August 19, 2009 2:46 PM

Selling a new invention to the world online...suggestions on shopping carts and cc processing?

I am redoing my friends website for a new invention...it's a bottle opener for screw cap wine bottles.

I am in the process of redoing the site and I want to know your suggestions on payment processing for a single item like this. PayPal is ok or we could sign up for a regular merchant account and gateway. As far as rates, I have a cc processor/merchant account, so I care about gateway and ecommerce fees on top of my cc processor's rates.

I am looking for a dead simple solution like shopify or something that can easily be created to handle the ecommerce as well as allow for static pages (ie press, video demonstrations, about us, contact, etc). It would be nice to have some type of backend for supporting order status, shipping, receipts, etc. But no one feature would be a deal breaker for me. It should be 2-3 clicks before they click 'place order'

Eventually, we would like to setup landing pages how shamwow does it. They have a single page that is optimized for conversions (probably using A/B testing) and allows for the customer to place an order on the same page. Any suggestions for this?

Bonus question: would this change if I had 1-3 products to sell? I got another buddy who is inventing something and there are a couple indirect products he is selling related to it. I am hoping to use the same dead simple system on there too.

Thanks for reading that long and drawn out question :)

posted by msoffab to computers & internet (6 comments total)

SearchFit might do the trick. They're similar to Volusion, but a better deal in my opinion. You might be able to connect up with Google Website Optimizer for the A/B testing as well.
posted by ejoey at 3:38 PM on August 19

Thanks, but those look like other shopping cart/ecommerce systems for sites with 50+ products. Do they have a mode where you dont need a shopping cart and can just proceed to checkout?
posted by msoffab at 3:44 PM on August 19

foxycart and wordpress might be a good fit. There are some videos on css tricks that cover both services.
posted by backwards guitar at 3:57 PM on August 19 [2 favorites]

thanks for the foxycart idea. thats an easy to use thing that can over an exisiting site. and i checked out the css tricks screencast integration with wordpress...

Does anyone have suggestions though for duplicating the functionality of a shamwow.com type site (landing pages, a/b testing, with 1 page payment processing)?
posted by msoffab at 5:21 PM on August 19

[Link removed. It's fine if you want to include a link to it on your profile page, but if it's not absolutely vital for context here (and asking about shopping cart solutions is not such a case) that sort of thing reads as too self-promotional for askme, for future reference.]
posted by cortex at 5:30 PM on August 19

I use the Shopp plugin for wordpress. It costs $55 but there aren't any monthly fees after you've purchased it. Not sure if you can configure it to go straight to checkout, but the user forum over there is super helpful and I got answers to my pre-purchase questions within a couple of hours.
posted by hibbersk at 4:42 AM on August 20