High gas prices got you down?  Take advantage of high gas prices and shop online.  With gas hitting record highs, the economy slowing down and everyone pinching pennies, it’s time to position your online store to take advantage of high gas prices.

Save Money: Shop Online

If you don’t think $4 a gallon gas is hurting your customers, think again.  But rather than looking at high gas prices as a negative, it’s time to make some lemon aide!  Shopping online can actually save your customers a lot of money, so use it!  Even when you figure in the cost of shipping, it’s probably cheaper for your customers to shop online than it is for them to drive to your store.  And if you offer free shipping, it’s easier than ever to shop online!

Save Energy : Shop Online

You may be thinking this rather obvious approach is easily seen by your customers, but it’s never a bad idea to state the obvious.  I remember seeing “Vegetarian Bread” at the grocery store the other day.  Only one bread maker was marked as vegetarian, but I bet there were more than a few breads on the isle that were suitable for vegetarians, however only one brand used this marketing approach, which seemed to work as their space was almost empty.  Saving energy is a selling point, so use it!

When the mailman delivers your customer’s package, they didn’t drive all that way to deliver one package.  The truck is loaded with items that are going to other houses.  This is energy efficient product ‘car pooling’.  It saves energy, natural resources and if your mail truck is like the one that delivers to my house, it’s also ‘green’.

The Online Store

Yes, the online store is not only saving money, energy and the planet, it’s a way to keep your store open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  And with an online store, you’re not serving just your local customers, you’ll be serving customers all over the globe!  As energy prices get higher, more and more people are shopping online to save moeny and time.

eCommerce : Online Store

If you don’t already have an online store, it’s time to get one.  Most online stores pay for themselves within a few months and can really add a great source of revenue to your business.  And if you don’t have time to manage your online store, we can manage your site for you. Give us a call or fill out the contact form and we can get you started with online sales and jump start your business for much less than you think.

After first discovering Magento a few weeks ago, I was really looking forward to spending some time exploring this shopping cart. When I finally had enough time to really look into the cart, I was excited by what I saw. Very clean layouts and a nice user interface, I couldn’t wait to get down and dirty.

Magento PABP PCI-DSS Compliant?

While searching for PCI-DSS shopping carts, I ran across Magento eCommerce shopping cart. What really got my attention was open source. I love open source software. And an open source shopping cart with PCI-DSS compliance – I nearly fainted. But alas, Magento is NOT PCI-DSS compliant. But I read a thread at their forum that Magento was pursuing PCI-DSS compliance testing. Maybe they would be compliant in the future – I hope. But at this time, the lack of PCI-DSS compliance is a major obstacle Magento needs to overcome to big a big player in the ecommerce shopping cart future.

Installing Magento

Magento’s documentation could use some work. Installation instructions do not come with the download and the directions for installing Magento on their website are not accurate or complete. It took me a while to get Magento to install. I had to download a patch that was several months old, which I felt should have been included in the install. But maybe they’re busy with PCI-DSS compliance testing, so I gave them some slack. You’re going to have to wade through the forum to get complete directions for installing and that is a bit of a pain. I have to CHMOD a lot of files and folders to get the cart to install and then I had to do more CHMOD to get the administrator backend to function, a problem that many others seemed to have from reading the forum. Many of the CHMODs were not in the install directions and had to be discovered by searching the forums for people who had similar problems with installing Magento. Overall, the install is fairly easy, but if you’re not comfortable with creating SQL databases and changing file permissions, get someone to install it for you.

Search Engine Optimization

Magento is ready to go for SEO. The cart makes SEO as simple as any cart I’ve used and that’s a major plus. You have complete control over the product URLs and that’s amazing. And it’s not an file edit, you can change the URL in Magento’s administrator access panels. One of my current favorite shopping carts, which costs over $1295 has nothing on Magento’s SEO abilities. Dare I say, Magento has ‘the best’ SEO capability of any shopping cart I have ever used. Yes, I dare say it. With Magento, SEO is both easy and powerful. Magento has the easiest and most powerful SEO control in the administrator panel of any shopping cart I have ever used. And remember, this is ‘out of the box’ no customization needed. Brilliant SEO Magento.

Features and Style

Well, I have to say, it sure looks like Magento did a great job on designing a default storefront. Of course, it’s basic, but it’s not ugly and that’s a major step up from any open source shopping cart I’ve used. Magento gets extra credit and a gold star for default buttons and colors that are stylish, easy to read and made finding the next step to purchase easy. I was really impressed, they spent some time building a piece of software that was appealing to the customer and they did a fantastic job. On the backend, the administrator side, the layout and design are fairly intuitive and thanks to JS, you have everything at your finger tips… so to speak. The template system is promoted by Magento as being easy to use, but I haven’t tested it yet as most shopping carts are customizable as long as you understand the system.

Adding Attributes and Options in Magento

I couldn’t seem to figure out how to add attributes, and three days after starting this review of Magento, I still don’t know how to add products and attributes. It’s really bery confusing and I even watched the demo videos. Yes, Magento has instructional videos! To be fair, I haven’t had a lot of time to play with the cart, but after several hours, I can’t get products to have size and color options – grrrrr!!!  Maybe once I figure it out, I will feel differently.

Magento – Give Us Security !

One of the biggest reasons I’ve stopped playing with Magento is what I consider a SERIOUS SECURITY FLAW! I tried processing a few test orders, just to see how it went and I noticed, in the admin back end, you don’t have the customer’s IP available. I’ve never used a shopping cart that did not include the IP of the customer. I won’t process an order with a bad IP. Getting orders to a address in the US and find out the IP is from Ghana… Why Magento does not include the customer’s IP baffles me. I think it would be fairly easy to add IP to the orders and read in the forum that adding the IP was being looked into, but the thread was a year old and obviously, the issue hadn’t been addressed.

Magento – More to Come

I’m not finished with my review for Magento, but I have to figure out how to add attributes before I can continue with a complete review.  So far, Magento looks really good, but fails miserably is some areas. However, despite the IP problem and the attribute issue with Magento, I can’t wait to explore this shopping cart more. The wealth of features and abilities may make the shortcomings worth the hurdles.

Magento Shopping Cart Review Part 2 Coming Very Soon!

ASPDotNetStorefront is a lot to type out, so hereafter, I will refer to it as ASPDNSF, which is easier to type.

ASPDNSF is another great shopping cart. This cart is used by some big names and it’s used by them for a reason – the cart is great. Out of the box, this cart excels. It has the basics you would expect from an online shopping cart: payment gateways, shipping gateways and so much more. Image handling with ASPDNSF is really good and by far, the best out-of-the-box image management I’ve used. But all these features come at a price, which is currently $1295 for the ‘good’ version. If you want the source, which you will, add an additional $995. Want updates, that will cost another $299. Total price for the store, the source and 1 year of updates: $2,589.00 – yep. Wait, don’t make up your mind just yet, even though that seems like a lot of money, it’s not a bad deal when you consider what you’re getting.

ASPDotNetStoreFront – The Good

Image management in ASPDNSF is very simple and very robust. Simple and powerful isn’t something you’ll usually find with a shopping cart, but somehow, they manged to make it work. Not only does it work, it works miracles. All those nice mouse-over images you see in online stores are built into this cart. With some carts, you have to manually add in the image function for every item, which is very time consuming and requires a good deal of programming knowledge. And then there’s Zoomify, a fantastic flash image viewer that is a godsend for detailed imaging in shopping carts. It takes a little work to use with each product, but it’s all drag and drop and anyone can use it – no programmer needed.

Another one of the great things about ASPDNSF is PABP compliance. You’ll never appreciate how much this means until you get the subpoena. TJ-Max and Marshals are currently facing a multi million dollar lawsuit thanks to their site’s data being hacked. This storefront was built with security in mind and that’s something that can not be said of many store fronts. Security should be a major concern of all shopping carts, but sadly, it is not. ASPDNSF takes security seriously and is yet another reason they’re one of my favorite shopping carts.

Search engines LOVE ASPDNSF. You won’t find an easier to use search engine method than the one used in this cart. It’s so customizable and simple to use, it shames most other shopping carts. This is a huge positive when it comes to a storefront and something I can not stress enough as being mission critical. Search engine optimization is damned good with ASPDNSF.

Inventory control is nothing short of spectacular. A lot of carts don’t track inventory by size, color and whatever other variants you may have, but ASPDNSF does and it does it very well. It’s also easy to change, update and manage inventory if you have a brick and mortar store. There’s even a third party tool called T-Hub that will integrate the store with QuickBooks POS and that’s something you’re really going to need once the online orders start rolling in.

ASPDotNetStoreFront – The Not So Good

Product management with ASPDNSF isn’t the best out there, but it’s not the worst either. While adding products and variants are very easy to do, changing prices and availability are not easy. ZenCart and OSCommerce have a very nice indicator for IF a product is published, but this is not the case in ASPDNSF. You will have to manually check on an item’s published status, which can be very time consuming. However, adding variants (size, color, etc.) are much easier to accomplish in ASPDNSF than ZenCart or OSCommerce default installs.

Templates are going to require knowledge in XML and XLS to really get the look you want and even then, without the source code, you’re still going to be at the mercy of the default program. However, with the source, you can do almost anything your programmer can imagine. It’s really powerful, but the power comes at a price – ease of use.

Support for ASPDNSF isn’t the best. You get 30 day support with your purchase, but the support is limited to problems and built-in features. If you want something not in the feature list, you’re going to have to hire someone to make it happen. Their forum, while informative, lacks the user base of ZenCart and OSCommerce and so a lot of the features you may want aren’t addressed and as such, they don’t exist without hiring someone to make your features and that’s not cheap.

ASPDotNetStoreFront – The Ugly

$$$ it’s going to cost you a fairly substantial amount to get your site where you probably want it to be and that’s something you’re going to have to consider when looking for an online storefront. Without the source, your hands will be tied when it comes to really making your site ‘zing’.

Some features you expect from a storefront don’t exist in ASPDNSF, which is a shame. Being able to filter products is possible, but the method is clumsy and down right confusing to many customers. With the source, you can make your own filtering, but it will cost you more money in programmer fees. Product filtering is a feature many customers expect and you will lose customers from lack of product filtering.

Google Analytics suffer with ASPDNSF. On the feature list, you’ll find Google Analytics as a feature of ASPDNSF. I’ve found the opposite to be true. You can get almost all features to work, but not all. There’s a odd situation where you can use some of Analytic’s features, but not all of them. Depending on the method you use, you can get certain features to work. As it stands, I have every feature of analytics except site searches. I’ve been told this issue is going to be resolved, but I’ve yet to see as resolution to this issue.

Windows hosting. I’m a linux guy, so using a Windows-ISS based host wasn’t something I wanted. Windows hosting costs more than Linux/Apache and lacks some of the features I’ve become used to using. I know, this is a preference issue, but it’s a big change for me and my hosting style and needs.

ASPDotNetStoreFront – What it all means

ASPDNSF is still my favorite storefront, despite its few shortcomings. If you’re looking to sell a few products that don’t have size and color variations, ASPDNSF may not be the best choice for you. But if you’re serious about ecommerce and your shopping cart, ASPDNSF is a bargain. It handles variants, sizes and inventory as good, if not better than any other shopping cart I’ve used and that’s with a default install. You also get a nearly infinite amount of products to add and that something you’re not going to get from many shopping carts. SEO is a breeze with this cart and while there are a few minor issues with SEO, this cart is by far, the easiest to use with SEO.

The cost may be off putting to some, but it’s also a one-time expenditure. A lot of other carts charge per month or even per sale, which to me is ridiculous. In the long run, you’ll be happy with the money you spent on ASPDNSF. It’s going to cost at least the same amount, in programmer fees or time, to get ZenCart and other free carts to act like ASPDNSF.

In this series, I will try and broach some of the pros and cons of various shopping cart and various ecommerce solutions. We will begin with ZenCart.

Zen Cart is a really nice online shopping cart. Out of the box, it works. It’s basic, but it does work. There’s a beauty to its simplicity, thus Zen. Out of the box, you get basic image handling, easy to use and create templates and built in credit card processing gateways. You also have the ability to add a lot of features that would cost thousands extra for most pay shopping carts, but with Zen Cart, most every extension and contribution that add functionality to your cart are free. $0 is a very attractive price for a piece of such powerful software, but there’s a cost. ZenCart management is not for the faint of heart. ZenCart requires a fairly high level of knowledge to really have a good shopping cart.

ZenCart – The Good

One of the best things about Zen Cart is it’s free. Yep, free. Not only is it free, it’s also open source, which means, given enough knowledge, you can make the cart do anything you want it to do. Well, anything within reason or the ability of your programmer. And it’s not just the cart that is free, the source is also free for Zen Cart. Shopping carts source code can cost thousands of dollars, but Zen Cart is free. And when you really need to change a function of the site, the source is, well, the best source. Updates and upgrades are also free and that’s a big plus in the world of ecommerce.

Designing a shopping cart with ZenCart is fairly simple, if you can design a website. Zen Cart uses a great template system. It’s very easy to use and it makes updating the software a lot easier. I really like the hierarchical taxonomic structure of the template system. It takes a little getting used to and it’s not a WYSIWYG system, you still need to code, but it’s one of the easier template systems I’ve used. And let us not forget, ZenCart is free.

Zen Cart – The Not So Good

Product management with ZenCart is both a godsend and a nightmare. The godsend is keeping track of products that are published vs non-published items. Price adjusting and category management. Any system is going to take some time to learn, but Zen Cart provided a wealth of information about your products, all on one page and all easy to update and edit. In some aspects, it’s the best product management layout I’ve used. However, adding variants (size, color, etc..) to a product is archaic. ZenCart’s cousin, OSCommerce, has an add-in that addresses this issue, but not in Zen Cart. ZenCart 3 is scheduled to address this issue, but the schedule itself is 2 years old. There are a few contributions and add-ons that try and address this issue, but the method for adding variants to products falls far short of user friendly and is downright hostile at times.

ZenCart – The Ugly

The downside – you need a real programmer. And every upgrade is going to require some rather extensive work to keep the look, feel and functionality of your site. All the little bells and whistles are going to cost you in programmer fees or extensive amounts of your time. Your cart is going to need a lot of add-on, contributions and graphics to have a nice looking and highly functional site. Images handling is fairly poor, but there are add-ons to make image handling as good as most any other website, but again, you’ll need someone who knows PHP and SQL to get it functional and be able to update your site in the future.

Search engine optimization is going to take a lot of work with Zen Cart. The shopping cart isn’t exactly what you would call search engine friendly out of the box, but that can be fixed with an add-on. So there’s more money to the programmer.

ZenCart – What it all means

Depending on what you’re selling, Zen Cart may be the best solution for your shopping cart. It can handle an infinite amounts of products, but if you have a lot of variants (size, color, etc.), you’ll probably be happier with an easier to use administrator interface for stock and attributes than the one used by Zen Cart. If you’re selling products without variants ZenCart may be a great solution for your web site’s shopping cart.

coming up next… ASPDotNetStoreFront

The storefront is ASPdotnetstorefront.com, which is a handful to type, but definitely worth the time. One of the big reasons for trying this ASPDNSF was Visa’s PABP and PCI compliance. PABP and PCI are basically Visa and many other credit card vendors telling the ecommerce community to ’strengthen security’. More and more, you’re hearing about websites being compromised and customers credit card information be hijacked. Well, PABP and PCI are meant to help stop these compromises. It’s not just business practices, but the way the code is written. ASPDNSF is PABP out of the box and , as Martha Stuart would say, ‘that’s a good thing’.

Another key issue was Quickbooks integration. If you’re running a brick-and-mortar store and an ecommerce site, you’ll quickly learn inventory control is a beast that can easily consume a lot of time, resources and there’s nothing worse than selling an online item that’s out of stock – ouch! With an application called T-Hub, from Atandra.com, you can have a bidirectional synch with Quickbooks. Sales on the website are imported into QB and sales on QB update the inventory in the online store. You also get integration with shipping that updates your website and your QB. It’s really an amazing accomplishment if you’ve ever attached the 800lb gorilla that is QuickBooks POS. One click and all your orders are downloaded from the website into Quickbooks and one more click and all the inventory in the website is updated from Quickbooks – how’s that for efficiency!

So, take a look around the ASPDotNetStorefront site and check out all the amazing features you can have on your website.