Shopping Cart Suggestion

Business
1

Hello everybody,

I am asking for your help in making a choice in regard to a shopping cart. I have to build an auto parts store and i really don’t know which is the best way to to.

The client wants something similar to http://www.discountcarpartsonline.co.uk

Is there a shopping cart out there that will allow me to create something similar ?

2

The site you mention appears to run on Magento - http://magento.com/

That’s not the only choice by a long way, there are 100’s of shopping cart systems around, it all really depends what sort of features you need, budget, how friendly the administration is to use (both for you and your staff) and so on.

A few ideas to start your research:

  1. Write down a checklist of every requirement you think you may need, and group them into:
    a) Must have (essential)
    b) Would like (but not essential)
    c) Nice to have if budget allows

  2. Set a budget
    If you hire a developer to assist then ecommerce done properly for a site like that can run to a 4 figure sum, possibly even 5 figures depending on your exact specification.

  3. Check out as many cart systems as you can on a site like http://www.hotscripts.com - use your checklist to find a few possible candidates.

3

I have worked with ZenCart, OpenCart and Magento. What I can tell you is that whilst I believe that Magento is a very good or probably the best solution, I prefer OpenCart. You can find alot of templates for OpenCart and also quite a large number of ready made pluggins on their website. Also be careful if you intend on running an eCommerce website on shared hosting. For some features in Magento to work you need a dedicated server. Features like recurrent payments like subscribtion based payments, where instead of purchasing an item for a one time payment, you purchase an item that you pay in 12 installments for example.

4

Hey guys,

Thank you all for replying.

Yeah, I know, Magento is one of the most popular and most used shopping cart solutions out there. I’ve also used it on a website I developed in the past. While it is, indeed, very powerful, Magento is also very hard to work with.

For the auto parts website I am aiming to use a solution that is easier to work with considering there will be A LOT of data. Thank you for the OpenCart suggestion, will seriously take it under consideration!

Any other opinions guys ?

5

Did you take look at this?