websites and shopping cart software

[Pam]

After lurking on this excellent BB for several months and also getting ready to move from hobbyist to selling stuff, I'm finally to ask a few questions. First, does anyone have experience (good or bad) with shopping cart software and ISPs that host sites with shopping carts? Also, I think you also have to get a merchant account seperately - can you use the same merchant account for web and point of presence sales or do you have to have two?

TIA,
Pam

[Sara]

Pam,

Talk to Dee Janssen, who frequents this board. dee@ucjewelry.com I designed and maintain my own site front-end and Dee takes of the ColdFusion secure portion. We are both hosted by http://www.intent.net

While I love maintaining my site they both are sorely out of date and it is time consuming to get them current, a task I'm now undertaking. Unless you are a complete control freak or simply addicted to computer graphics I'd suggest having someone do the site for you.

I've been selling on-line since 1995 and while I've gotten fabulous orders both retail and wholesale steadily I do not count on websales as a major point of my income. I have a huge email mailing list too. It is a good fill-in and way to get yourself out there, yet up close / in person still sells strongest.

Simply putting a site up doesn't work and my advertising budet often precludes the in the green spot of websales, yet makes my shows and business all the stronger.

Good luck,

Sara

[Paul Tarlow]

After lurking on this excellent BB for several months and also getting ready to move from hobbyist to selling stuff, I'm finally to ask a few questions. First, does anyone have experience (good or bad) with shopping cart software and ISPs that host sites with shopping carts? Also, I think you also have to get a merchant account seperately - can you use the same merchant account for web and point of presence sales or do you have to have two?

TIA,
Pam

Hi Pam -

I recently launched a store based off of CactuShop software (http://www.cactusoft.com). I'm very happy with the results -- but getting it to work they way I wanted took about a month of development on top of what they offer. For me the big advantage to CactuShop was that the license (about $300) includes source code so I could modify as needed. In my "real" job I'm responsible for a core chunk of Dell's website so I'm pretty demanding (spoiled?) on what I require for myself.

CactuShop is located here: http://www.cactushop.com Their code is pretty solid.

One of the nice things is that it has seemless itegration with a number of payment solutions -- including PayPal (which doesn't require a merchant account).

The challenge with most off-the-shelf software packages is that they don't handle the concept of one-of-a-kind very well so that not selling the same piece twice becomes a problem.

Good luck,
Paul

[Brad Walker]

Also, I think you also have to get a merchant account seperately - can you use the same merchant account for web and point of presence sales or do you have to have two?

You can use the same merchant account for both web and point of presence sales. But verify with your specific processor -- sometimes they have peculiar rules, so if you're already set up with someone and they don't allow it you may have to switch to someone who does.