Selling Online - Common Shopping Carts
By Eric Lester
Selling online is virtually impossible without a shopping cart of some sort.
This article provides an overview of two common shopping cart programs, Miva
Merchant and osCommerce, their cost and support options.
Ecommerce hosting is filled with many choices. Unavoidable and undeniably
important, the choice of shopping cart program is one that will effect every
aspect of a store's future on the web. The shopping cart is how your customers
find your products and ultimate pay you for them. That last part is, perhaps,
the most important of all. Choosing one that is right for an individual's needs
and can be comfortably administered is a step that can't be understated. This
article will briefly review 2 popular shopping cart programs, Miva Merchant and
osCommerce.
osCommerce
osCommerce is an open source shopping cart solution offered by many hosts. To
the frugal, its most endearing quality will be the price tag, which is
non-existent. Being open source, osCommerce is available free of charge for
anyone's use. Simply jumping at the cheaper of the two solutions is not the
ideal way to proceed. osCommerce provides all the basic functionality to run a
store, add products, categories, and manage customer account information. The
look and feel of the store can be modified somewhat through the use of
templates, but the basic layout will remain fairly static. Visit one osCommerce
store, and it will be fairly easy to identify the cart in the future. This is
not necessarily a drawback, as some customers may appreciate using a familiar
shopping cart if they have had good experience with another osCommerce store in
the past.
As open source software, osCommerce's primary method of support is via its
user community. There is no "official" support support channel, simply forums
and user groups that discuss the program and even develop add-ons for it. This
means the primary method of support in an osCommerce environment will be via
your host's technical support department. This makes finding a host with
reputable technical support very important. This is the primary trade off with
most open-source software, economy versus supportability. Paying a large sum of
money for any piece of commercial software not only pays for further
development, but also for the software company to maintain support channels for
that software. Open source programs don't have that luxury, they rely on the
user community to provide a means of support.
Miva Merchant
Miva Merchant is a large piece of commercial software, and as such will
require a more significant capital investment than osCommerce. Fortunately many
website hosting companies offer what is essentially a "rental" of a Miva
Merchant licence for a much smaller fee compared to an outright purchase direct
from Miva Small Business. Anyone considering this option should be aware that
using a hosting company's licence means that licence will remain with the
hosting company even if they decided to leave. Miva Merchant does provide for
import and export of customers and products, though, so a new cart can be setup
at a new host with relatively little inconvenience.
Miva Merchant, in its basic form, provides a robust shopping cart environment
able to handle a large number of products. Like osCommerce, it is software
installed on the web server that is administered via a user's web browser. The
browser based interface includes many "wizard-driven" processes to accomplish
basic tasks, such as product and category setup, that ease new users into the
administrative system. Once comfortable with the basic functionality, an
advanced version of the administration system is available for more detailed and
efficient management of the store. Miva Merchant is highly customizable,
affording the ability to style the store to mimic the appearance of the parent
website. More advanced store styling features have been added with the recent
version 5 release.
Like osCommerce, support for Miva Merchant will come primarily via the
hosting company, though Miva Small Business offers direct support channels for a
yearly fee. Purchasing support from Miva allows users to bypass their hosting
company's technical support and speak directly with a Miva Merchant
representative. Also similar to osCommerce, Miva Merchant has a thriving
"module" community. Modules are programs installed to Miva Merchant that offer
increased functionality. If the core functionally of Miva Merchant "out of the
box" lacks a required feature, it is likely that feature can be added by a
module. Unlike osCommerce, these modules will come at a cost.
Conclusions
Miva Merchant and osCommerce are both powerful carts with strong, basic
feature sets that will fit the needs of many online stores. The mostly
non-existent cost of osCommerce provides a low barrier of entry for many smaller
stores without a significant amount of capital. Though attractive for that
reason, it is best to examine the feature sets of each cart and determine which
one is most appropriate for the needs of the individual store. Making a wrong
choice can have long lasting consequences. Switching between web hosts will seem
easy after attempting to switch between shopping cart programs.
About the Author
Mr. Lester has served for 4 years as the webmaster for ApolloHosting.com and
previously worked in the IT industry an additional 5 years, acquiring knowledge
of hosting, design, and search engine optimization. Apollo Hosting provides website
hosting, ecommerce hosting, vps hosting, and web design services to a wide
range of customers.
Established in 1999, Apollo prides itself on the highest levels of customer
support. |
