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dynocat
01-21-2009, 01:26 AM
Sounds like a broad question, but I'll explain a bit.

We had a site on Bigstep (stop laughing) since they came out in 1998 and were free. They are now out of business. We've had no site since March, because of family things going on, and are seriously hurting financially. We have repeat customers, but with no site up right now, we're losing many of them I'm sure. We do not have a B&M, but do some local selling at shows and have repeat local customers who call if they want something.

In the past, I've played with Monster Commerce (now Net Solutions, I think), 3DCart and Volusion. I wouldn't go with either of the first two but am ready to sign up with Volusion.

We have an established domain name, a merchant account (First Data/Linkpoint) and most site copy written. I have less than 100 products, a large customer db and merchant account in place. I need pricing levels (retail, wholesale and drop ship reseller), quantity discounts and a few other features found on most all in one solutions.

I am self taught in html and css--more than enough to be dangerous. :) I can set up forms, lists, etc. Budget is a major consideration. I recently looked into some cheaper and maybe quicker solutions, like GoDaddy, but it doesn't have the features I need.

As in the past, I would set up and maintain the site myself along with other commitments, like shipping orders, marketing, some shop work and all the others hats a business owner wears.

If I haven't lost you with my long windedness yet, my question is does anyone know any reason NOT to go with Volusion? Or do you have a better alternative?

billbenson
01-21-2009, 02:37 AM
I can't comment on Volusion as I haven't used it. I would never recommend the prefab carts like Godaddy or Yahoo. You have no control over SEO, or your database. I currently use oscommerce but am cutting over to zen cart. Just a newer cart and is css based. Zen cart also has some cms sort of features, although I'm just putting the cart in a subdirectory and a cms in the root.

Here is a link for a Volusion review that seems pretty unbiased. One thing though, it is ASP. There are far fewer resources for ASP than PHP. If you are going to be modifying it you may want to consider that.

Review: Volusion Review, Volusion Shopping Cart Review, All in One Ecommerce Solution Volusion Reviews by Small Business Arena (http://www.smallbusinessarena.com/2007/09/02/volusion-shopping-cart-review/)

vangogh
01-21-2009, 10:34 AM
I don't have any experience with Volusion so I'll offer some other ideas. Like Bill, I wouldn't recommend any solution where the cart is being controlled by the other site. I looked briefly at the review Bill posted above and I see Volusion charges $29.95/month. Why?

You can get what I think would be comparable hosting for $10/month and there are many free shopping carts you can use. So why spend the extra $15/month for what is ultimately less control over your site.

One free cart that's been recommended to me a lot lately is Magento (http://www.magentocommerce.com/). I haven't used it yet, but it does look like one good option.

I've been using WordPress for most content management solutions over the last couple of years. I think it's easy to work with as a developer and I think it's also easy for the site owner to use. It doesn't come with a shopping cart by default, but there are a few plugins available to extend the basic functionality of WordPress to include a cart. Some are free and some you'll have to pay for, but the pa ones are going to be a one time payment of under $100 most likely.

Other content management systems you can also look at are Drupal (http://drupal.org/) and Joomla (http://www.joomla.org/). Between the two I typically hear better things about Drupal, but Joomla also has it's strong supporters. Both are full CMSs with shoping cart support either built in or through the addition of plugins like WordPress.

Two applications built specifically around shopping carts are Zen Cart (http://www.zen-cart.com/) and osComerce (http://oscommerce.com/). As a developer I'm not crazy about working with either, but both seem to work well enough for shop owners. Between the two I'd sooner go with ZenCart.

Sites like Volusion offer the ease of use for a price. Their claim tends to be that in minutes you'll have a site up and running. My experience is that they aren't any easier to use than some of the applications you download and install on your own hosting other than the fact that you don't need to install anything or upgrade anything in the future.

However if you prefer not to install the applications and maintain them you can easily hire someone like me to do the work. Odds are that's going to cost less in the long run than the monthly fees you pay for the hosted cart solution.

None of what I'm saying should make you not use something like Volusion. I'm sure Volusion has many happy customers and I believe one member here (AaronHats) is using Volusion right now. You may want to ask him about his experience, since he's one here with actual experience. Just know that while hosted solutions like Volusion do offer a certain ease in set up they also lack a certain measure of control that you'll more than likely want or need somewhere down the road.

dynocat
01-21-2009, 10:51 AM
Thanks, guys for your responses. Maybe AaronHats and others will chime in here too.

I had actually read the Volusion review link posted. Nothing is perfect, for sure, but V sounds workable for my needs.

I don't feel confident enough to go with separate site application, hosting and shopping cart. If I set up an all in one, like Volusion, how hard would it be to change over at a point down the line? I'm thinking we may be better able to afford the upfront cost to hire a knowledgeable web designer--like one of you guys--do do that later on.

vangogh
01-21-2009, 11:27 AM
I don't know how easy it will be to move from Volusion to your own application, but I would imagine it can be done. The basic process is you'd need to export your database and then import it into the new application. You'll probably need to reset all the basic configuration of the cart with the new application since they'd likely be different.

One issue with the database is that two applications will have two different database set ups. It should be easy enough to export the one database, but it then needs to be converted to a format the new application can use. That's also doable, but the ease depends on the two applications. You'll likely need to redesign for the new application as the old one probably isn't going to work. I mean the development part and not the look. Each application will have a different system for adding themes or skins or whatever they call it.

In all honestly you're probably going to pay a lot more to move the site later than to set it up today. That's why I usually think it's best to go with the more future proof option. Obviously I can't guarantee you will want to move the site down the road and I can't guarantee how hard or easy it will be when the time comes. I prefer to build things today that are closer to what I think I'll want a few years from now than what's easiest now. I'd rather spend more time learning now than having to change later.

KristineS
01-21-2009, 12:42 PM
One free cart that's been recommended to me a lot lately is Magento (http://www.magentocommerce.com/). I haven't used it yet, but it does look like one good option.



Just a note on Magento, we looked at it here when we were contemplating what software to use for our EnMart site. My IT guys, both programming and implementation, did an analysis and the conclusion we came to was that it was buggy. It was also pretty new and didn't have a lot of documentation.

Granted, this was a while ago, and things may have settled down some, but at the time I was told that Magento had a pretty steep learning curve.

cbscreative
01-21-2009, 01:55 PM
I'm sure Volusion has many happy customers and I believe one member here (AaronHats) is using Volusion right now. You may want to ask him about his experience, since he's one here with actual experience. Just know that while hosted solutions like Volusion do offer a certain ease in set up they also lack a certain measure of control that you'll more than likely want or need somewhere down the road.

I think some feedback from Aaron would be a very good idea. I recall in another post he had some serious SEO issues with Volusion.

vangogh
01-21-2009, 04:01 PM
Thanks Kristine. I hadn't known that about Magento. It may be when you looked at it and a few versions later the bugs have been fixed. I only know it's been recommended a few time to me and a with quick look from the outside it seems decent enough.

Steve, hopefully Aaron will come by this thread. If I'm remembering right he liked Volusion at first, but as he looked at it more he felt it lacking and is thinking of switching to something else. That's just my faulty memory though. I don't want to put words into Aaron's mouth.

billbenson
01-21-2009, 04:16 PM
On the hosted solutions as well as changing systems down the road, keep everything you add into your cart in an excel sheet. That way, should you want to change solutions down the road, you will have much of the information you need. What you won't have is order history, customer info etc that customers type in.

One thing I would check with Volusion is if you can get access to your database and can get your backups emailed to you. Could be done through a control panel they have. That way you know you can get your full database down the road.

orion_joel
01-21-2009, 07:48 PM
One option which i have been putting a lot of time into is Joomla, you can get Joomla with VirtueMart built in. You can download the combined package from the VirtueMart website here VirtueMart: Your free e-commerce solution. - Welcome... (http://virtuemart.net/)

As soon as i installed it and start playing with it i realized that the shopping cart part itself makes this package really good, and i am in the process of setting it up for my own website. Unfortunately i don't have one with the cart setup properly online at the moment for you to have a look at but my Orion Networks site in the footer is running off the install of this package, and i am planning to get the cart running within the next week or two.

Aaron Hats
01-21-2009, 08:43 PM
Just found this thread so hopefully I can help a little.

I am using Volusion and am very happy with it. The biggest complaint I hear from other V users is the high monthly fees. The problems I had with SEO were not related to Volusion but more a poor webmaster. They have a lot of great SEO fields automatically built in so all you need to do is populate those fields correctly. They have a lot of nice design templates but you can also customize the look of the site as we did with our site. Third party apps can not be installed on their servers so we had to put our blog on another domain I already had.

Let me know if you have specific questions.

Aaron

vangogh
01-21-2009, 09:54 PM
Not being able to add 3rd party apps is a problem in my book. Aaron, I think you'd be much better off with your blog on the same domain. Your situation now is basically two sites to promote instead of one.

Aaron Hats
01-21-2009, 10:18 PM
Not being able to add 3rd party apps is a problem in my book. Aaron, I think you'd be much better off with your blog on the same domain. Your situation now is basically two sites to promote instead of one.

For now, that's ok with me considering I have four domains and just registered two more for our new hat club.

vangogh
01-23-2009, 01:31 PM
Just wanted to call attention to this short video from SEOmoz (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-the-microsite-mistake). It's essentially why putting up different parts of your site (main site, blog, etc) on different domains isn't as good as having everything on one domain.

The video is talking about something a little more specific and you might not be familiar with all the SEO terms, but the advice in the video is why I think not being able to add 3rd party applications to something like Volusion ultimately hurts your business.

seolman
01-23-2009, 01:49 PM
Just a note on Magento, we looked at it here when we were contemplating what software to use for our EnMart site. My IT guys, both programming and implementation, did an analysis and the conclusion we came to was that it was buggy. It was also pretty new and didn't have a lot of documentation.

Granted, this was a while ago, and things may have settled down some, but at the time I was told that Magento had a pretty steep learning curve.

About how long ago was that Kristine? Roughly?

billbenson
01-23-2009, 02:09 PM
Interesting video VG. My question is this. Say a distributor has a bunch of product lines in diverse areas. Say, telecomunications, construction equipment, T Shirts etc. Or suppose you decide to do some affiliate sites, say T Shirts, DVD Sales etc.

Would you really want T Shirt sales as a subdirectory on your web design site?

Now the video pertains to a blog supporting one main site. Presumably that blog is related to the main sites products. That makes a lot of sense. But a lot of people have multiple blogs in "kind of" related fields. It might be very hard to integrate that into your main site?

vangogh
01-23-2009, 02:42 PM
Bill, we may want to take this conversation to a new thread, since I think we might soon hijack the original idea, but for a quick response I'd want related things on the one site. If I was selling t-shirts with my company logo then yes I would absolutely sell those shirts on my site. If they had nothing to do with my company or the general theme of my business then no I'd start it on a new site.

Just depends on the business and the specifics of what you're debating adding to the site.

KristineS
01-23-2009, 03:13 PM
About how long ago was that Kristine? Roughly?

It was Spring of 2008 if I remember correctly. We were contemplating building a new site from the ground up.

Magento was the program of choice for a while, but after my guys tested it further, they reached the conclusion that the learning curve was too high and there wasn't enough documentation yet to be helpful.

Things might well have changed since then.

seolman
01-23-2009, 03:41 PM
Thanks Kristine - I may get one of our Jr. Programmers here to toy with it a bit. If I find anything useful I'll let everyone know.


It was Spring of 2008 if I remember correctly. We were contemplating building a new site from the ground up.

Magento was the program of choice for a while, but after my guys tested it further, they reached the conclusion that the learning curve was too high and there wasn't enough documentation yet to be helpful.

Things might well have changed since then.

Edit - we're just setting up an app with Drupal + Ubercart plugin. I'll let you know how that goes too. Should be interesting.

vangogh
01-23-2009, 08:21 PM
Dave I'm currently working on a Drupal site with Ubercart as well. Will be awhile before it's all set though since this client has other things more pressing. I'll be curious what you find out about Magento. I had seen a few recommendations for it, but don't know much about it from experience.

seolman
01-23-2009, 08:41 PM
Dave I'm currently working on a Drupal site with Ubercart as well. Will be awhile before it's all set though since this client has other things more pressing. I'll be curious what you find out about Magento. I had seen a few recommendations for it, but don't know much about it from experience.

I'll let you know what we find out. I'm always up for friendly collaboration when it makes sense. I set up a play Drupal with the Ubercart and it seems to work fairly well but I talked the client out of a couple awkward bits of special functionality they wanted. Would've been very costly to chop up the code so severely.

My programming guys are building the real McCoy right now - when it's done I'll pass you a link to play around with it.

vangogh
01-23-2009, 09:09 PM
I have both installed, but we're still working on configuring things and both my client and myself are first learning how Drupal works. This site has until now only been a wholesale site so it hasn't been taking orders through the site. My client recently purchased it. It had been one of her suppliers. We're looking into setting it up to be both a retail and wholesale site and set up roles and permissions so wholesalers will be able to login and see different things than others.

billbenson
01-23-2009, 09:41 PM
So, for the designers here; if you were starting a shopping cart site from scratch tomorrow, what would you use? PHP por favor. By site, I mean cart plus other regular site stuff: blogs, information pages, old twiggy photos, etc.

seolman
01-23-2009, 09:44 PM
For a tried and tested solution I would use Drupal with the Ubercart plug in.

vangogh
01-23-2009, 09:46 PM
I'd use php, because it's the language I know. In truth I would grab an open source solution like Drupal or WordPress and customize them instead of starting from scratch most likely. No reason to reinvent the wheel.

billbenson
01-24-2009, 03:11 AM
When I made the post, I was curious about the Drupal with the Ubercart solution.

Does Wordpress have any kind of shopping cart plug in?

I'm not doing design for other people, I want to standardize on one platform. I don't do design for other people, so I don't need to know every program out there. As you know, I'm playing with wordpress at the moment. I also know oscommerce and have some oscommerce sites (don't like oscommerce, so I'm conberting that site to Zen because the database structure is similar).

Setting that aside, for new sites, keeping with the kiss principal, I'd like to have one platform that I use. I could continue with a wordpress / zen cart approach (again, is there a cart plugin for wp?). I could look at Seolmans recommendation.

If I build a new site, I'd like to upload the combo platform - say Drupal with the Ubercart plug in, WP. Change some images and colors in the css and I'm up and running. I have a standard platform with a cms, blog, and cart?

orion_joel
01-24-2009, 09:00 AM
I also took a look at Magento, when i was trying to find a cart solution to use on my business website. I also found it to be a little buggy, and there was many things that i could not figure out on it. Also i had some trouble trying to make it accept csv data uploads.

I end up settling on the combination of Joomla and Virtuemart. Which they have integrated really well into a single install. I should imagine that blogging would not be to difficult to include in the setup as well. either by default or with a plugin. I had been using joomla on a couple of sites, and when i found it with virtuemart and saw how well it worked together was my choice option.

vangogh
01-24-2009, 01:10 PM
Bill, WordPress has some shopping cart plugins. I haven't had need to use any so I can't offer opinions based on experience using them. If you search 'wordpress shopping carts' you'll find plenty of info. I think you'll find some free and some pay cart plugins with varying features. As you understand how WordPress works you'll probably be able to take an existing cart plugin and customize it to your needs.