Shopping Cart Suggestions

I have a client using MIVA and think its time to change.

[wonderbread]

A current client I have is using MIVA merchant on their existing e-commerce site and is doing horribly with engine placement. I've read a bit about the problems associated with MIVA's longgggggg URL strings full or variables and some of the possibilities of making it more SEO friendly (dropping certain variables, making static versions of the pages, etc.)

I'm just starting the redesign and the client has asked whether to keep MIVA or try something else. Can anyone here make any recommendations for similiar shopping cart systems that are easy to setup and more SEO friendly?

Thanks!

Nick

[Essex_boy]

Ive just bought webgenie ($500)pretty dam amazing - simple to use yet allows a variety of options in the design that ive never found in a point and click package.

It would appear that you can even use the same credit card processors for several sites, take a look.

[flood6]

I always suggest osCommerce.

The bad thing is: you're on your own for the most part; but the great community is very helpful.

I have made some very SE-successful sites with osCommerce with only a few modifications.

You can't beat the price.

[Essex_boy]

Yeah thats true, I tried it once and it was the only site that lost me money.

Quite simply I didnt know what I was doing and hired someone, but yeah I cant fault it.

[BroadLea]

Our main site has over 22,000 links in Google, of which about half are dynamic sites with looonnggg Miva Merchant URLs.

While Google used to index very few of our dynamic MM URLs, that situation seemed to change about a year ago.

Yahoo used to only include our static pages, but of the 1100 or so of our links in their index about 90% have at least one variable in the URL and a little over half seem to be long dynamic MM URLs.

There are several methods you can use to shorten the URLs, including removing the Store_Code parameter and using a special stub .mv/.mvc for links from your static pages.

[wonderbread]

Thanks for your replies. I think that we're going to stick with MIVA for now and give it a test once everything is all redesigned. I'm not too familiar with MIVA's admin panel. Does anyone know how to get rid of the store code variable in the url strings?

Thanks!

Nick

[Edouard_H]

There is an add-on modification available for Clickcart Pro that utilizes modrewrite to generate some spider-friendly url's.

[BroadLea]

Nick, the later versions of the OUI (as opposed to MMUI) can do this for you easily. If you are using MMUI, though, it might involve editing the mmui.mv file (if you are using the older, uncompiled version).

[wonderbread]

I'll check it out...thanks everyone.

[Ian_Cowley]

For serach engine freindliness and overall flexibility you can't beat Interchange. If you're after something more simple go for osCommerce, only problem is all osCommerce sites seem to look the same (IMHO).