Want a shoping cart website - advice please?

Zascar

A friend of mine has a high street shop and I suggested to him that having a website with an online shop might be a good way to increase business.

I'm going to help him do it so I want to do some research into how best to achieve this, and what solution is most suitable to out needs. I have been taking a look at OsCommerce as it seems like a popular solution - this site is a great example of the type of thing we are looking for.

However I know there are alternatives. Can anyone tell me if they would recommend any others over OsCommerce, and specifically why?

I am quite familar with basic web design, some CMS and forums etc but I'm no programmer - I usually subcontract out any work. I want this to be simple to set up, but most importantly easy to get up and running, and to update and maintain. I'll only want to do very basic customisation like logos and colours etc. Do any of them come with librarys of skins or themes etc?

Search Engine Optimisation is very important. How do I ensure my shopping car website is seo compatible?

I'd really appreciate any advice you can give me on this.
Thanks

MartMax

if he doesn't mind paying for hosted service, Shopify.com would be a good example. Free templates and customisation are quiet easy to do too.

Marty

Zascar

Thanks Mart - that's excellent. I had not thought of this type of thing but the demo looks fantastic!

This site will primarliy be targeted at Ireland. Sometimes these US sites are not very 'compaitble' - any idea what this one is like?

Are there any alternatives to Shopify?
Cheers

MartMax

I'm sure there are alternatives to Shopify but the few ones I had seen were not as clean as Shopify.

Can you explain what you mean by "compatibility"? You can check the features on their website, I definitely sure that things like taxes, shipping cost calculator, paypal support, offline order and custom currency are already built-in. You can even use your own domain for your shop address. You can also select which country that you can deliver to.

As I had only created just one simple store with Shopify, I can't speak much more about it but it does work for my project.

Marty

cianclarke

Personally I'd choose Zen Cart over OS Commerce, can't remember why exactly but there were plenty of reasons at the time, having set up both!

Zascar

I've been playing with Shopiy and it is very impressive! Got a working shop up and running in a few hours... Really like the back end. Never used Zen Cart, it s anywhere near as impressive or usable?

EKRIUQ

cianclarke wrote: »

Personally I'd choose Zen Cart over OS Commerce, can't remember why exactly but there were plenty of reasons at the time, having set up both!

Zen cart is very easy to use but, to get it up and running and looking like how you want it takes a bit of time and know how.

Zen cart is a lot more user friendly over OS commerce but you need to know a bit of knowledge if you need to start customising the template and hacking into core files plus its very unforgiving if there one dot missing you'll get a blank screen and it could take you ages to find the error.

But it is open source which means it’s free and a very powerful shopping cart with nearly every feature you'll need enabled with a good support forum.

Maybe start with a hosted service and play around with Zen cart until your ready to make the transition to the free service