With all of the fundamentals discussed in our previous article we are now ready to examine the various platforms that exist for shopping carts, focusing on the pros and cons so you will be able to find the platform that suits your needs.
Choosing the Shopping Cart
Assuming you want to implement a shopping cart that is free (as opposed to spending a few thousand dollars to have a programmer create a custom shopping cart for you), the three most popular free shopping cart platforms are as follows:
1) Paypal
2) Zencart
3) OS Commerce
Paypal
Hands-down the most simple and fastest to implement system is Paypal. The Paypal system consists simply of creating ‘buy now’ or ‘add to cart’ buttons for each of your products within their interface. You will choose the price and additional options (such as size, color, etc). When you are finished, a block of code will be generated for the product’s button. You then take the code and paste it on your webpage wherever you want the button to render. And that is it!
Of course it goes without saying that you need to have already signed up with Paypal, verified your account, and have your bank account verified as well.
Advanced parameters such as shipping, stock and tax are customizable during the button making process, but are not required.
Paypal has the unique feature of offering the shopping cart solution AND the credit card processing too. So when a buyer clicks on your Paypal button, he will be sent to Paypal’s credit card processing page, where he then enters his info (he does not have to be a member of paypal to purchase the item from your store) and gets redirected back to your site. This ‘one stop shop’ makes Paypal very attractive to individuals who want something simple, painless, and no programming required.
Zencart & OS Commerce
Zencart and OS Commerce differ considerably from Paypal. They are essentially whole websites which you upload to your server (think of it as WordPress but with e-commerce), which come in a variety of different designs/templates. Whereas with Paypal, you have your own website already and you are simply putting in ‘buy’ buttons on your existing pages.
In our next article we will go in-depth on Zencart & OS Commerce and examine their features.
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