Forum Moderators: buckworks
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Does anyone know of a cart program that with customization could be similar to any of the above (especially defunker)?
The closest thing I found for apparel carts is Volusion and its far from what I am looking for.
Anyone know if a boxed cart program could be similar to the above three examples or would that have to be built from scratch?
Thanks
Tom
[edited by: lorax at 2:36 pm (utc) on Aug. 5, 2005]
[edit reason] No URLs please - see Charter & TOS [/edit]
-Corey
I'm not so much worried about the backend aspect of it, as most carts have good management tools
If only that were true - IMHO the backend management tools are what let down 90% of the commercial carts out there.
Most "off the shelf" carts appear to focus on fancy features people will notice that will make their stores look good, but when it comes to actually to processing and managing the orders they fail miserably!
Although I've not used it, I did investigate Volusion quite a lot and that appeared to be one of the better ones in this respect.
jules.
I'm not so much worried about the backend aspect of it, as most carts have good management toolsIf only that were true - IMHO the backend management tools are what let down 90% of the commercial carts out there.
For an apparel site, you should pay particular attention to the ability to manage product attributes. You especially need to be able to assign costs to each attribute. XXXL usually has a higher cost than Large or XL. Dark navy and black colors are sometimes more expensive. I know that for t-shirts, whites are usually cheapest. The lighter colors are a bit more, and the very dark colors cost still more.
A shirt might be available in White, Orange, Red, Purple, Blue, Yellow, and Black. And it might be available in Small, Medium, Large, XL, and XXL. And it is available in all combinations except that XXL is not available in Yellow or Purple. You want a system that lets you manage this common occurrence without having to retype every color and size combination for every item.
Quantity pricing, scheduled sales, scheduled price changes, and discounts/coupons are also very important.
If the backend lets you manage those things efficiently, then it is very likely that it also presents it to the shopper in a clean manner.
Agree that virtually all back-ends are weak. Shopsite's is primitive but integrates with the well-respected StoneEdge products.
Precisely what features are you looking for that most carts lack?
It would probably be a lot more clear on the style I like, if the overprotective admins didn't censor out all the links. Geez, I'll never understand that policy.
How is a search engine supposed to find that site with virtually no text? The main page doesn't even hint at what they sell. And the links don't appear until you do a mouse over.
I guess mainly what I am looking for (besides the product combination features mentioned above) is the ability to lay out all product thumbnails on a clean index page without all the clutter (best sellers, menus, etc).
You can do that with most carts. I presume you are turned off by cookie cutter OSCommerce sites. Me too. Putting product pics on the front page is important. But some text is necessary
I think Oscommerce will suit my needs with the right customization. I'll let you guys know how it turns out.
We use X-cart as our backend, though we ended up having a fair amount of customization done to support our product option selections (e.g. select a color and have it switch the image displayed) and checkout procedure (the default X-cart checkout is abysmal.)
