Best cart for a few products & most seamless integration

[cdaniel]

I'm hoping to find a shopping cart that meets the needs of a client. I'm not very experienced with shopping carts, but it seems that most are designed where the cart drives the site design. But, the client has already created their own design. There are just a few products and will never be a lot.

The old site has a very old hand-coded shopping cart. Each time a price changes or a new product is added or removed, it requires coding changes and I'm hoping to find something very light weight and user-friendly where the client can maintain any product changes themselves.

Why not just do Paypal buttons? Well, the current shipping structure cannot be handled by Paypal.

Books: 1st $10.00; each additional $2.00
Videos: 1st $5.00; each additional $2.00
Brush sets: Beginner, $15.00; Student, $15.00; Professional, $20.00
Sable sets: Starter, $15.00; Atelier, $15.00; Master, $20.00
Pro Mix Complete Color System: $20.00
Other Pro Mix Items:
First Item (if Complete Color System isn't ordered): $12.00
Each Additional Item: $6.00

Even the facility for a shipping structure that comes close to the above might be acceptable.

Of course, with the low volume of products, monthly cost shouldn't be too high as well.

[edited by: cdaniel at 4:05 pm (utc) on May 30, 2013]

[cdaniel]

Oops, should add that we prefer to not change servers and only have the cart part hosted.

[Joe Web Filter]

Hello cdaniel,

minicart.js is an opensource shopping cart used by Paypal. I have made very few changes and use it on my site. I use it for Google checkout and Paypal. You can tweak it to make the shipping work as you mentioned above or a simple script to add the shipping on a checkout page. I have many products on a lot of pages and only have to edit 1 or 2 files to make changes sitewide.

Joe

[edited by: lorax at 6:46 pm (utc) on Jun 3, 2013]
[edit reason] no sticky requests please [/edit]

[cdaniel]

Hi Joe,

I appreciate your response and will take a look at it. I wish there was a way I could see your site, but I know from experience it's against the terms of service to add a reference to one's web site.

Are you allowed to give me a link to the best reference material on minicart.js?

Many thanks for your advice!

Cynthia

[edited by: lorax at 12:20 pm (utc) on Jun 10, 2013]

[cdaniel]

Joe,

I took a quick look at it. I'm a little confused. I've done individual Paypal buttons before, as opposed to using the Paypal paid shopping cart. Is minicart.js a feature that makes simple Paypal buttons function more like a cart?

Cynthia

[cdaniel]

Sorry, I read further at the "Paypal shopping cart" page and it seems to refer users to independent shopping carts such as Xcart, Magento, etc. - unless I missed something.

[lorax]

Hello cdaniel and welcome to WebmasterWorld.

A Javascript file such as minicart is not dependent on the shopping cart. In most cases, a file like this is interchangeable. In some cases it may call variables that are dependent on a particular cart but you can change these.

Just because PayPal recommends certain carts doesn't mean you have to use those carts.

Oh and we do have private messaging - it's called stickymail - check the email icon in the msg id block at left & your control panel (see header) :)

[cdaniel]

Thanks, Lorax. I got the minicart working and it is wonderful - really takes the paypal shopping experience to another level. Many thanks!