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and we agree

We too use Zen Cart. I saw a post saying that if you
use FREE you will get what you pay for. I think that is true if you are
not familiar with how it works and do not understand that it is a
platform. Sure it will work out of the
box, but in order to successfully implement a useful product for your company,
you need to have an understanding.

I, like many other posts here am able to help with eCommerce
development and marketing!

Rob Milburn
www.piermarketing.com
www.piertechnologies.com

Hello Trentton

I would advise on not using free shoppiing cart software. However there are a few inexpensive good starter carts out there:

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Vevo Cart
PD shop.NET
AspDotNetStoreFront (Expensive but amazing Not starter cart)

I personally do not trust PHP so I wouldn't recommend it.

Joseph Voldeck
MadGig.Com

Hello Xenpod,

No real specific reason except that I have had more configuration troubles with it in the past than any other language that I have used and it is a "dirty" code. Actually I think Joomla! is an excellent app. however it is very tempermental too.

So going by my experience with PHP I wouldn't recommend a starter cart as a PHP application unless you want to fix DB errors all day long.

Thanks for the reply
Joseph
MadGig.Com

Hello Xenopod,

Yep, I agree with you....

Joseph

This site that just turned 100.
Congratulations, Bank of America small business online.
LUCKIEST

We use Shop-Script and like it very much. Anyone with some basic html knowledge can modify the templates that the software comes with. They have a few different versions (Standard, Pro, and Prem) and which version you use depends on what you need in your store. A shoe store with multiple product colors and sizes would need the Prem version, for instance. Shop Script's technical support is exceptional, very responsive and second to none IMO. They will help you with everything EXCEPT the html coding (IE, the look and feel of your site) but there are enough templates that the software comes with, to get a custom look and feel to your website without having to be an expert. It also works with all types of payment gateways, such as PaPayl, Authorize.net, etc. Their site is: http://www.shop-script.com

The trick about this software and any other dynamicly served content (database lookups) is to get your site into the search engines and that takes time and effort. Most search engines don't crawl dynamic sites well (php, cf, asp). If you host on a Linux server you can effectively use the MOD REWRITE command to map static pages to dynamic ones. This gets very complex but if you don't want to get into all that techie stuff, there are enough description and keyword meta tag fields for every item in your store and every page in shop-script to make some impact on the search engines without having to use Mod Rewrite.

There are a few free e-comm apps out there, but I found shop-script to be very reasonably priced. It is actually open source so you can also use "rentacoder.com" to help you customize if you need help or need extra features the software doesn't come with.

Rich Petrelli, VP
DollsBags.com