Selling on the Internet

[cabindoors]

I would like to know anyone's recommendations on the best shopping cart and/or credit card providers to market my Shopbot made items on the internet.

I used to be able to accept credit cards, but for many reasons (least of all is that they were bought out) and my POS equipment were outdated.

Does anyone recommend PayPal or similar. Some blogs have horror stories on Paypal due to their slow payment back to you, but I don't know if that's true.

Also, I desperately need to put a shopping cart on my web page again. Does anyone like the carts they are using now and could recomend it. I used Americart in the past but Kingcart may be a better deal (although their web page hasn't changed in years).

I look forward to anyone's suggestions. I know that I'm loosing sales by not having credit card capabilities, but with slow sales the fees can really add up.

Thanks

[harryball]

I prefer Google Checkout, I've had no problems with it and it's similar in concept to a merchant account. If you sign up for google adwords the amount you spend on that is credited to your processing fees... so why not? Every little bit helps.

Check out Mercantec.com, they have a free cart or a pay cart available. Look at my website store to see a working store. I'm still using the free service. I've never had any trouble with it. It's great for items that don't change often.

I'll probably be updating the site later this year and improving our store, but what we have now has done well.

I dislike PayPal with a passion.

/RB

[frank134]

how do I get to your website?

[njandpa]

Frank
Click on the R Ball above and you will have the info needed.

[fmihm]

Tom --

You might find the "Which Shopping Cart Should I use?" article of interest. It compares the Magento, osCommerce, ZenCart, X-Cart, CRE Loaded, OSC Max, Joomla & Virtuemart shopping carts. All of these are shopping carts below are open-source carts. Most of them will run with Shared Hosting.

The review article is at:
http://www.itwebexperts.com/oscommerce_zencart_xcart_comparison.php

The article has a "Shopping Cart Feature Comparison Chart" that is very handy. Note, however, that the Chart says that osCommerce doesn't support Spreadsheet Database Upload. I don't think this is quite correct.

From my files:
load data infile "C:\DropShip\Data\stock.txt" into table stock (productid, quantity, model, image, price, date_added, last_modified, date_available, weight, status, tax_class_id, manufacturers_id, products_ordered, name, description);

The key to its operation is the "load data infile" command. A mySQL syntax page says, "The LOAD DATA INFILE statement reads rows from a text file into a table at a very high speed. The file name must be given as a literal string." Here's that Web page:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/load-data.html

I believe I tried this a couple of years ago with a small csv-format Excel file, and that it worked fine. I think the field names above are from osCommerce's sample database.

Here's some information about the Simple Template System (STS), which can be used with osCommerce:
Simple Template System (STS). Lets you create simple HTML templates to customize the look and feel of OSC. You simply create an HTML page that looks the way you want it to and put in placeholders for the various elements wherever you want to position them.

For example, you would put "$cartbox" wherever on the page you want the Shopping Cart box to appear.
Put "$categorybox" where you want the Categories box to appear.
Put "$content" wherever you want the main page content (the central part where all the magic happens) to appear, etc.

osCommerce is free and most Web hosts have it loaded on their systems.

Hope this helps.

[mikeacg]

I've been using PayPal on my sites for the last couple of years and haven't had any problems. I'd love to hear Harryball's horror stories sometime (offline). It is certainly easy to use...

Mike

[Big-Tex]

I dislike PayPal with a passion.

/RB

Why do you still have it on your shopping cart?

[khaos]

Why do you still have it on your shopping cart?

Because you meet your customers at there need. I dont like checks but I still take'm. :rolleyes:

[gripus]

I have been using "A SecureCart" https://www.asecurecart.net (https://www.asecurecart.net/) for about four or five years and have been very happy with it.

Joe

http://www.gripus.com (http://www.gripus.com/)