NYCPHP Meetup

NYPHP.org

[nycphp-talk] Shopping Cart Solutions

Brian O'Connor gatzby3jr at gmail.com
Fri Aug 12 13:10:59 EDT 2011


Preface - it is not my intention to start a language debate or anything like
that.  I just want to offer another alternative.

That being said, if you are familiar with Python, I've found the Satchmo
ecommerce framework to be quite good for handling small-medium sized shops.
The configuration out of the box is quite manageable, but the design and
such falls apart a little bit once you hit the larger sized stores (at
least, in my opinion).

If it's a really basic shop without too many over-the-top features, you
_might_ even be able to get away with just installing satchmo and just
overriding the default templates.  I deployed a very basic shop wihtout
touching too much python (although, I made a few patches to the project to
accomplish that).

I created www.topdogwear.com on Satchmo, and there are a host of other
satchmo shops you can look at on their home page.  Hope this helps!

www.satchmoproject.com

On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 9:57 PM, Rob D <vision2 at ozemail.com.au> wrote:

> **
> Thanks for the information Federico.
>
> Your example site looks quite nice too.
>
>
>  *From:* Federico Ulfo <rainelemental at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Monday, August 08, 2011 1:02 PM
> *To:* NYPHP Talk <talk at lists.nyphp.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [nycphp-talk] Shopping Cart Solutions
>
> If she doesn't need any modification go for Magento or other open source
> e-commerce, if she needs custom e-commerce is the solution, con: needs time,
> pro: total control on any features. After a few pretty bad experience with
> os-commerce, I started to install my custom CMS with an e-commerce module to
> all of my clients, here an example www.supermercatodellarotonda.com, easy
> and clean.
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 10:21 PM, Rob D <vision2 at ozemail.com.au> wrote:
>
>> **
>> Thanks Gary for your response.
>>
>> I totally agree with your comments and, have tried to explain these points
>> and many others to her previously but, feel that it fell on deaf ears.
>>
>> Considering that I don’t think she really has the time to manage an
>> ecommerce web site properly, I think she is going to end up being very
>> disappointed.
>>
>> I have passed your response onto her and hopefully she may take notice!
>>
>> Thanks again for your comments.
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Rob
>>
>>  *From:* Gary Mort <garyamort at gmail.com>
>> *Sent:* Saturday, August 06, 2011 11:43 PM
>> *To:* NYPHP Talk <talk at lists.nyphp.org>
>>  *Subject:* Re: [nycphp-talk] Shopping Cart Solutions
>>
>>  On 8/6/2011 12:24 AM, Rob D wrote:
>>
>> Greetings All,
>>
>> I have been asked by my sister in-law to provide an ecommerce solution for
>> her small business. As I do not consider myself to be knowledgeable enough
>> in this area, I am posting to this list to ask your thoughts and
>> recommendations.
>>
>>
>>
>> For a "small" business with only a few products, I find PHP ecommerce
>> applications to be overly complicated and complex.
>>
>> SimpleCart works very well from a small business perspective:
>> http://simplecartjs.com/
>>
>> If your sister is editing her items directly, it just means you add a
>> little html markup to each item to make it an item which can be purchased.
>>
>> There are a number of PHP scripts which have been written for different
>> platforms to make creating products simpler[for example, RokCart is a
>> simplecart implementation for Joomla! which adds a button on content editing
>> to set the price and such and create a product.
>>
>> The downside of simplecart is that because it is all done via javascript
>> -  there is very little you can do to stop malicious buyers.  If a buyer can
>> edit the javascript, they can go ahead and change the prices on the products
>> and then submit the sale and it will be processed.  This means your sister
>> would need to make sure to check the sales invoices in Paypal before
>> shipping products and make sure the price is correct.  Full fledged
>> ecommerce solutions often have this type of functionality built in - they
>> check invoice information returned by paypal and make sure it is valid - and
>> flag invalid transactions.
>>
>> It's a low end solution, but honestly I've run into a lot of people who
>> only get 3 or 4 sales via the internet a month.  Spending lots of time
>> and/or money to implement a high end ecommerce application is a waste.
>> If/When business takes off and it is taking too much time to process the
>> orders is when you upgrade[preferably to something that will support
>> something like Amazon Fulfillment so that you can automate the entire
>> process at some point].
>>
>> Not knowing what business your sister is in, another thing I'll mention is
>> to think very hard about whether or not to have a 'pick up' option for
>> purchases and if so, set a reasonable shipping and handling cost.  As an
>> example, a small art Gallery which expects to sell mostly within 200 miles
>> can be better served by offering local pick up and placing a 50-100$
>> handling charge on shipping paintings.   If you can get the buyer into the
>> gallery, then you have the chance to cross-sell other items.  If you ship
>> the item, it's a one time 500-1000$ sale AND packaging the whole thing up
>> properly is a pain.  So charge for that pain/inconvenience and encourage
>> buyers to come to the store.
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> New York PHP Users Group Community Talk Mailing List
>> http://lists.nyphp.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
>>
>> http://www.nyphp.org/Show-Participation
>>
>
>  ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> New York PHP Users Group Community Talk Mailing List
> http://lists.nyphp.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
>
> http://www.nyphp.org/Show-Participation
>
> _______________________________________________
> New York PHP Users Group Community Talk Mailing List
> http://lists.nyphp.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
>
> http://www.nyphp.org/Show-Participation
>



-- 
Brian O'Connor
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.nyphp.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20110812/6e39fdf9/attachment.html>


More information about the talk mailing list