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

msoffab — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:46:35 -0800

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 :)

E-commerce orders for a gift list

Kirklander — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 11:11:40 -0800

Question about setting up a Web shopping cart that would send a list of orders to a list of different addresses. My client owns a winery, which currently ships out individual orders using the Nexternal e-commerce software.

He'd like to set up a system so that, for the holidays, a business could send bottles of wine to a list of dozens of clients at different addresses.
If possible, he'd like them to be able to copy a list from an Excel spreadsheet, paste it into the Web site, and have it talk to Nexternal to put in a single order for all those people.

Was wondering if anyone knows an easy way to do this. Open to switching to Zen Cart or another system. Any help much appreciated. Difficulty level: I'm pretty good with PHP and stuff, but new to shopping carts.

Cool E-Commerce?

Work to Live — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 12:17:39 -0800

Etsy.com displays products in interesting ways. What are some other unique e-commerce experiences? Etsy allows visitors to shop by color or view items in reverse chronological order. Maybe not the most usable ways to shop, but certainly unusual and fun.

What are other sites that are thinking outside the box (or breaking it entirely) when it comes to product display, shopping cart and/or user experience?

Are you for real?

forallmankind — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 13:12:00 -0800

Hope me! How can I verify if this online merchant, which also masquerades as this online merchant, is for real? Usually I don't bother with any site I consider potentially unscrupulous, but my story is this: I need a Denon FG-5000 replacement drive for my Denon DN-S5000 turntable, and this appears to be the only retailer online in North America claiming to have one in stock.

I've searched high and low, and short of importing one from Europe - which isn't a viable option with the exchange rate - this appears to be the end of the line.

Is it possible to verify if this retailer is for real?

What's the easiest shopping cart app to set-up/configure/use?

jbickers — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 14:23:24 -0800

What's the best/easiest open-source e-commerce program? I'm helping a buddy set up a web store, and I need a great open-source shopping cart app. And it needs to be reeeeeaaally easy to configure - gotta set this up quick, with a minimal amount of tweaking.

Several years ago, I set up one for another friend using OSCommerce. That felt like pulling teeth - poor documentation, lots of trial and error. I looked at Zen Cart at the time, and it looked a lot better, but I don't know how well those products have evolved. PHP is preferred, because of my familiarity with it.

Are there better choices out there? Looking for a cart app that's as easy to set up and run as Wordpress is for blogging. The guy's got between 50 and 100 items, pretty simple stuff - any thoughts? (He's already got credit card acceptance abilities, but again, easy will trump sophisticated in this instance.)

How can I take online credit card payments without using a third party payment service provider?

Hartster — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 08:51:26 -0800

How can I take online credit card payments without using a third party payment service provider? Our ecommerce website (which uses a home made shopping cart) currently processes credit card payments via a third party company.

At the moment, using a third party costs us around £1500 a year in monthly and per transaction payments to them.

In the near future we'll be rebuilding our site; one thing we want to include is user accounts to store shipping and billing addresses, order and credit card information etc. What do we need to do to process and store credit cards ourselves, rather than use a third party? What are the costs and pros and cons?

We have our own dedicated server plus a internet merchant account.

Explain credit card processing

letitrain — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 11:53:59 -0800

How does my client accept credit cards online? I'm a web designer, and I'm building a book site for an author. She would like to sell her books through the website. I don't know how to set up online credit card processing.

She definitely doesn't want to use Paypal or any other service where we have to send people to another domain for processing. She'd like for the entire thing to happen on her site, and she will ship out the books. Whatever I set up, it needs to be fairly inexpensive.

I figure we need a secure certificate, a credit card processor and some sort of database to store the transactions and keep track of purchasing/shipping. Does that sound about right?

I've looked at shopping cart software (OSCommerce, Zen Cart, etc.) and I understand basically how it works. I don't understand how the live online processing works. Is this some software the cc processor provides?

So here are the questions: how does it work? What do I need? Who do you suggest?

Name my store.

Typographica — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 11:27:34 -0800

Name my store. Opening an online shop. For sale will be mixed used goods, some useful, some pretty, some just amusing. Mainly designy stuff from '40s-'70s. All selected by people with good taste and humor. Need a great name that is sticky and short. Please consider the domain. Thank you!

My current favorite: Picky (pickyshop.com) but one partner isn't convinced.
Other ideas: leShop, SuperShop, Mixer

Online shopping cart minus the kitchen sink?

evil holiday magic — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 16:03:13 -0800

phpHelpFilter: Is CoffeeFool.com based on an existing shopping cart system? I've been tasked with installing a shopping cart system for a small company with a product line probably extending (eventually) to a few dozen individual models. The designer is very picky about clean design and minimalism.

The system at Coffee Fool has been the best I've seen; but I don't know whether it's custom or based on existing designs.

I've tried free, and paid, distributions, such as CubeCart, X-Cart, Agora and osCommerce. I found the process of making them match the designs given to me daunting to say the least. The shopping cart systems I've tried are, out of the box, huge, generic, one-size-fits-all Amazon clones. Is there a cleanly designed shopping cart out there?