Suggestions on ecommerce solutions ?

Looking for feedback on ecommerce solutions for my 1st retail site.

Ive been looking at yahoo stores and http://www.volusion.com/ so far.

I would probaby start with no more than 100 products.

Thanks in advance for your comments!

 

Are you wanting a hosted solution or your own cart? You might also take a look at Modular Merchant for some ideas.

Yahoo - we have a few clients using their cart. They can be good for something but if you know a lot - it might not be worth your time. Yahoo is good for beginner's but if you know a lot, it might be a lot of hassle.

Plus their preferred merchant account provider (Chase / Paymentech) sometimes won't approve some websites because of their content, but there are a number of other ISOs that you can get a merchant account from.

With Yahoo (electronic payment gateway), they will charge you .75%-1.5% per transation on top of what the merchant account provider will charge you. Usually gateways only have a flat fee per month and some might charge a transaction rate as well but a lot of gateways are void of transaction fees.

 

Im brand new to retail but have good experience with affiliate and general online marketing...

Cant I just use paypal as my payment option to start off with ?

 

Yes you can. Yahoo is compatible with Paypal as well. I don't think Yahoo will charge you anything extra but you should verify. Since they used the First Data Nashville Platform, they might have something internal - I am not certain.

 

I think Volusion is great in my opinion. Very good back end and reasonable priced. I would recommend it to anyone. It is easy to manage your entire site. The only problem is you are a little limited on design unless you pay them for a custom design.

My e-commerce site is www.blademasterswholesale.com

 

We are with yahoo merchant standard for almost 6-7 months. If you are good at RTML (yahoo's own programming language), you can have a great ecommerce site with you. If you don't know RTML, you need some good custom work.

Some good RTML programmers/companies will charge you anywhere between $1500 to $20.000 to setup a fully customized yahoo store (including template design, and modifications to standard yahoo store).

Yahoo stores need some extra customizations (e.g. even a basic pagination function doesn't come with yahoo stores, you need custom work).

Yahoo will charge %1 for us (%0.75-%1.5) no matter what for each transaction, even if it's paid with paypal or google checkouts.

Good parts, people will trust yahoo, so you use their brand name.

Their servers are usually pretty good, and their checkout is pretty good (you can have 1 page checkout or multiple pages checkout).

You can start right away with yahoo without too high startup costs, but remember you will need to customize basic yahoo store or pay somebody to customize it.

Yahoo's backend for order processing is ok if you process up to 10-15 orders per day, but if you go over this number, you will definitely need another 3rd party order management software (stoneedge, solidcactus, etc.) and their costs may add up also.

If you have the serious cash to start the new ecommerce site and already have a solid business plan, I wouldn't recommend yahoo (go with an enterprise system), but if you are a small small biz and want to test the waters, yahoo is a great start.

good luck and let me know if you have any specific questions. I'll try to answer the ones about yahoo stores, and feel free to check our yahoo store (my signature).

 

You can find a review for Volusion at http://www.tripleblaze.com/blog/2006/08/21/volusion-review

 

Also you may look at Avactis http://www.avactis.com. As I see they offer a new shopping cart software concept when you can update software seamlessly.

As I see at http://www.avactis.com/forums/index.php?showforum=11 they are getting good user reviews.

As a web developer I got a coupon for free copy and try Avactis when I have some spare time.

 

oscommerce, open source, the most advanced shopping cart, second choice would be zen cart

 

I wrote this review of Volusion:

Volusion Review
Software Version Reviewed: 3.1

There is a company making a big splash in the shopping cart market. That company is Volusion. Founded by former Dell employees back in 1999, Volusion is proving to be a leader of ASP based e-commerce solutions. After reviewing Volusion’s rich features and search engine friendly stores, this solution is proof that where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

Volusion is a complete e-commerce solution; the first of its kind to be offered to small business at an affordable price. Using this solution, a merchant can benefit from an integrated gateway, a RMA system and a phone order system. This allows the merchant to process refunds, issue credit and take phone orders without having to leave their store’s control panel, or dashboard. Volusion also offers a great selection of features that enhance the shopping experience for the customer. Volusion is a superb all around solution that leaves little to be desired.

Where Volusion Excels

1. A Complete Solution

Looking to tie your POS system to your online store? Volusion’s got you covered. Looking to take phone orders? No problem with Volusion. Want to process returns (RMA’s) and issue credits without leaving your store’s control panel? Using Volusion with Authorize.net is the solution for you.

2. Search Engine Optimization

It appears that Volusion has really focused on making their client’s store as search engine friendly as possible. Volusion solution offers:

Dynamic Static HTML page creation.
Keywords in page titles
Keywords in breadcrumb navigation
Automatic Site map generation
The ability to have an html index page rather than one based on ASP.

3. Excellent Selection of Features

Volusion offers many of the customer comfort features that e-commerce merchants have come to expect from their solution. These include:

Wish List
Gift Wrapping
Customer Reviews
Email to Friend Option
Gift Message on Packing Slip

4. Knowledgeable Support

Volusion’s support team can readily answer just about any question you throw at them.

5. Marketing Channel Feeds

Volusion offers a robust selection of integrated marketing channel feeds. The following are feeds included in Volusion’s solution:

Froogle
Shopping.com
BizRate
Dealtime
Epinions
Yahoo Shopping
NexTag
PriceGrabber

Where Volusion Needs Improvement

1. Limited Number of Store Templates

Volusion only offers 7 customizable store templates. This is a limited offering when compared to their competition.

2. Checkout Process Need Sprucing Up

The checkout process Voluson currently offers is 7 steps. Industry trends are moving toward 1-2 checkout steps. Volusion could also benefit from adding customizable checkout questions and allowing customer to checkout without having to register (guest checkout).

3. Missing a Few Key Reporting Tools

Volusion currently does not offer the ability to log and review abandoned shopping cart or customer search queries. These are both valuable tools when trying to figure out how customers are using your store. Conclusion

With Volusion, the sky is limit. This solution is already ahead of most of the e-commerce shopping cart pack and will only improve with future releases. If you’re looking to start an online store or upgrade from your existing solution, we recommend that you take a good hard look at Volusion.