Implications of moving to new shopping cart system

[NigelT]

I have a long-established html/css web site which uses a rather basic off-the-shelf shopping cart. I want to move to something better looking and with more functionality. I have investigated a number of carts and the ones I like the look of are all database driven.

If I use one of these it seems that I will not be able to retain my current .html page names which have ranked reasonably well for many years.

I have enquired whether I could retain my .html category pages and link from them to the .php item description/purchase pages, but was told I would lose much of the functionality of the system.

My questions are:

1. Are there any good carts that would allow me to retain my existing .html URLs?

2. Would it be committing SE suicide to change the URLs?

3. Using 301 redirects from the current .html to new .php pages has been suggested as a solution. Is that sound advice? And are there any SE implications to using 301s?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[HRoth]

I wanted to keep my static html pages also, for the same reason. I looked at a bunch of carts and switched to Mal's Cart. Not the most sophisticated cart in the world, but not the crudest either.

[NigelT]

HRoth, Thanks for that. I actually use Mals cart on another site, and quite like it. But for the site in question I want more functionality.

[lorax]

How many pages are we talking about and are the keywords you rank for competitive or not?

[NigelT]

Lorax, This is quite a small site - no more than 40-50 pages. Pretty competitive keywords.

[RhinoFish]

recently went through the same thing, but my existing html pages are dynamically generated via php and mysql, so i had my sku and price data where i could import it into a cart that specifically is built to work with an existing website (ShopSite). do you have the ability now to put your product data into a table or spreadsheet? can you enter the data into a table or spreadsheet? doing so will open up options for you, not just using carts that require data upload (and still let you use your own front end), but also things like merchant data center to get free product listings and link your products to your ppc and use comparison shopping engines and ...

just saying i'm one who kept my front end, added a cart, open up many marketing possibilities, after facing the same question you are staring at.

[NigelT]

RhinoFish, to be honest databases are an unknown world to me at the moment - although I'm happy to learn. I'll take a look at ShopSite. Thanks!

[lorax]

If you have good backlinks and decent rankings for those keywords then you are likely to see a shift in your rankings when you make the switch but you should bounce right back up. I wouldn't be surprised if your position changed but the analogy of switch cars is appropriate here. An Audi is not built the same as a VW but they will both get your there.

301s would be appropriate and you could do them manually with so few pages.

Carts that produce a static HTML page like ShopSite or XCart would be worth a look. Then you can build page that are exact or at least similar to your current setup and map them using RedirectMatch.

[NigelT]

301s would be appropriate and you could do them manually with so few pages.

Carts that produce a static HTML page like ShopSite or XCart would be worth a look. Then you can build page that are exact or at least similar to your current setup and map them using RedirectMatch.

Lorax, Just to clarify (for someone not too knowledgeable beyond basic web site creation,)am I correct in thinking that these two paragraphs are presenting two different possible routes?

If so would I be right in thinking that using 301s would allow me to consider a wider range of carts, including those that produce dynamic pages?

Obviously I need to spend time on further research, but could you give a very brief explanation of your expression "map them using RedirectMatch"?

Thank you so much!

[MikeT3]

301's should be fine for what you're looking to do. Used to work for a big SAAS ecom provider, it was a built in feature to their system for that reason. Most SAAS carts should have that function built in as well.

[lorax]

Putting my daughter to bed so short answer:

You could use nearly any cart but remember that urls that pass vars don't do as well as static html URLSs.

Mod Alias (redirects, etc) [httpd.apache.org...]

[NigelT]

Many thanks to those who have posted. I need to check this out further. In the end it seems there may be too many risks attached to making a major change.