Ecommerce shopping carts and security question

Well first you have to ask yourself, what exactly you need from your cart. Different carts give different functionality. So what your selling makes a big difference.

To answer one question right away, if you are concerned about security, go ahead and use a hosted shopping cart. Those would be carts like Shopify, BigCommerce, Americommerce, CoreCommerce, 3DCart and others. They all handle the servers, security, upgrades and they are PCI-DSS Level 1 Compliant (Payment Card Industry - Data Security Standards Level 1) meaning they have actually been audited based on their data security standards.

As for accepting payments, you will need both a merchant account and payment gateway. The merchant account is what accepts the credit card and the gateway is what connects the Cart and Merchant account together. Some merchant accounts have an integrated Gateway (PayPal and Stripe for example).

In my signature I have a link to shopping cart reviews I have done so far and you will see each one has its pros and cons and how they work with each. For example, Shopify is fantastic for very niche sites but if you are going to have lots of categories and subcategories it can fall a bit short. Need recurring payments, Americommerce is my go to. For the best balance between functionality and ease of use, I like BigCommerce.

So once you have figured out what you are going to sell, what you need from your cart, then you can ask a better question of, I have these 10 requirements, what cart would you suggest...

Go hosted e.g Shopify or BigCommerce. It will allow you to run the 'commerce' part i.e inventory, shipping, accounts etc without having to think too much about IT e.g systems, hosting, security, payments etc.

These hosted options will be far superior to open source carts out of the box too, it will save you a ton on development costs upfront but also ongoing too. Once you've validated your products and offering, you can invest in your own ecommerce technology down the line.

Before you decide for a shopping cart, you need to list your requirements....
It's quiet tricky if you get stuck in a wrong cart... The moving part is hell.

You did not mention if you want hosted or standalone. If your a person which values privacy stuff and control then hosted is not for you. You know the NSA stuff...

Of-course using hosted it removes all the hassles and make it very easy for you. You need to look the downside as well...

Additionally, once you have chosen the cart.... look for customer reviews and the struggles they experienced.... You don't want to do the same mistake....Learn from others....

For hosted cart, I have good experience with ecwid. Its easy to handle...
You might want to look at Shopify and bigcommerce as well..

For standalone, you might want to use Joomla CMS. It has some good shopping cart as well.

*Note: Avoid using carts which are developed for over 10 years already. The technology before and now are very different.
I've been using xcart for more than 5 years with one of my client and its just buggy and can't get it work properly. But I was stucked so I tried my best to make it work until last year we moved to Joomla.

Hope this help...

How many products?
<200

What kind of products? Digital? Physical?
Physical

Do you need to do recurring orders (consumables)?
no

How many categories? Do you have subcategories? What about sub-sub categories?
I would like to categorise by brand and then product type.

Lots of brands or no brands?
Few brands I would say <30

How are weight and dimensions calculated for shipping purposes? Do you need ounces or will KG and Pounds be ok?

Pounds would be fine but even then it might be a bit too much. The heaviest I would be shipping would be the weight of t-shirt.

How many options or option sets?
?

Are you dropshipping or taking inventory?
Taking inventory

How do you want to do your shipping? I.E. are they large heavy objects or small objects where shipping is easy? Local pickup? Overseas or no overseas?
Small items with worldwide shipping

Which payment options are you looking at?
Credit card, wire transfer and possibly bitcoins

Do you need wholesale functionality?
no

What about customer groups?
not fundamental but could be helpful later on

Any type of discounting or coupons you want to offer?
percentage off or codes to certain customers

Need a Facebook tab to sell on?
not required

Need an affiliate program? Use a third party network (Linkshare, CJ, etc)? Integrated on cart?
not essential

I've created sites that have done millions in sales using WooCommerce for wordpress. Ultimately it's all about getting the functionality you want. I was looking for SEO, no limits on number of products, and the ability to have unlimited flexibility with content. We spent a good deal of money on premium and custom plugins. The best part about this is that as your business grows, you can expand and customize it with custom programming without being locked into a limited turn key service.

Make sure you use a secure shopping cart.. IMO if you have this many questions, an all-in-one solution would be advised. BigCommerce, Shopify, etc. If you need to host it, go with magento, opencart, etc.. Google before you do, look for exploits, etc. While you will not maintain credit card numbers on your actual backend (unless you process offline), you could still get hacked for personal information i.e. names, addresses, etc.

As far as the encryption, that's just an SSL you buy and apply to your domain via your cPanel, or if managed, your host can do it.

As far as SEO, all of the big self-hosted shopping carts have phenomenal SEO options, either out of the box or for purchase as addons.

Best of luck, if you have any questions, PM me.

You may want to take a look at 3dcart. I've used them for years. For an 'advanced' person that wants a ton of control over the site, it's a pita to deal with. But, for starting out, looking for a nice hosted solution that will fit your requirements - 3dcart will work.

They also recently started accepting bitcoin btw.

I've used most of all the leading paid shopping carts out there. Those usually have shared SSL protection built in. In these times however, an obvious and secondary SSL badge should be bought and displayed "above the fold", or the top half of the screen, in sight when the prospect's eyes hit the page for that all important first impression.

Consumers are very nervous about their credit card and private info. getting compromised. The more visible security measures you have, the more profit you make.