I originally built my bookstore’s website using PayPal for the shopping cart. It was functional, but never seemed to be able to calculate shipping correctly. I also had issues with the way the specials and discounts were handled. The biggest problem, though, was the number of people who said they didn’t like PayPal and didn’t want to create an account there.
When I redesigned the site and added a site for my tea bar, I switched to Google Checkout. Overall, I am much happier with the interface. Unfortunately, I’ve gotten several phone calls and emails from people who said they just couldn’t get orders to go through. This is a huge concern, as there are probably a dozen people who just gave up and went elsewhere for every one that took the trouble to email or call me.
Then Google decided to drop Checkout entirely (it goes offline in November), so there’s no longer an option. I have to redesign the sites again.
I’ve built my own product databases and the sites are PHP/SQL based. I’ve hand-coded the PHP, HTML, and CSS. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to spend months – or even weeks – on a redesign right now, and the site doesn’t generate enough volume to justify an expensive turnkey solution.
What or inexpensive shopping cart/payment processing systems have you folks used that you’re happy with? Has PayPal improved in the last couple of years?
I’ll put in a big vote against Amazon Payments. I’m fine with the main Amazon site, but when I tried to use Payments to fund a Kickstarter project, it failed for mysterious and opaque reasons, and their tech support was essentially useless in resolving the problem. Eventually the problem “fixed itself”, but only after something like two weeks.
Also, my impression is that Checkout is just transitioning to Wallet, and that the change will be partially automatic. Does it really require a redesign?
I own a bookstore. Believe me, Amazon Payments is not being considered as an option!
It’s my understanding that Checkout and Wallet are two different things. Checkout is a full shopping cart and payment processing system. Besides, if I’m getting complaints from my customers about one Google shopping system not working, then I’m certainly not going to switch to another system from the same vendor.
Google is dropping two products this year that I’ve used heavily: Reader and Checkout. I’ve been a big Google fan, but I have to say I’m reluctant to commit to another of their products.
Are you willing to look into something standalone? That is, not affiliated with any major brand (Amazon, Google, Paypal etc)?
My store uses a website called aspdotnetstorefront. I don’t know if the shopping cart is part of the actual program or it’s a totally separate program that the web designers that we used added to it, but it all works together nicely.
As a whole, to be perfectly honest, it can be a bit clunky, but it gets the job done.
It’s got a WYSISYG programmer, but if you can do ‘real’ programming, you’ll have a leg up, I taught myself some ASP.NET (C++ IIRC) to get by, but probably didn’t even need that just based on what I remembered from high school BASIC.
They also have forums where you can ask for help.
If it sounds like something you’re interested in, I can try to answer more questions for you. Also, I want to say the software is something like $1500 to get started and you own the source code so you can kinda go to town on it if you know what you’re doing.
ETA, I know I said they’re not affiliated with a major brand, but you can set up the shopping cart to accept payments from places like paypal etc.
I really don’t care if there’s a major brand as long as there’s decent payment processing. I used to be a software engineer (and later, CTO), but I’ve been out of it for quite a while. I can code PHP and I could probably reacquaint myself with perl fairly quickly, but I wouldn’t want to commit to a Microsoft-only solution, especially since I’m fully hosted on Unix machines at the moment. I’ve just had too many compatibility problems in the past using Microsoft’s tools.
I also don’t have $1,500 in the budget right now, unfortunately.
There are some good PHP shopping cart applications that are easy enough to integrate with an existing web site. xCart, Magento, several plugins for WordPress (WooCommerce and WP E Commerce). They all have flexible shipping options and support multiple payment gateways. That’s the best solution really - don’t be dependent on a single payment system.