Has anyone tried Shop a la Cart E-Commerce here and could give me some insight if it's worth signing up with them? They have a free 6-month trial but require a sign-up first, so better to know before I give them my info.

Just in case, here's that offer they're giving: Shop a la Cart shopping cart

If you don't recommend these guys, what's a better choice out there? I will be selling a pretty big clothing and shoe line, and need a shopping cart that's very reliable, and I have no programming experience, so I need something easy to put together too.

Thanks in advance for any help.

i would stick with Zen Cart if i were you.

nice, simple and very popular

__________________

I haven't heard of it. I've had a quick look around, but their isn't much info available for it, even their own forum is empty http://forums.shopalacart.com/. Personally I wouldn't touch anything with no 3rd party impartial feedback for that price, it's way too risky. An ecommerce platform with some history and feedback is a safer bet. As mentioned above, have a look at Zen Cart or even Magento (This is relatively new, but it's making some bug waves in the ecommerce industry).

__________________
Lawrence

Thanks for the advice, Lawrence/topebaydog...

I've never heard of Magento before (downloading their slow-loading screenscast now to take a look). I also ran into another one in my research called Shopify which looks awesome, but I haven't heard of that one either.

Both Shop a la Cart and Shopify are hosted shopping carts which is something I really want... I don't have the experience or time to install or configure the thing myself. Is Zen hosted?

http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?ma...es&pages_id=10
Certified zencart hosts will usually install zencart for you.
Details at url above.

__________________

and
Unusual and Special Gifts

Thanks, Dezina... I looked at Zen Cart but I guess I'm not that impressed. Maybe cause I couldn't find a working demonstration of the management system side of the cart, so i can't really make a final decision there.

I decided to go with Shop a la Cart and just try them for their 6 month free thing. I called them this morning and they don't need any credit card info during that time, so nothing to lose here.

Why I'm going back to them after looking at all the other carts (hosted or not) is primarily because of a strong referral from a business partner who swears on that cart. I'll come back and let you guys know how it goes at some point in the future.

Understood...for future reference...zencart admin demo at
http://www.opensourcecms.com/index.p...mid=1&catid=73

__________________

and
Unusual and Special Gifts

Wonderful... I just ran into this thread from a Google Alert on "Shop a la Cart", and gladly so...

I am the owner and lead programmer of Shop a la Cart. Thanks, Willy, for signing up. I am certain you won't be disappointed with our e-commerce system. I mentioned to you yesterday that our system is 100% completely customizable and that if there is anything missing in it that you need, just let us know and almost all of the time we put that out in the next release of the software.

It's great to hear the comments from Lawrence, even though they're a little against us:

We have been working on Shop a la Cart since 2003, with our first major release in early 2005. It was built completely based on our small business customers requests regarding what they needed in a shopping cart. The most important thing they told us over and over again was "keep it simple!". So we did.

I would be extremely grateful if anybody would have the time to really take a look at the cart and let us know how you would rate it. There's a full working demo (both StoreFront and BackOffice) on our site. Any comment, positive or negative, is very appreciated, just as long as you're being honest and unbiased (I know that's hard sometimes).

Yes, the forums are pretty empty. Our customers have always emailed every feature request, question, comment, etc... to us directly, so we only recently started getting more public feedback with the introduction of our forum last month.

Thanks for your help!!!

Shopalacart, or should I call you befreewilly?

If you're going to spam a forum in such a manner, it's usually a good idea to make sure that both your usernames have different IPs!!!

Please don't insult us with such a transparent attempt at spamming, we have far better things to do with our time than waste it on phantom users.

This thread is now appearing quite high on a Google search for "shopalacart", so you now have some feedback available for your potential customers to see, well done.

If you'd originally posted as yourself introducing your S/W to us, that would have been fine, but using the technique you have done only makes yourself look foolish, and your company unethical.

__________________
Lawrence

Ok... you're right. And I know this is not the way to do it, but how then do you create a buzz about something you created when there is a mountain of competition out there? How does one get ANY traffic to their site in a legitimate fashion?

For that sort of money per month/year, would expect all bells and whistles.
Don't see options for downloadable/virtual products...

__________________

and
Unusual and Special Gifts

Thanks, dezina. Yeah, the software currently does not support downloadable/virtual products. So far, that has never been requested by any of our customers, so it was never added to our Feature Requests lists, but it's been on my mind to add in case it's needed in the future.

We will make secure downloadable/virtual products available in the next release.

Strange as both those are most requested at Magento forums..
no need to add those options on my behalf..price too expensive and not impressed by tactics to gain traffic.

__________________

and
Unusual and Special Gifts

Our customers thus far have been small business shops which sell physical products... no customers yet who sell any virtual items, so it was never a priority to create that feature.

And yes, I'm guessing both of you think that I'm a spammer and horrible person for trying to promote a work that I really believe in a way that is deceptive. But note that never did I give any false claims at all. My intention is to make more people aware of the cart, just like you Dezina, who pushed me more than once to go with ZenCart because it's your money maker too. We are all marketers of our products, one way or another, whether being pushy or being deceptive.

So, I'm sorry for being deceptive here. I am NOT a spammer, you can tell that since I was so easily caught in a double post like that. I have been trying to promote our cart for almost 4 years with little success, and I guess I've come to the conclusion that promoting it the decent way (adverts, PPC, trying to raise my place in Google,...) cost us so much money than it was worth with so much competition, that it just wasn't feasible.

So now I ask, with all due respect, how does one REALLY, SUCCESSFULLY market an unknown shopping cart with more than 400 competitors completely ethically and, most importantly, inexpensively?

ZenCart is one of many programs design for that acually use/have personally tested extensively.
Recommended zencart because criteria outlined by yourself under your incognito membership here, suited requirements.
Earlier today, recommended avactis to another forum member, who laid down different criteria.
If you really wish to make success of your creation, lower the price..
Maybe posting here/other forums, as developer, and request members test then give opinions/suggestions which have done re downloads/virtual products...
Did not suggest/believe you are spammer..but honesty is always
best policy.

__________________

and
Unusual and Special Gifts

Thanks Dezina.

You have a very good point with the pricing of our cart. Pricing structures of carts have changed quite considerably in the last several years, save free open-source carts.

I am considering dropping the price because of this... maybe that will be the true kicker. Believe it or not, the pricing for this cart was competitive among commercial carts about 4 years ago, but I know that today is a different world and the market is saturated with them these days.

I would love to even do free, but have to find a way of making a lively-hood off of it somehow. I still don't know how those open-source carts do it... I know a lot of time and effort goes into them, yet they offer the whole package free of charge. How do the developers afford to live and work on the project at the same time?

Oh dear

This is the sort of knowledge an e-commerce developer should aquire prior to releasing a product, especially if they intend to charge for it. For a start, any savvy potential customer will research the product before buying, and they'll run smack bang into a question like this from none other than the developer. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence, does it?

As you have already acknowledged, you will struggle to compete with any of the free open source carts out there, for obvious reasons. Even if you were to drop the price, you would have to have a "knock 'em dead" product which people will feel is worth the price. At the moment you do not have that. I'm not entirely convinced by the "free for 6 months" offer either, as no online seller is going to want to migrate their entire inventory to another shopping cart once the trial period has expired. Let's face it, if they do not feel it is worth almost a grand a year, then they won't feel any differently in 6 months' time.

Secondly, if you have struggled to sell something for 4 years, that should have sent a pretty clear signal to you by now that something is not working. In that case, there's no point in continuing along the same path; you need to take a long hard look at your product (and your website IMHO) to see where it can be improved and developed further (you do need to offer much more, even at a reduced price). With regards your website, your homepage looks like it is under construction. Because of this, I never went any further on my first visit. Compare your site's homepage to that of Zen Cart:

http://www.zencart.com
Looks professional. Contains a brief software featureset as well as a little blurb about the company without looking overcrowded.

http://www.oscommerce.com
Again, a professional-looking site which tells the user something about the site they're visiting and the products they will be viewing.

http://www.shopalacart.com
Looks incomplete. No information about the company or the product whatsoever.

You need something to entice people in! Your homepage is your shop window and people are walking straight past. No amount of expensive advertising is going to change that.

Those are just a couple of things. It may be an idea to have a rethink about your target market as well and how you plan to generate your income. Most of the members on this forum trade online amidst a sea of competitors, so they will no doubt have some advice of their own. It'd be worth taking their comments on board as it will benefit you in the long term.

Do you really need to ask about ethics?

__________________
Original Art by Tarryn Winfield

Thank you, Loop... I appreciate your opinion and you've given me some great insight.