Shopping Cart Options - Small Business / Indie Labels - Part 2

And the winner is...
Big Cartel http://www.bigcartel.com/
For a new startup indie jewellery label.

Why:

• Low entry level cost $9.99p/m
• Simplicity; of options, of admin, and conveyed through thoughtful interface design throughout their offering
• I don't have to host it 
• Has a 'store directory' for promotion within the community
• Has a sizable community / forums
• Allows a custom domain
• No commissions, just flat store fee, paid monthly no contacts
• Paypal only, no mucking about with merchant stuff, eg. no liasing to make this happen
• The client had already signed up for a free store and seemed comfortable with the admin section, so this was a good sign it would be pain free for them (me).

Result?
I'm pleased with this shop solution, it was up and running at signup, and customising the 'Sexy' theme with basic CSS to personalise it and match the clients website was done and browser tested in under a day. I havn't tried more intense theme customisations / filters as there is no budget, and no need I can see for now.

The non-technical client was able to use the BigCartel admin without instructions to add images and pages, colour options, descriptions, prices, categories etc etc.
The only caveats was explaining how to crop / resize photos in Photoshop properly... as there is no inbuilt crop / resize app in the CMS. (Photoshops better anyway).

It check it here: (Still under construction in terms of content)
http://www.yinjoux.bigcartel.com/
or here when the domains been setup
http://www.shop.yinjoux.com/

Not sure how it goes with SEO etc, but for this sort of client main traffic will come from design blog referrers, online mags and the like, so its no biggie at this stage, and they have a Wordpress main site which can be customised for the SEO goodness.

Shopify's affiliate options are enticing though, I'll keep them in mind for future, larger volume shop clients with a larger budget.

Roundup of paid CMSs

Here is a large list of Australian CMS vendors. Guessing that means people that make custom commercial solutions and then help install and set them up custom for whoever buys them. http://www.steptwo.com.au/resources/australian-cms/

Stuff out there:

Traffik

http://www.playintraffik.com/Detailed_Features

Part of this new breed 'hosted application' type thingy.

A hosted website CMS / shopping cart / hosting / blog / customer database /community / email marketing / customer database / everything you can think of. Its about $30 per month minimum, goes up to $160 per month. You only pay month by month.

They offer a 30 day trial where you can build your own thing and see if its good. From brief looking at it it looks like pretty amazing and they have thought of everything. So if its a large site, and your going to be looking at paying $30 per month just for hosting anyway, then this could be good to look at because you get an all in one solution forall the things a business generally neeeds. But its a bit risky because its their own proprietry solution, so your wholebusiness is tied into them - and the web is meant to be FREE. It could get messy if you try and port over to someone else. Still, a neat looking solution.

Light CMS
http://www.speaklight.com/how-it-works
Another monthly paid CMS / hosting solution. Seductive because they also offer slicing services. You could pretty much hand them a psd and then soon enough client would have their own editable site - then they can make the million rounds of changes themselves then using the CMS. Fuck they could even design it themselves in microsoft paint and send it to these guys and i bet theyd be stoked with the result and if they wanted changes there'd just a buy addition paypal button or something on the support ticket I bet. Cant argue with that button. Future is now.

GOOD

• They can slice and CMS and host - all in one go. Quick and nasty and done yesterday.
• They let you brand the CMS and support.
• They reckon you should markup their monthly bill... (lets all get rich together sort of deal)
  
• Good for clients who dont have much capital to invest in a custom CMS right at the beginning. They can pay for it over a few years. By then they'll want a new site anyway. So when you look at it that way - it could actually turn out to be a decent option for microsites and whatever for startups, if they go bust, at least they havnt spent heaps on a custom CMS, just the easy to manage monthly bill - better for SMB cashflow.

BAD

• They dont do email hosting - they recommend gmail...
• Imagine having to chase a client up for their web hosting fees every month or even year - what a drag! Youd spend the money your making admining the payments (or getting overdraw fees for the company billing you monthly whether or not the client wants to pay). Think this only good if you have an accounts department. Or you get the clients credit card details.
• The internet is meant to be free. (but guess hosting isnt and they are providing hosting in a way. HTML is free, php is free.
  
• if the company disappears - you have to salvage the site and recode the cms yourself because its proprietary... what a drag. Thats if you even have a backup somewhere.
• imagine anything beyond basic youd want to add they would charge you for customisations...
  

Still - its a pretty seductive idea- i think it will catch on.

SiteSuite

Make e-commerce sites, from a package deal for a monthly fee. Australia based. The 2008 Sydney Binneale is using their products.

SEO and General Internet Marketing Tips

Good
http://www.sitesuite.com.au/page/community.html

This guide looks pretty definitive, read it when theres time. seems keywords meta tags arent very useful anymore. description tag is good because it sometimes shows up in a search engine under the title big link. but over all, test content is what is indexed and the title tag is very important.
http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=webmasters

Blog about SEO and blogging etc etc
http://www.mccordweb.com/weblogs/index.php

Blog about SEO but more funny
http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/

Googles webmaster central docs blog help etc
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/

Web design blog - good step by steps
http://imgiseverything.co.uk/2007/10/01/nike-trainers-a-keyword-case-study/

Shopping Cart Roundup

To Google
virtuemart 1.1, osCommerce and trading-eye
and read this:
http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/03/9-kick-ass-open-source-e-commerce-platforms-reviewed/

Zen Cart
http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=infopages&pages_id=5
Free, open source, tableless layout, admin tool, international, looks like it integrates well with credit cards and the like.

Why should you choose Zen Cart™ to power your e-commerce site? Let's face it. There are 100's of shopping cart programs around, all with different strengths and weaknesses. Zen Cart™ is superior to most in ease-of-use, features and price.

Zen Cart™ is built for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. The program is built by programmers and designers who understand the online selling process from start to finish. Zen Cart™ has included all the necessary tools required to build a successful online store and we are constantly improving and upgrading the software based on our users requirements.

Shopify

http://www.shopify.com/design/

A hosted application with templates and hosting and everything all in thge one spot. Their key selling feature is that you can have a shop up and running in mins using only their services. The hosting is interesting because if the shop gets massive, they are ready with server farms to support it. 

From the site...

"Shopify is a full-stack e-commerce package. Everything you need is already included. It comes with full SEO, inventory, and content management.Our customers will tell you that Shopify’s “killer” feature is its design flexibility. If you want to sell your products, you have to sell in style. Poor design begets poor customers."

Here is an example of a small shop built using the software. http://shop.eboy.com/collections/t-shirts

Pricing: You can have a trial set up, for free. But the cheapest is $24 per month for basic option. Ultimate option is $299 per month. Each price range is a limit of how many products you canhave in the database which is a bit shitty. They also take a percentage cut from each transaction. (So its really less of a cart software and more of a shopping community idea like ebay, etsy etc.) So ummm... looks like a nice product but having them take a cut of every sale is a bit much - better off using open source software I think. Plus the basic plan dosnt include SSL for the admin panel. It would be great for people who just need something up and running ASAP. 

XCart

http://www.x-cart.com/

- X-Cart shopping cart software is based on PHP Smarty templates, this makes it very flexible and easy to modify. The data is stored in MySQL database.
- W3C XHTML 1.0 compliance of X-Cart storefront out of the box.
- You receive a complete source code and SQL tables for MySQL database to make them extended or customized easily.
- X-Cart is a turnkey package. Installation is handled by web-based step-by-step wizard to make the system running immediately after receiving it.

Templates look ok, not great typography though and kind of dated looking. Theyre pretty basic looking and would designing to make better. Think Shopify  ones looked better. Example: http://demo.x-cart.com/demo/home.php?cat=112

http://demo.x-cart.com/demo/home.php?cat=1366

Pricing: Everything seems to be sold seperately. You buy the software as a package. You buy module add ons. You buy the skin you want. You can host it with them or not. 

Add On And Partnerships 

Fulfillment by Amazon - Use Amazons pick and pack experience, warehouses etc etc. Would be great for testing out the American market without having to set up your own warehousing etc.

http://www.amazonservices.com/fulfillment/pricing.html