Ok, my parents run a retail business, in a small-ish market town in the UK. We want to expand to an internet side of the business with an online store.
I am at university, so I can't manage it, my mother will be. Now, she's not useless with technology, but she's not a computer whiz, so it must be easy to manage. We also want to have it on my VPS, so no expensive hosted solutions. We need something with nice themes (we want it to stand out somewhat).
What sort of eCommerce softwares are out there that suit our needs?
On a somewhat related note: I've been searching around, and now my youtube videos are advertising hosted eCommerce solutions! >_<
Have you checked out Big Commerce as a hosted solution? It's actually quite cheap compared to some I've seen. There aren't any transaction fees either. It's also worth noting that Chris works for them too.
I haven't seen many decent eCommerce softwares to be completely honest. A hosted solution might be worth looking in to.
osCommerce (similar to ZenCart) is what I used many years ago. It was a PITA to setup but once setup it was easy to add and maintain product as long as you did not get excessive with the options (sizes, colors, left/right, etc). Lots of payment and shipping gateways, VAT support, etc.
I have not seen any good carts that were not also a PITA to setup and none really easy to manage. Those easy to manage required a lot of manual steps outside the get full use out of
We know they're going to be a PITA to setup
We've pretty much accepted that. We have about 450 products to add, and photograph - so it'll be a big job
We basically just want some reasonable ecommerce software, with bundles (maybe), discount codes, payment gateways (although we might just stick to PayPal), and plenty of nice themes (which OS Commerce seems to have).
As long as my mother understands it somewhat (she understands how joomla works so...) that's fine
I'd rather host it myself for extra freedom. If we dont like x we can shift to y. If we want a plugin installing, I can do that.
This might sound crazy but, depending on what you're selling, IP.Nexus isn't bad. Even better when IP 4.0 means it can be a standalone app. I've just finished a major project integrating and my boss loves it.
I used
OpenCart for a while and it seemed pretty good. Free/Open Source as well. BigCommerce probably has to be good because he-who-got-his-head-shaved works at it
(2012-12-18, 12:53 AM)labrocca Wrote: [ -> ]http://www.opencart.com/ is the way to go for sure. OSC is terribly old now and just has fallen apart.
that is sad to hear. OSC was nice back when I was using it. I think ZenCart is fork that took off (or was it OSC that forked and later died off???)
have not tried opencart
Yes it's a shame OSC fell apart the way it did. I have a handful of credits for plugins including a fairly popular Wish List I wrote back in the day. But the project is nearly useless now.