I need a shopping cart for a site that sells computer bags. Aside from the obvious standard features I need the following: 1. wish lists 2. affiliate code tracking, this is basically where anyone can be assigned an affiliate code. If some one uses that code to buy a bag the I need to see how many times it was used. 3. Buy gift certificates If anyone knows of a cart that does all this please let me know. thanks
In my opinion the best shopping cart around is oscommerce. Look at the contributions for the additional featires that you require, i am sure that they will be there. As for others, magento looks like it will be a good open source cart when it is released, at the moment it is not advised that you use it for production.
I would recommend monstercommerce.com (recently bought out by networksolutions.com) they have a basic and a pro version and I know the pro version is capable of doing what you need and much more, though not sure about the basic. Another recommendation would be to read up on SEO and other marketing techniques before you get yourself into ecommerce, since it is not anything like "when you build it, they will come". Because they don't and it is a constant analyze/update cycle to make your site better and better.
Thanks for the feedback. This is for a client that already has a site with sales so thankfully it is not a "build it and they will come" situation.