What to use for an ecommerce site?

9 replies
Hello warriors!

Well,title says it all. I am in the process of starting a business that will sell physical products and would naturally like to sell online. My question is what to use for an ecommerce site? (haven't had any site where I was selling stuff, since I mostly have done cpa/affiliate marketing)

Anyone has a good wordpress plug in (I like wordpress ) that is easy to use and customize (being free would be nice too)

Anyone has experience with Amazon's webstore? Seems pretty nice (built in everything, payment processing, amazon's brand name (for check out at least)) Though looking at feedback some people are saying it's a pain to customize the site and requires a lot of technical knowledge.

Any other suggestions? Appreciate your help!
#ecommerce #site
  • Profile picture of the author Christian Little
    Personally I would code my own system. Takes longer to setup, but you have way more freedom in terms of functionality and such. I can code a basic cart in a few hours, add another couple to integrate a payment processor, then just build a site around a few PHP functions instead of being locked into a cart system.

    But I generally recommend osCommerce or ZenCart to people that don't have any programming skills. Both are very easy to setup (like 2 mins to setup/install), and both have a huge userbase so it's easy to find solutions to problems, get plugins, designs, etc.
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  • Profile picture of the author J smith
    Well, I can't code so that's not an option. I'll look into osCommerce and ZenCart.
    Ebay and amazon are decent choices but I need a site.

    Any particular wp plug ins or themes you'd recommend Ryan? There are so many, kind of hard to tell which ones are good.
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  • Profile picture of the author ecdavis
    ZenCart and OsCommerce are two free, open source templates, as mentioned above. Most hosting packages allow you install these automatically using Fantastico. You may want to consider paying a coder to customize a template to your liking. There may be features that you want that are not natively included with the template. These shopping carts are not the same thing as wordpress. However, if you want to use wordpress, there are are variety of shopping cart platforms to choose from, even some free options. Simply do a Google search. What I really suggest is that you do a bit of research to see what's available and then engage a programmer to tweak it so that you have exactly what you want.

    Evan
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  • Profile picture of the author magnet
    Banned
    [DELETED]
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  • Profile picture of the author Evan-M
    I would say oscommerce with the STS(simple template system) mod installed for easy templating

    There are also allot of security mods you should install before using it as your store, as out of the both most shopping cart systems are vulnerably.
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    Evan-M

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  • Profile picture of the author altteam
    Dear J smith,

    I would recoomend you just to try CS-Cart demo version (see the sginature) or any other professionsl carts. Just to compare.
    You may find many advantages (or disadvantages).

    Regards, Alt-team.
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    • Profile picture of the author fryguy173
      You might try out Market Theme.

      It's a theme with everything built in. Quick, easy, looks good, and simple to understand.

      There's also an online demo you can try out before buying.
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      • I just use the basic paypal Buy html buttons on a Wordpress or static HTML site and it works well for basic needs.

        I've also heard good things about Shopify.com which is an ecommerce hosting service - it's not free but they have a reputation for being easy to use, affordable and quite SEO-optimized.
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