Lunarpages Shopping Carts

Choosing the Perfect Ecommerce Shopping Cart

With Ecommerce comes the responsibility of finding a merchant account, payment option(s), and shopping cart that is perfect for you, your customers, and your online business website. With the immediate choice of four shopping cart software programs, which one is the best?

Agora Shopping Cart

The Agora Shopping Cart features customization and design integration for CSS (cascading style sheets), templates, HTML, PERL, and javascript; merchandising and inventory management to generate product pages, add unlimited options for each product (size, color, weight, etc), add unlimited categories and sub-categories, add taxes, best selling items, and discount codes; order processing and order management with order confirmation emails, HTML order forms, multiple payment processing gateways, the ability to view order logs in various arrangements (by date, year, status, etc); and support for shipping arrangements, store management, and easy installation via a one-click install through CPanel.

OsCommerce Shopping Cart

In business for over 6 years, OsCommerce is one of the leading E-Commerce cart systems, serving well over 12,000 shops and 150,000 webmasters. Their software runs on any machine, including Linux , Windows , and Mac OS X . OsCommerce can be installed via Fantastico through CPanel and works on a template-based structure for easy integration and updating. OsCommerce supports unlimited categories, subcategories, products, and invoices, and allows the webmaster to remove, add, or edit any of the features with ease. An administration area is secure with username/password login and you can create newsletters, backup your information, and send out packaging lists or invoices directly from the interface to maintain your customers and their orders. It also supports an address book, product reviews, shipping, and payment through multiple payment gateways like Authorize.Net and PayPal.

CubeCart

CubeCart is a professionally audited service that offers a variety of extra features along with the common shopping cart aspects. It is 100% template driven, where the HTML code you create can be completely separated from the PHP code that runs the application on the server. There are various skins to choose from, XHTML and CSS are fully-functional, it supports unlimited product images, has an HTML image gallery pop-up, enables currency support for many countries, and includes email marketing tools, multiple tax classes, and various languages, such as German, Chinese, and Slovakian.

ZenCart

ZenCart’s motto is “the art of ecommerce”, and the software speaks for itself. Very user and newbie-friendly, many customers choose ZenCart as their option for its customization, XHTML and template systems, and ease of use. ZenCart’s helpful FAQs are one of the other many reasons customers flock to Zen. Among the others are no HTML knowledge necessary to add, delete, or edit product catalogues, security guarantee, the inclusion of an advanced template system for CSS, HTML, and image functionality, multiple pricing and payment options, product quantity limitations, one-time fee additions, sorting by any method, store layout is easily customizable, customer authorization keys, WYSIWYG page editor, and even advertising banners.

So Which Shopping Cart Works Best?

Honestly, the best way to find out which one will best suit your needs is to visit the sites above and make a checklist of must-haves and ease of use. One cart may work better for a small business with international customers while another may work best for a big business with a limited customer base. It’s up to you to research further into each cart and find out which works best for your customers and website.