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rob_hawk
rob_hawk
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Shopping cart options for basic e-commerce system

Jun 13, 2011 10:12 AM

Hi,

 

I have a new client  that has a need for a fairly straight forward site for a new business that sells engery saving products. I'm still pretty new to this so although I'm comfortable now with many aspects of building  a site I have a couple of questions about shopping carts and customer databases.

 

First a little background.....

 

The new web site is to be the clients primary "shop window" so as well as providing a visually attractive solution I need to provide a robust cart solution for his products (up to 100 different products). The client has the need to add, remove and update his own product images and information once the site is live. In addition he would like the cart/site to generate invoices, I'm guessing that Paypal can do this but perhaps there are other options?

 

I'm currently using the PageLime CMS that allows me to create new pages based on a template so the creation of new pages plus the insertion of new products I feel should be fairly straight forward it's just the actual cart component that I think I'll need some help with...... The customers of my prospective client are to be able to pay via Paypal, cheque or electronic bank transfer.

 

Questions....

 

1) What are the best 2 or 3 cart solutions that are robust, and easily installed and user friendly? (are they open source?)

 

2) What's the best option for retaining a database of all customers that purchase items from the shop?

 

I have to get back with a quote soon so I'd really appreciate some advice as this is my first e-commerce type project.

 

Many thanks

 

Regards


Rob

567 Views   8 Replies   Latest reply: rob_hawk, Jun 14, 2011 7:51 AM
 
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  • 370H55V
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    1. 370H55V,
    Jun 13, 2011 11:04 AM   in reply to rob_hawk
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    1) What are the best 2 or 3 cart solutions that are robust, and easily installed and user friendly? (are they open source?)

     

    CoffeCup

    CartWeaver

     

    Those ARE NOT open source (I don't personally know of any open source shopping cart software) They are user friendly as long as the user knows how to configure a server and write PHP ASP or AJAX.

     

    2) What's the best option for retaining a database of all customers that purchase items from the shop?

     

    Cartweaver PHP and ASP integrate this into client. Your customers will be stored in a database using MySQL.

     

    There are online cart services too. A friend of mine uses 800cart.com for her shopping cart transactions. She said it took all of ten minutes to set it up and she's used it since 2007.

     
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  • Nancy O.
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    2. Nancy O.,
    Jun 13, 2011 1:56 PM   in reply to rob_hawk
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    Depending on which features your client needs, Web Assist has 2 e-commerce solutions:

    http://www.webassist.com/support/ecommerce-options.php

     

     

    2) What's the best option for retaining a database of all customers that purchase items from the shop?

     

    Be careful here.  Learn all you can about PCI compliance.  You and your client are responsible for protecting consumers from identity theft.

     

    I don't recommend keeping sensitive data in your client's MySql under any circumstances.   Most small business shopping carts pass the consumer off to a payment processing gateway site like Authorize.net who collects and encrypts sensitive CC info.  If using Authorize.net, your client can log-in to his account with them to retrieve customer names/addresses & order details.

     

     

     

    Nancy O.
    Alt-Web Design & Publishing
    Web | Graphics | Print | Media  Specialists 
    http://alt-web.com/
    http://twitter.com/altweb

     
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  • Lawrence_Cramer
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    3. Lawrence_Cramer,
    Jun 13, 2011 2:42 PM   in reply to Nancy O.
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    Nancy gave some good advice there... Never, ever, under any circumstances store customer credit card data on your site / database.  There is no way to adequately store this data on a shared host, VPS or dedicated server to which the host employees have access, to be considered "safe".

     

    The way to handle this data is to not store this data in any way... not even in memory, but to immediately hand off this information via http post under SSL encryption to a reliable gateway provider such as Authorize Net, and let them take it from there.

     

    This effectively removes you from the "food chain" of lawyers should a customer's credit card ever be compromised. The information that is then retained in your database, that being the customr's name and shipping address,  is no more that what the customer already has exposed in their local phone book and is quite benign.

     

     

    Lawrence Cramer - *Adobe Community Champion*
    http://www.Cartweaver.com
    PHP& ColdFusion Shopping Cart for Adobe Dreamweaver

     

    Stay updated - Like,Follow, and Bookmark Cartweaver!

     

    http://www.twitter.com/Cartweaver

     

    http://www.facebook.com/Cartweaver

     

    http://blog.cartweaver.com

     
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  • rob_hawk
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    4. rob_hawk,
    Jun 14, 2011 1:35 AM   in reply to Lawrence_Cramer
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    Hi,

     

    Many thanks to everyone for the advice especially that around the data protection side of things. I will ensure that nothing other than name and address information is stored locally to prevent future issues.

     

    Final question on Cartweaver.

     

    1) As a couple of you know from previous discussions I'm not a PHP expert at all but am assuming I can builtdand customise a cart  via the regular DW interface without this right now?

     

    I'll look to learn some PHP soon!

     

    Regards

     

    Rob

     
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  • pziecina
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    5. pziecina,
    Jun 14, 2011 5:32 AM   in reply to rob_hawk
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    Hi

    I'm not a PHP expert at all but am assuming I can builtdand customise a cart  via the regular DW interface without this right now?

    No, use Cartweaver or a similar product. Doing this yourself will require extensive use of PHP an MySQL query's/updates/inserts, and the ones produced by dreamweaver should only be used for prototyping such functions, especially so when it comes to storing or using any kind of user data.

     

    Even the DW Development team agree that the dw server behaviours are only for prototyping such functions.

     

    PZ

     
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  • rob_hawk
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    6. rob_hawk,
    Jun 14, 2011 7:29 AM   in reply to pziecina
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    Hi,

     

    Sorry, in my question I meant can I do this with Cart Weaver without extensive PHP knowledge and it sounds like the answer is yes?

     

    Regards

     

    Rob

     
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  • pziecina
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    7. pziecina,
    Jun 14, 2011 7:44 AM   in reply to rob_hawk
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    Hi

     

    As I have not used Cartweaver personally, (must give it a try. Lawrence is a trial version available?) I cannot answer from experience, and I would prefer that someone who has confirms this for you. But from what I have read about the product it does appear to be reasonably simple to use.

     

    But it would be better if someone who has used, and deployed cartweaver answers this question 'definitively' for you,

     

    PZ

     
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  • rob_hawk
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    8. rob_hawk,
    Jun 14, 2011 7:51 AM   in reply to pziecina
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    Hi,

     

    Many thanks for the help.

     

    Hopefully someone will provide the thumbs up shortly as I'm keen to make a correct choice for my client.

     

    Regards

     

    Rob

     
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