Shopping Carts so complicated

by Ali Anwar

Posted: 12 years ago 13 replies

ECOMMERCE

I am new to eCommerce, but I have researched enough in the past few weeks, and also found a good niche for myself to start. I bought a domain and took hostgator as my webhost with the hopes of using the shopping carts provided by them. Now, before this the only experience I have had was with making stores on weebly, and they seemed very simple and easy to do. I expected something similar, but I'm completely shocked to see the interface of the other shopping carts.

Firstly, I installed Magento because I heard so much praise from many about it, but I was dumbfounded with its dashboard. After installation, my homepage changed with the Magento logo on the top, and a blank store. I tried adding products, but even after configuring the details, I didn't even know the link of the product page, let alone making a shortcut on the homepage.

I uninstalled Magento, and started looking up other carts that hostgator offers, and chose PrestaShop after that because the website showed some very good websites, and it seemed easy to operate. Comparatively, creating a product page with PrestaShop was easier, but again I was faced with the same problem of not knowing what to do where.

I couldn't even find a way to edit the homepage. I, actually, did find a way, but it seemed like you can edit your page only if you're an HTML pro which, regrettably, I am not.

Can somebody please guide me to tutorials or tips for making good looking stores? Also, I couldn't find anywhere on the dashboards where to configure my payment processor. Please bear with me as I'm a newbie, and have no idea about all this. Where does the money go when somebody buys from you? How do you get paid? Is there someplace where you have to enter your paypal details or bank account details? Is there some time constrained payout like monthly?

I got fed up with the shopping carts pretty easily, and I'm scared of even logging in now. Somebody, please help me.

#carts #complicated #shopping

javarog 12 years ago

In your situation you should either go with a hosted paid shopping cart, or use wordpress with a extension like woo or if you want simple ,simple use Ecwid with wordpress.. (no affilation)
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spearce000 12 years ago

My choice for a newbie e-commerce site would be WordPress with the WooCommerce plug-in. They're both super-easy to install, there's a wide choice of templates, support lots of payment processors (PayPal comes included, but you can get others, too), and there are tons of tutorials/ YouTube videos around.
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- OnlineStoreHelp 12 years ago
  
  All the hosted carts take a while to get used to. Yes, Magento is complicated and Prestashop while easier, also has a learning curve. If you have only used things like weebly before, you are better off using the hosted cart providers.
  
  Given your lack of experience I would most likely suggest either Shopify, or if you need more flexibility, BigCommerce. You might try 3d cart or corecommerce but they are also a little bit more difficult to use.
  
  If you don't have a bunch of categories and sub categories go with Shopify. It is the easiest to get started with. If you need a little more flexibility, look at BigCommerce. You can take a look at the walk throughs on my site if you look in my signature.
  
  I would not suggest wordpress because I still think you are going to have issues getting it all sorted. Add on top of it, I don't think you want to deal with security, upgrades, updates, installing your SSL cert, etc. Just put you back in the same boat.
  
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  Learn how to set up a powerful, functional yet easy to use e-commerce website at cartprep.com.
  
  Not sure what ecommerce solution to use? Watch my video walk through of popular shopping carts.
  
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Ali Anwar 12 years ago

Thanks for your responses. I appreciate it. However, can someone please address the payment issue as well? How do I get paid? I still haven't been able to find any page on the shopping cart software which asks for my paypal or bank account.
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Ayodejiaa 12 years ago

I have only had a lot of experience with Wordpress and WooCommerce and almost none with the others! Adding products in this system is super easy and straightforward! Your payment is also straight forward as Woocommerce brings the ease of PayPal to your store for you!
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- DWolfe 12 years ago
  
  You should contact the service provider about payment service. They all have support and would be able to show you how their payment systems work.
  
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ReferralCandy 12 years ago

+1 what OnlineStoreHelp said.

It's pretty challenging to work with Magento (and other hosted-cart solutions). It's powerful and praiseworthy, yes, but it has a rather steep learning curve for newbies.

Working with such unfamiliar complexity while trying to run a business at the same time sounds unnervingly daunting!

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mlcmartin 12 years ago

WooCommerce will really save you a lot of time. I used it for a good while with excellent results. Although now I have developed my own cart because I enjoy programming so much.
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Ali Anwar 12 years ago

I signed up for bigcommerce today, although it was my first choice, I hadn't tried it yet because it wasn't available on hostgator's free carts. I can honestly say that it is the best thing out there. It is everything I'm looking for. All the praise I've heard about their service is absolutely true. It is so easy to navigate and the products you load show up instantly on your home page. Even the webpages' customization doesn't require any HTML skills. I'm delighted with what I found after signing up for bigcommerce. The payment processors are also easy to find, and it automatically searches for the best suited solutions for your business.
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- rhinocl 12 years ago
  
  When you praise a service you've just signed up for you are creating noise. Someone searching for reviews of services (or anything else) really wants the opinion of someone who has had more than one day's experience with something. Unfortunately the Google search engine that almost everyone uses is not capable of taking reviews of people with one day's experience and placing them at the end of the SERPs so you complicate the process of finding good advice.
  
  I have nothing against you or Big Commerce but I think it is high time that people stop posting about their experiences with products and services before they've had time to see if it will really fill their needs.
  
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jbthemummy 12 years ago

Try ecwid dude. You'll love it.
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Solid Commerce 12 years ago

I would check out BigCommerce.

From what I've heard, they've got some of the easiest software to use and set up -- with the most minimal amount of learning curve.

Ecommerce Software & Shopping Cart Solutions - Bigcommerce

Hope this helps!

_ Sean
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_ Sean B.
Solid Commerce
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Shopitpress 12 years ago

I would go with self hosted WordPress and WooCommerce.

Why?

Does everything you need in e-commerce website and more.
You have power full content management out of the box.
You have massive community behind your site.
Massive amount of free plugins. You need community here you go buddypress, you need forum here you go bbpress, you need anything here you go thousands of free plugins
Massive count of free themes.
Easy development
Loads of developers to pick from

don't know why you picked magento first, but magento in your situation is a waste of time.
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