Forum Moderators: buckworks
OS Commerce can be autoinstalled from CPanel. CubeCart can be autoinstalled with Fantastico.
Forcing the user to signup tells me the author(s) know absolutely nothing about sales. I had to find a major hack to skip registration...total sales killer.
I beg to differ since it probably depends on the products you are selling and your target market. Don't put up blanket statements and claim to know every market and product market strategies.
It's worked for me and my sales have not suffered, in fact, have gone up because my users 1)know they need to sign up, and 2) they receive benefits just by doing so, like 10% discounts and a $5.00 voucher they can use towards their first purchase. I've made many features available to those that do sign up and once you outline them, they will not see a problem -- in fact they will want to.
There are many ways to accomplish this and some here may want to consider them. I do $5K in sales a day and my site has been up since September and my customers repeatedly tell me that they like signing up because they belong to something. Plus, signing up makes subsequent shopping visits easier as they don't have to re-enter everything all over again. I've found that focusing on re-visits outweighs the initial visit -- remember customer retention = loyalty make each re-visit worthwhile.
Go back and do some research with your marketing strategies.
Thanks.
kepagk: your claims are rather odd. Just because you claim to make $5k sales/day doesn't mean you couldn't make more if you didn't have mandatory registration.
Just for kicks, how about you test putting registration after the checkout, explaining to people what they would gain from joining. You just might get more first-time visitor sales AND better return traffic. Unless you compare, you really can't say your solution is better.
