Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with ecommerce and shoppingcart

Give me advice on installing an ecommerce shopping cart.

zorro astor — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:40:54 -0800

Need advice on pitfulls/things to look for when installing a shopping cart on an ecommerce platform. I am a PHP programmer with moderate experience (500 hours) and am wondering about the pitfalls of installing a shopping cart. I have been given the task and know more or less nothing about it. The person commissioning the job wants to use paypal, but wants to use a merchant account (ie doesn't want user to have to sign up for a paypal account. Possible?). I am thinking about zen cart and oscommerce as those seem to be the biggest.

Feel free to offer any advice even if it doesn't fall strictly withing the boundaries of the question.

Recommendations for shopping carts that don't use money?

jmevius — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 08:26:59 -0800

Is there a shopping cart-like web application (hosted or not) that could work if I don't want to have prices or sell anything? Square peg - meet round hole. I recently met with a web client (a wholesale distributor for multiple vendors / product lines) that wants to upgrade their current brochure-ware site to one that is more focused on the products they offer. I've setup a few smaller shopping cart sites, but they're asking for something a little different, so I thought I'd query the hivemind.

They'd like to display products (grouped by vendor or type) with multiple variables (size and color) in a standard manner. They don't want to put pricing anywhere on the site.

Whenever customers are finished adding products to a shopping cart and are ready to checkout, they'd like the entire order (shopping cart, contact information, *no billing information or cc numbers*) to be submitted to them via email. This way, they could contact the person individually to arrange an account.

Any ideas?

I've used Shopify before and loved it, but their pricing model is based on a percentage of sales. I used Digishop on a similar model (no actual credit card processing), but was never really impressed with the options or customization. I've used osCommerce and have hated every second of it.

Help me find an ecommerce solution for digital products!

katillathehun — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:49:31 -0800

I need an ecommerce solution for digital products - something that will email my customers a download link to their orders the instant the purchase is complete. What service or software can you recommend? I'm creating a template site for those folks who dig my design work but can't quite afford my personalized services. The more automated the purchase process can be, the better. Other features I kinda need:

* Time and download limits: "Your order will be available for X days and may be downloaded X times."

* Quantities. Most of my templates will be unlimited, but there will be a premium selection that can only be ordered once.

This whole thing is a work in progress, so I'm flexible on payment methods at this time.

As for me, it would be awesome if what I'm looking for were free, but if you know of a good solution that will cost me, I'll check it out, too.

Open Source Shopping Cart

pinto — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 10:28:10 -0800

Simple e-commerce solutions. I have a fully built site, with individual webpages pointing to specific product items. I simply want to add a backend shopping cart functionality that resides on the server, without relying on PayPal. Whats the best opensource solution that allows me to pass a variable (ie, add a "Buy This" button to already-designed pages) to a shopping cart php function (inventory isn't necessary at this point) and allowing checkout/payment? Is this possible or is PayPal the easiest way to go without completely
rebuilding my site in an opensource commerce engine (ie OsCommerce)?

I know this has been addressed to some extent before , but I don't think I need a sweeping e-commerce solution, just a cart, checkout, and merchant services (visa/mc) hookup.

How can I get a shopping cart with ajax-based product previews?

fourstar — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 17:09:03 -0800

If I wanted an ecommerce site powered by something like osCommerce and I wanted some additional functionality built that gave product previews via ajax, similar to what NetFlix does, where should I look for a programmer to set it all up and about how much should I expect to pay?

Paging Herbert Kornfeld - ecommerce with purchase orders

Wild_Eep — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:27:28 -0800

Is there an open-source ecommerce store system that has built-in support for purchase orders? You see, I was all set to just use ZenCart, when the client informed me that the first 3 interested customers he has all want to pay with a PO.

Personally, I'd rather just tell the potential customers to go find a credit card, as writing/testing/debugging/shipping/maintaining a bolted-on PO system seems like a lot of effort. Then there's the additional 'back-office' administration of dealing with the purchase orders, collections, etc. Seems like a hassle that could grow unwieldy.

So, is there a LAMP-compatible e-commerce system that supports customers paying with a purchase order instead of a credit card?

Keep me out of internet shopping cart trouble

junkbox — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 12:02:11 -0800

I'm building a website for a local store; they want a small catalog to sell a few of their products online. They already accept credit cards on-site and have a merchant ID#; can a pixel-pusher like me set up a shopping cart system out of the box for them, or do I need to find a web developer? I got a lot of good info on different shopping cart systems from past AskMe threads, but then this question popped up and now I'm wondering if I, too, am in over my head. I write HTML and CSS, and I can make some PHP work if I play with it and have good instructions. But I'm not a programmer, a developer, or someone with a thorough knowledge of Internet security.

What is the best shopping cart solution for a small business already accepting credit cards? Can an average web geek implement it, or do I need to find someone more experienced with ecommerce?

(Bonus points if you can recommend a solution that allows for both individual orders and wholesale ordering)

Open source ecommerce software vs. something else, cheap

ValveAnnex — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 19:28:58 -0800

OSCommerceFilter: I need to find a new ecommerce site package for a small business client. OSCommerce has been fun, and that whole open source terrain is a real kick, but security problems have become serious, and it's time to consider something else. Hackers have done their damage. I'm getting my ass kicked figuring it out, finding the source of the problem, and swimming through the crap that is open source support. My client is not wealthy, and feeds their family with some (roughly 1/4th) of the income from the site. Those shitheads hit at the worst time of the year (the holidays), I'm super busy at work, and come home to a family. I don't really charge my client for ongoing support, but this is a whopper. I'm facing a site rebuild/redo.

Do I slap her with a $10,000 package? Point her elsewhere? Give OSCommerce a loving, forgiving turn again at the nails going through my hands and feet?

NEEDED: a cheap, easy to run, customizable ecommerce package (with extesibility, and shipping/payment processing features) that is reputable, hosted privately, friendly to design customization, with robust reporting, tight security and adequate support.

Know anything about online event planning or shopping carts?

willnot — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 14:00:43 -0800

Does anybody have any experience with online even management systems and or e-commerce shopping carts? I'm in the early stages of planning the web systems for a company I'm planning to start. I'm more of a front-end guy than a database guy, so I will be hiring somebody to put those systems together for me. I'd rather not reinvent the wheel though, so as I develop a functional spec to take to somebody, I'd like to build it with current open source modules in mind that can be glued together to get me roughly where I'd like to be. If anybody knows of systems that are close to what I describe, I would really appreciate hearing about them.

Broadly speaking, users will be able to browse events, which can be in multiple categories (i.e. Location, date, attendee profile, etc.). Users will be able to browse based on any of those criteria or even a combination of those criteria.

There are two types of users, subscribers and non-subscribers. There are also two types of events, standard and premium. Subscribers can attend an infinite number of standard events, and they get credits for a few premium events each month that will expire at month's end. Subscribers can purchase additional premium credits as they need them.

Non-subscribers would purchase premium credits or standard credits as they need them. Standard credits would be significantly cheaper than premium credits.

Users will RSVP to events. Events must have at least X RSVP/attendees before the event is confirmed via e-mail and credits are applied towards the event. Events will close down once a maximum number of attendees is reached.

There will be an area for users to create profiles. Profiles will only be visible to other users that the profiled user has flagged or accepted.

There will be a forum area for users to discuss whatever. This area is visible to everyone.

There will need to be a robust web admin section that makes it easy to add events each month -- possibly set up recurring event, event categories and credit people with credits for events and the like.

I'm assuming the site will be built for a LAMP environment.

I found a hosted (I think) solution, Sporg for online event planning. The hosted part alone probably makes it a bad solution for me, but does anybody know of an open source project that is similar?

I don't know if an event system would have shopping cart elements built into it or not. If I need a shopping cart as well, I get the impression that Zen Cart is a good solution. I understand it is a branch of OS Commerce, but I don't understand what the difference is. Does anybody know?

I also get the impression that these shopping carts have a lot of 3rd party modules that can be added in. Is there a clearing house for these somewhere that describes what they are, what they do and how you would use/integrate them into the main package?

Once I have the functional spec created, I will be going to Craig's List to look for a developer. Is there any place else that I should also look? Are there any particular questions that I should ask to ensure the person I will be hiring is capable of building a robust system that will do what I want it to do?

Thanks

web design simpleton

leapingsheep — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 13:52:04 -0800

How do people make websites do this fancy trick? The site sells something downloadable. You pay, then you get an automated email containing a link to download the same item or items you bought.

ASP Shopping Cart Software?

vraxoin — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 06:27:08 -0800

Windows shopping cart software recommendation? I'm looking for a not-ridiculously-expensive shopping cart package that I can put on a client's windows box. Doesn't have to be anything fancy, but Authorize.Net is a must. Any recommendations? Must be either cgi or ASP; client won't go for PHP/MySQL.