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I use PayPal and their Shopping Cart for the Tours I offer: http://www.cancunandrivieramaya.com/bonustours.html But the cart certainly is not very flexible. I would use Google, but they won't allow people selling Tours to use their payment or shopping cart system. Tim

Note to TheGypsy: you have e-mails. Please respond.

basketlady wrote:

Thanks for all the info!  I had seen something on server about OS Commerce but just assumed there was a cost involved.  Will check into that futher ASAP.

Thanks for the explanations as well - I'll be back asking more specific questions in the future:P

BasketLady

Yeah.. if yer hosting control panel has Fantastico or relative... you should be able to install it automatically... Skinning it isn't all that tough and you can find lieterally 100's of FREE add-ons on the OSC website to extend the cart in just about ANY way you'd like.....

The main SEO factors one wants are;

Search Engine Friendly URLS
Ability to create custom TITLE and Meta-Desc tags
Create NON cart pages for targeting


The main development factors;

Ability to FULLY customize the template for a consitent design throughout site
Modify code ( open liscencing)
Extend the cart as needed ( with OSC via 'contributions') to adapt as the shop grows
Secure; obviously security is always an issue


This is why we are proponents of open source carts such as OSC .....

Customization – I can tell you from 10 years of experience each and every site owner has different needs in how the cart processes information. From clothing to flower stores – each has unique presentation and processing needs. Having an Open Source cart allows us to adapt the code to each situation – 3rd part applications, one cannot do more than the cart allows. There is no ability to customize for different situations.

Once again, the more advantages the better in the world of ecommerce. If your competitor has more features than you do…. You are at a disadvantage. If your cart application is not flexible.. you are at a disadvantage.

“I would far rather use something like PayPal or G checkout that takes customers right off my site”

Strangely the opposite is true. You’d be amazed how many dropped sales there are because of the re-route to PayPal. You are making the assumption that every consumer knows what PayPal or other processor sites are. The more clicks.. the less likely the sale. When leaving the site altogether.. folks get antsy.. and that ain’t me.. study up on conversions.. many,many studies have been done…

Last edited by TheGypsy (2007-05-10 18:59:47)

There is also a wide variety of shipping information and methods involved as well as stock management and sooooo much more that is involved in a 'cart'. They can also handle product delivery ( downloadable) and offer a WIDE variety of reporting tools ( Including accounting to the extent of hooking into aplications such as Quick Books and other accounting software) that are essential to any business, ecommerce or otherwise.... They also have CMS capabilites for non-cart pages.. but not robust enough for me so we usually use Joomla for that...

We have set up OSC to manage a brink/click and mortar in harmony - complete with syncronized stock tracking and vritual terminals ( from onsite processing). 

I could ramble for hours about the many, many functions a GOOD ecommerce cart should have available.... once again.. one should have EVERY advantage....

Last edited by TheGypsy (2007-05-10 19:23:45)

I think this is where Miva comes in.... yet another option, and part of my original problem.

Unfortunately, Miva is a pain to work with, but a setup like that is exactly what Gypsy is talking about. Sadly, this means I'd have to build my whole site with Miva, which is clunky to begin with.

I might have to take a look at this OS commerce tho, just to see what I can do.... easily. (the key word right there)

Actually, I'm managing 4 now.

WS:

What sort of measures do you have in place for stock control when some one adds an item to their cart but does not actually buy it?

In my system all products are unique and can only be bought by our members - if they 'horde' products they are automatically made available again after a week.

Was wondering how you went about it on a bigger scale?

MrStitch wrote:

Probably part of the maintenance program?

I believe there is a plug-in for Miva where, when you delete expired shopping baskets or all shopping baskets, the items are automatically put on the shelf again.

oh i understand that point, but how does one decide if the cart has expired or not?

I say a week as I can link a cart to a member. When you don't have member - only sessions - i'm guessing there's a garbage clean up script run on a scheduler to do just as you say by looking at expired sessions and purchased==false

lol

Northie, we use a postback feature. The cart automatically handles multiple shoppers ordering a limited item nearly simultaneously, i.e. - if there is one item remaining and two shoppers have added it to their cart, the first one to check out will get it and the second shopper gets an error indicating the inventory became unavailable. However, it is theoretically possible for the two shoppers to check out at the *exact* same time and the cart would not catch this but that is extremely unlikely under normal loads.

Working with a developer we have created a method that will allow us to operate two more completely unique carts while keeping all inventory databases in sync and decremented while only having to actually maintain one. That way we can have many web presences whilst allowing them to have their own identity. In example, luaushirts.com and waveshoppe.com are two separate companies sharing a common database. One site appeal’s to the bulk wholesale markets and one sell individual products.

Each additional cart would automatically decrement a new account's inventory list normally. However, its Postback feature would decrement the existing account's list. So, the cart decrements its own list and the postback feature decrements the "other" account's list. Basically, we run a database script to pre-populate the new account's inventory list to match the existing account's list. The cart inventory would work the same way that it does today in that the existing account would decrement it's own copy of the inventory list of the item(s) ordered. The Postback Feature would send a copy of the order to a new process which would then decrement the new account's list by the same amount.

This new process maintains the detection ability but because one account must update the other's list, the window of opportunity increases slightly for two shoppers to order the last item without an error. Rather than it checking out at the exact same time, if the second shopper checked out after the first shopper but before the postback decremented the inventory, the last item could be ordered twice. However, the likelyhood of this condition occurring remains very slim - the two shoppers ordering within a couple hundred milliseconds of each other or so, I'd guess. But with thousands of shirts in different colors and sizes this is certainly better then managing stock levels in your head.

I have a hard time just figuring out what color shirt to wear each day, so anything we can automate, we do. And as we identify even more profitable markets... we now have the flexibility and tools to cage that animal quickly. So like Gypsy said there is a lot more than just processing a credit card transaction.

UCSI wrote:

Hi all - I have been watching the forum for a number of  YEARS now - just lurking and taking the great advice...
MrStitch - we have been developing with Miva since version 1.0 (they are now up to 5) and you can do everything you can do with OSC (which we use as well) and more. I think it depends on how comfortable you are with the scripting language - if you are comfortable coding in PHP, then you should feel right at home with Miva, they are very similar.

I'll be more than happy to give you some hinters for your Miva stores - just ask specific questions.

'I believe there is a plug-in for Miva where, when you delete expired shopping baskets or all shopping baskets, the items are automatically put on the shelf again.'


It's actually not a plug-in - it comes with every cart and you can set the basket time duration in the admin.

We have build sites that are completely done in Miva (as you described) as well as lately we find us building a lot of sites that use Miva and Wordpress for instance - using the Wordpress part for the article and content sections that are outside of product related things.

Thanks again for the great advice given in this forum, guys!
Best,
Sabine

uhhh.. last I checked Miva is not open source and as such there ARE limitations in what you can and cannot do as far as hacking it to suit. That there is a fact....

Also... Wordpress as a CMS? Not really what it's for and as with the Miva route.. not open source.

You see.. I don't like Open Source cause it's free... I like cause it's.. well... Open Source. This means my programmers can go to town and make it sing and dance EXACLTY as the client has evnisioned the system.....

So I shall take a OSC and Jomla (for CMS and oter activities) over Miva and Wordpress. I appreciate that you're 'hooked on them' but it's simply not as felxible and effective. I ain't attached to them eaither. A better solution comes along... we'll jump on it. After 10 years of web development... it's the best and most affordable and flexible combination we have worked with.....

It's about delivering on client needs without the handcuffs in liscencing associated with 3rd Party applications ... that's what floats my boat....