E-Commerce

There are literally hundreds of software packages out there for building an e-commerce website. This can make deciding which package is the right one for you quite difficult.

If you’re looking for the quickest, cheapest way to set up an e-commerce website using a pre-built system like Yahoo! Stores is probably you’re best bet. Yahoo! has created an online interface so you can get your shop up and running with no technical training in just a few hours and all for less than a hundred dollars. If you’ve never sold anything online and you want to minimize your financial risk, this is probably the best solution.

Many other companies (GoDaddy, Network Solutions, etc.) offer comparable products so you might want to look around for some others that will suit your needs. Wallanet in no way endorses Yahoo! Stores, and in fact since they require no technical expertise none of Wallanet’s developers have spent any time using their system, but if you want to get an online store going quickly with a minimum of risk, you might want to consider a product like Yahoo! Stores.

Go here to view Yahoo!’s store builder: http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/

The downside to using a pre-made product like Yahoo! Stores is that it is very general and not at all customizable. Your products may not fit quite right into their system. Because you’re just dragging and dropping objects into place, you’re limited as to how your site functions and what functionality you can offer. If they don’t offer what you want, you’re out of luck. If your products don’t quite fit into their general template the site may look and act a little clunky. All the sites tend to look very similar, too, since they all use the same templates and customization of those templates is so limited. As the stores grow they tend to become more difficult to navigate, too, since these pre-made systems are typically geared more towards smaller merchants. In addition, the more business you do, the more money you pay to use the system. Typically these pre-made systems charge a fee based on monthly transaction volume. So as your store grows your costs grow as well. And once you’ve invested a lot of time using a specific system it becomes costly and difficult to switch. Which is why Wallanet recommends using an open source package as your e-commerce solution – they’re fully customizable, scalable, and there are no hidden costs as your business grows.

Wallanet’s recommendation is to use a system that is used by lots of people so that there are always other people out there developing modules and add-ons for the package. This is the real power of free open source software. Because it’s free and the license allows modification developers around the world will create add-ons and often times will donate them back to the community.

It’s important to understand why the community base is so important when choosing an open source package. Once you get your store up and running you will inevitably want to make customizations to it. Every store has specific needs that won’t be addressed in the initial phase of launching your online store – this is normal. As your store grows you will need new functionality. If there is a large community base for the solution you’ve chosen, it’s quite probable that whatever customization you need, someone else has needed it before you and spent the time and money developing it, and donated it back to the community for others to use for free. As an example, one of Wallanet’s clients opened an online store selling boat motor parts. We installed osCommerce for them and added a few modules that were available for free to the community, like the USPS Automated Labels module. As the summer approached their busy season started. They needed a much more robust way of shipping items out. Luckily, someone in the osCommerce community had already built a UPS module for calculating shipping charges and donated it back to the community. Within a few days they were able to switch from USPS to UPS without spending a lot of time or money on the project. If a large community didn’t exist, it’s quite possible that this client would have had to hire a developer to write this module themselves, which would have been quite expensive, probably requiring a developer to spend 40-80 hours building the module from scratch. But because the module existed it was just a matter of hiring a developer to actually do the install – which only took a couple of hours.

There’s certain aspects of your business that you’re simply not going to be able to predict, so you want to have a platform that can grow with you. The turnkey solutions offered by Yahoo! Stores are simply not that.

Wallanet offers the following Open Source e-commerce packages:
osCommerce, osCMax, Zen Cart, CRE Loaded, Cube Cart, and X-Cart,

Cube Cart and X-cart are both open source packages, although they come with a licensing fee (see product listing below for current prices). Both systems are well established and used by many online merchants. The programs are written in PHP and use MySQL as a backend (like the other e-commerce solutions we offer) so if you need to modify either one of these packages in the future it should be fairly simple – PHP developers are quite common. However, there is not a community of developers developing for either one of these solutions and donating the modules back to the community. Many add-on modules exits for both systems, but they will cost a little bit of money, typically from around $30 - $300. Both Cube Cart and X-Cart are turnkey solutions, so the basic install should be everything you need to get your store up and running.

To learn more about X-Cart please visit their website: http://www.x-cart.com/
To learn more about Cube Cart please visit their website: http://www.cubecart.com/

OsCommerce is by far the largest and most well used free open source e-commerce solution. It literally has thousands of add-on modules that are free to download so you can customize the functionality of your store. There’s virtually nothing that hasn’t been built. Lots of templates exist so you can easily get the right look for your website. However, the very basic install is a little outdated and doesn’t look that great, so some additional development might be needed to get your store up and running.

To learn more about osCommerce please visit their website: http://www.oscommerce.com/

Zen Cart, osCMax, and CRE Loaded all use the osCommerce code and simply build on it.

Zen Cart is what’s called a fork. Because osCommerce code is free, open source, and can be modified, Zen Cart did exactly that. They took osCommerce and built on it creating something new and a little more developed. While this is good on the one hand because it’s a slightly more developed product, it also limits the store owner’s ability to use osCommerce modules in the future. While Zen Cart has a large user base of it’s own, it’s no where near as large as osCommerce. So what you gain in upfront functionality, you lose in flexibility as your store grows. Overall Zen Cart is a good solid turnkey e-commerce solution. And in fact, because it’s based on osCommerce, it’s quite possible that many osCommerce modules would work with Zen Cart. True to its osCommerce roots, the software package is free of charge.

To learn more about Zen Cart please visit their website: http://www.zencart.com/

CRE Loaded is another fork from osCommerce. Like Zen Cart it's a much more turnkey solution than the vanilla install of osCommerce. But also like Zen Cart, that added functionality may reduce flexilbilty down the road. In addition there is a liscensing fee to use CRE Loaded (see product listing below for current prices). But with that fee comes a much more developed product that can be used right out of the box. CRE Loaded has added an easy to use templating system and includes lots of add-on moldules. It supports multiple images for products, image thumbnails, and lots of other extras. And because it's based on osCommerce, many of the free osCommerce modules that are available will work with CRE Loaded.

To learn more about CRE Loaded please visit their website: http://www.creloaded.com/

OsCMax is simply osCommerce with all the most common osCommerce modules integrated into the basic install. This gives the store owner a developed product that’s ready to use and gives the store owner the ability to continue to use the huge osCommerce community.

To learn more about osCMax please visit their website: http://www.oscmax.com/

In addition to the e-commerce packages mentioned above, many content mangement systems have add-on modules that add shopping functionality to them. CMS packages like Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress all have shopping cart modules. With a little additional development these modules can be added and you get the full functionality of a content management system while still being able to sell products online. If the actual content of your website is more important than the selling, and you only want to sell a few items, using a content management system might be right for you. In fact, Wallanet used Drupal with the e-commerce module to set up this website. Please check out content mangement systems here: http://www.wallanet.com/open_source_packages/cms

What else will you need to launch your e-commerce website?
If you plan on selling products online you will need to purchase an SSL Certificate. This gives you a trusted secure page where you can process credit card orders. Depending on your hosting set up you will also need to purchase an IP address (each secure certificate requires its own IP address). In addition, you will need to get a merchant account with your local bank (typically free) and you will need to get a gateway account (typically costing between $100-$300) that will process your credit card orders online.

Wallanet will handle all of the additional technical items for you (just make sure you purchase the SSL certificate at checkout - which includes a unique IP address) and can guide you through the set up process for the merchant account and gateway. It’s usually just as easy as going down to your local bank and filling out some paperwork, and then faxing that paperwork to a gateway provider (or faxing it to us and we’ll take care of it). It’s usually a good idea to consult with us before you make a decision as to what gateway provider you will be using. Some gateway providers already have modules available for some e-commerce solutions, which makes intergration seamless. If your gateway provider doesn’t have a module built for your e-commerce solution, you might have to hire a developer to build one. Authorize.net seems to be the leader in online payment processing, and has modules available for nearly every e-commerce solution.

You will probably want to buy a template for your store. Typically the package comes with a fairly generic template. Templates cost from $50 to $150. Wallanet can walk you through this process and can install a template for you if you decide you need a template - we'll install the template for free for most of the packages we support.

Bottom Line:
All the products that we offer are good products. We wouldn’t offer them if they weren’t. Without knowing the specifics of your online store, Wallanet recommends CRE Loaded. You get the best of both worlds. CRE Loaded gives you a developed, turnkey product and takes advantage of the huge community base that exists for osCommerce.

If you've used an e-commerce solution in the past that you really liked, we can probably install that one, too, just let us know what it is.

If you still have questions about what e-commerce solution is right for you please send us an email by clicking here.