I’ve talked some in the past about the options with regard to Ecommerce.  As I’ve noted, there are many choices when it comes to selecting the best Cart for online sales, but of the options out there, the best open-source option is Zen Cart.  For those who are new to Zen Cart, it is based on the popular open-source cart OSCommerce; that being said, Zen Cart is coded better (it does not use tables for layout, as OSCommerce does), and it provides most of the features that are needed in a good Cart.

The latest version (as of this post)  is Zen Cart Ecommerce V 1.3.9. 
The direct link is: http://www.zen-cart.com/

Per their website:

Zen Cart™ truly is the art of e-commerce; free, user-friendly, open source shopping cart software. The ecommerce web site design program is being developed by a group of like-minded shop owners, programmers, designers, and consultants that think ecommerce web design could be and should be done differently.

Some shopping cart solutions seem to be complicated programming exercises instead of responding to users’ needs, Zen Cart™ puts the merchants and shoppers requirements first. Similarly, other shopping cart software programs are nearly impossible to install and use without an IT degree, Zen Cart™ can be installed and set-up by anyone with the most basic web site building and computer skills.

There are hundreds of shopping cart programs available, but none come close to offering the level of options, features and support available with Zen Cart™. Even the commercial programs have a hard time competing.

Just a few of our features…

• easy installation
• multiple customer modes
• unlimited category depth
• multiple sales and discounts
• multiple display modes
  and…
• XHTML template system
• unlimited extra pages
• multiple ad banner controller
• multiple shipping options
• multiple payment options
  plus…
• newsletter manager
• discount coupons
• gift certificates
• featured products
• quantity discounts

As you will find, the installation is pretty straightforward, and as easy as any Cart I’ve worked with.  You can find online documentation at: http://tutorials.zen-cart.com

Zen Cart has a built-in automatic installation system. However to use this you must first unpack and upload the code to a compatible web server:

1. Extract the Zen Cart(tm) ZIP file (and tell the unzip utility to *retain* folder structures)
2. Upload the Zen Cart files and folders to your server using your FTP program
3. You’ll need to make some folders writable. The details are in the HTML-formatted documentation in the /docs/ folder
4. Point your browser to your website where you uploaded the files, specifically to the /zc_install/index.php file.
5. Follow the instructions. You’ll need MySQL database credentials, etc to complete installation.

Once you’ve installed Zen Cart, it can be customized by choosing a template (free or commercial) and by editing the CSS stylesheets associated with the template.

A question I am often asked about is how to sell online.  As I’ve touched upon before, the first thing you need to decide about is if you want to use an “All in One” payment solution such as Paypal or Google CheckOut, or if you want to use a Merchant Account.  Since I’ve blogged about this before, I’ll keep this short, … but my feeling is that in case you are sure your business will be a booming one the “All in One” will in most cases be the better option since you avoid a lot of monthly costs that having nothing to do with the volume of your sales, and this can really hurt your bottom line.  Secondly, in many cases the “Cart” application you use will allow for either an “All in One” or full E-Commerce, though not all of them.  And note that some carts will require the API (direct payment integration) to work with the “All in One” options.  That being said, here are some of the important considerations with E-Commerce.

For any Cart application you will need to have your content organized and ready for development.  This is much the same as with any web development project since it makes no sense to decide on the Cart to use until you have defined the fundamentals.  So…get your product list organized by using Excel, or other common spreadsheet type of application (alphabetize and check the spelling).  Next you will need to have good representative product photos.  In most case an image at 500px width/height will be fine for the larger view, but realize that if a lot of editing is needed (be it sizing, the background removed, or just visual improvement) this will add to the development time and cost.  Many of the Carts will do automatic sizing for the product images, but in some cases it is better to a let an experienced designer do the sizing to ensure that the cropping is done in the best possible way.  After the product listing with images are ready, you will need to have product ID numbers of some type.  In most cases you will have an inventory in place so you will simply use your existing numbers to identify the products.  Of course be as consistent as possible to ensure that your time doing inventory is as easy as possible.

Another important consideration is the options that will be available for a given product.  Typically there will be size and color, but depending on what you are selling these option fields may need to be custom ones, which not all carts provide for.  And you will need to decide on tax and shipping.  Tax will be defined by the tax codes of the state, but if you are intending to ship worldwide then you may wish to have a flat fee associated by country.  Of course weight and size can also be a concern, so it is important to spend some time considering the best way to handle this.  As for the shipping options, there is UPS, USPS, FedEx, and Worldship (though there are others less common ones).  Again, not all carts support all shipping options, so when considering the best cart application you need to look at the features set to define the best one for you.  Note that some shipping carries may provide an online integration option to have packages picked up automatically, package slips printed out at your location, the tracking of shipments, and shipping costs defined by address and weight.  I suggest checking into these options with the common carriers if these are important considerations for you.

Ok, so assuming you have your product list with images ready, have identified the options for the products, have defined the shipping costs, and how to ship, you will need to look at the Cart from an administrative perspective.  Firstly, it is easy to work with?  Many carts are, but some either have too few options, or so many options that navigating the application is anything but easy.  You should also consider options such as the ability to provide coupons with or without bar-codes, coupon codes, wholesale pricing, discounts for multiple item purchases, tracking of sales, tracking products/inventory quantity (having an excel file .csv upload/download option is important to many),  and tracking of customers.  There will likely be other considerations that are specific to your own needs, so when assessing the carts make a defined listing of what you want and/or need, and evaluate the cart based upon this (and of course compare the carts features side-by-side).  And lastly, you need to evaluate the cart from the visitor/user perspective.  Firstly, there is the “Add to Cart” functionality, the “Checkout”, and the “Returning User”.  Most carts provides similar features in this regard, though some will provide features such as “Wish Lists” in addition to account functions such as looking up previous orders, changing user details, etc.  You should also consider the visual impression of your cart.  Does it have a product slider, does it use jQuery for enhanced product image views?  Are there other features that you’ve seen that you would like?

Ok, so assuming all the aforementioned has been defined you need to consider the coding of the cart and the visual design, specifically is it easy to customize and how will it integrate into an existing website?  Note that carts will be designed in an advanced scripting language, typically PHP or ASP (other less common options are Perl “.pl” and Cold Fusion “.cfl”).  Of the primary two scripting platforms, if you are using a Unix/Linux server then the cart will need to be PHP and for Microsoft Servers the cart will need to be ASP.  As for the styling of the cart, most contemporary carts use a global stylesheet that will allow for the changing the page colors (sidebars, background, navigation, etc), and adding a logo.  The Carts administrative interface may have provisions to do this from a wyswyg interface, though in some cases the designer will need to make the changes in the code itself.   Note the customization of cart such as adding a flash header will almost always require hacking the code.

Another important consideration is if the Cart will be the “website” or if the Cart will be linked to from an existing website?  There are many sites out there that simply use the cart as the website, so when you arrive on the home page (index.php) you will see the first page of the cart with the products listed.  This works in theory, but this can be detrimental with SEO depending on whether there is enough text in addition (search engines require ample text to adequately index a website).  If your intention is to simply sell something on an established xhtml website then linking to a cart is the way to go.  Of course it will be important for the cart to still match the overall look of the existing website, … utilizing the same page colors, logo/header design, and other common page elements as possible.  If you are using a CMS website such as Joomla or the WordPress CMS, then you will most likely want to use one of the better Cart inclusions for the CMS platform.  For Joomla the common option is known as VirtueMart, for WordPress there are a few, but since I know little about them I won’t comment on them at this time.  The advantage of using a Cart component in a CMS is that the Cart will seamlessly integrate into your existing CMS website and will likely be indexed better by the search engines, and will look more professional from a user perspective. 

As for the Cart options….well, there are many, both Open Source and Commercial.  For open-source, the common options are OSCommerce (it’s been around a long time so there are lots of quality templates available) and ZenCart (less templates, but an upgrade of OS-Commerce so my choice).  For the commercial options I’ve worked with CS-Cart (easy to set up and work with but not especially feature rich), and Magento (very complicated to work with but lots of features).  Of the many cart options the important thing is to search the review sites and read customer comments before choosing one.  Also, wherever possible do a test drive.  In this regard, I would recommend downloading the “free trial” if one is provided and trying it out on your own server, or try out the demo on their server if no other option is available.  I would never purchase any application without trying it at least in part.  Note that some carts will not always work on a given server, be it the PHP version required (for example, your server may have php v. 4 installed, but the cart requires php v. 5), or other functionality needed such as IonCube (used to restrict licensing – most shared hosting servers don’t provide support for it).  And finally, pricing varies a lot on carts.  So I would suggest taking some time to assess “many” carts before you make a choice, and consider all that I’ve noted above, for once you’ve made the purchase you need to be confident that you spent your money wisely. 

Finally, I don’t suggest going with a “hosted” option.  There is no reason to pay a monthly fee to use a cart on someone else’s server, and a lot of possible downsides since any time you allow someone else to manage your site you run the risk of them “holding you hostage”.  Good carts can be typically purchased for under $300, and the open-source options are often the best way to go since they have a large development community, so security is often better with these carts than the commercial ones.  In this regard, always backup your site and database regularly since no cart, or database driven website will be 100% secure. 

And while I do think having a designer to assist you with making the right choice is a good idea, don’t assume that the designer will know the absolute best option available.  Most designers are familiar with a few carts, and those are the ones they will go to for client websites.  But this is not to say that the carts they suggest are the best for your specific needs.  And where possible, learn as much as you can, do what you can, … why pay a designer for what you can do yourself,…since after all, once the cart is online it will be “you”, not the “designer” who will be working with it daily. 

Hopefully this has answered your primary questions.