Need a FREE shopping cart

Well, off the top of my head I can think of oscommerce, zen cart and magento to name a few free ones. If you could be more specific about what you are trying to do then I could probably tell you which one works better for your application.

Also, if you want to integrate a shopping cart into a CMS like joomla or wordpress there are free options for that as well.

It really depends on what functions and extras you want with the shopping cart. Are you going to host it, or do you want it hosted? There are numerous open source "free" ones out there that perform extremely well.

I have worked with OSCart, and ZenCart. Of the two I prefer ZenCart. IT has numerous features ad easily customizable. But be prepared to invest some time setting it up.

Where as if you go for a paid product the set up is normally easier. I also work a lot with Miva Merchant which is definately not free. Honestly I get the same features and performance from ZenCart. There are free and paid plug ins for both Miva Merchant and ZenCart to help things along.

However just getting an online shopping cart set up is half the battle. Then you have to look to at site usability, product pictures, product placement, product attributes etc. The difference between a functional e-commerce site and properly set up e-commerce site is making a few sales and making a lot of sales.

If you need some more help on this, feel free to send me a private message. If you can give me a little more information on the products you want sell and what you expect of your online shopping cart I can better point you in the right direction.

Ben

Well the site you refernced here is running on Oscommerce which is open source "free". One of the large sites that I manage also sells on Amazon as well as e-bay. This site is run on ZenCart and I have systems in place so I can generate feeds to update and change its e-bay store, amazon store and Google base feeds.

While Zencart is free, they have a huge e-book you can buy for $29.00 USD that walks you through set up and runing the store. But be aware as some one new to this it may take you some time to figure it out and get it running. Plus you will need to get set up with a credit card processor.

Have you thought about how you are going to ship your product? How you are going to track inventory? How you are going to track sales and such for book keeping?

I am not trying to bog you down with details but one thing I learned from my days in the army is "Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance". If you write down all these things now and come up with a plan it will save you a lot of grief down the road.

Also consider things like how you are going to do product photos. Product photos are a REQUIREMENT. People buy what they can see, if you don't believe me look at all the "faked" e-book covers out there. So you will need at the bare minimum a digital camera and some editing software.

Keep in mind videos. Videos sell products as well, and very nicely I might add. Do a video of you using your product and showing the awesome result, it will convert a lot better than just pictures. Plus you can use that video to drive traffic to your site.

To really set up an e-store effectively requires a lot of thought. But it does pay off in the end. I hope I have been of some help to you here. I am in the middle of finishing a product myself that walks a user through all the steps of setting up an e-commerce site with e-bay, and and amazon stores. However its just not ready for release yet.

Ben

JackPowers,
You can take a photoshop design and make it work with ZenCart, but it takes a pretty good grasp of how CSS and Zen Cart itself works. My recommendation there is to post on the ZenCart forums in the Commercial help room and hire some one to do it if you do not have the technical ability.

Hope this is helpful,

Ben