louponne - 7:56 am on Sep 21, 2009 (gmt 0)

@rachel

My thought is, you should be delighted at the apparent lackings of the competition, and you should be selling your clearly superior shopping cart.

I guess that's probably sarcasm ;) , but that's not at all what I'm talking about here. The store/cart I have built is _very_ simple and there's no way I have the resources to complete it with all the fancy features a good cart needs nowadays. However, it has very good usability :) It's extremely easy to manage the products, orders, etc. Now, I know that part of the reason that the usability is good is because the app I have built is extra-simple. But still...

@lorax

The big conundrums are the GUIs for both the visitor AND the admin. Many of the Open Source carts I've looked at seem to have grown out of a particular need by a programmer. They appear to be built without the help of usability testers or marketing people and in some cases, someone familiar with coding large projects for long term growth and upgrades.

Yes, your shopping list of the essentials that a shopping cart needs, and this statement, sums up my thoughts exactly.

I'm in agreement with what you folks are saying and I'm not "complaining" about what "I'm getting" in open-source apps. You can't complain about something that you get for free.

However, the business model here is clear, I think: you built an open-source app with the idea that business will then come in by way of custom installs, modifications, etc.

So what I'm saying here, is, given that choice by a developer or company, I'm surprised that they don't go the extra mile and think usability while they're building. As I've said, open-source CMS developers do that (otherwise, nobody would choose their systems). Why don't store/cart developers? I think it's because up until now, the client base has been small, and there's the sense of keeping it among developers.

My bet (and hope :) is that within 6 months, we'll see some companies come up with more mature systems. At least I think that there's a market for them, and a justification for the investment. Magento has gone the full "pack in all the features" route which is fine. I think that there will be a few companies who do a more modest store/cart that concentrates on ease of use. One example, Interspire is clearly doing that, but their system is too expensive.