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Casual Articles - Selling Online - Common Shopping Carts
You have the story of a lifetime. Editors are going to drop their jaws in amazement. You just can’t wait to get the press release on their desk. You fire up the fax machine, hit the go button and then rush over to your phone to wait for the calls. And nothing happens. You check your confirmation sheet, 500 faxes sent out successfully, but still nothing happens. Chances are you’ve made one of the 3 fatal mistakes people often make when sending out a press release.The first mistake many people make in writing a press release is they allow their own biases to taint their story. Who cares what you think? It may be important to you,
Miva Merchant, in its basic form, provides a robust shoppin
Q: In a recent column you made the point that the customer is always right, which I agree with. However, in the same column you also said that it is sometimes necessary give problem customers the boot. If the customer is always right, at what point do you think they become so problematic that you should stop doing business with them? -- Gary M.A: That column brought a number of emails similar to yours, Gary, requesting that I clarify the line between "the customer is always right" and "sometimes you have to give a customer the boot." Here's the bottom line: if you, as a business owner or service provider, are willing to take a cus
Ecommerce hosting is filled with many choices. Unavoidable and undeniably important, the choice of shopping cart program is one that will effect every aspect of a store's future on the web. The shopping cart is how your customers find your products and ultimate pay you for them. That last part is, perhaps, the most important of all. Choosing one that is right for an individual's needs and can be comfortably administered is a step that can't be understated. This article will briefly review 2 popular shopping cart programs, Miva Merchant and osCommerce.
osCommerce
osCommerce is an open source shopping cart solution offered by many hosts. To the frugal, its most endearing quality will be the price tag, which is non-existent. Being open source, osCommerce is available free of charge for anyone's use. Simply jumping at the cheaper of the two solutions is not the ideal way to proceed. osCommerce provides all the basic functionality to run a store, add products, categories, and manage customer account information. The look and feel of the store can be modified somewhat through the use of templates, but the basic layout will remain fairly static. Visit one osCommerce store, and it will be fairly easy to identify the cart in the future. This is not necessarily a drawback, as some customers may appreciate using a familiar shopping cart if they have had good experience with another osCommerce store in the past.
As open source software, osCommerce's primary method of support is via its user community. There is no "official" support support channel, simply forums and user groups that discuss the program and even develop add-ons for it. This means the primary method of support in an osCommerce environment will be via your host's technical support department. This makes finding a host with reputable technical support very important. This is the primary trade off with most open-source software, economy versus supportability. Paying a large sum of money for any piece of commercial software not only pays for further development, but also for the software company to maintain support channels for that software. Open source programs don't have that luxury, they rely on the user community to provide a means of support.
Miva Merchant
Miva Merchant is a large piece of commercial software, and as such will require a more significant capital investment than osCommerce. Fortunately many website hosting companies offer what is essentially a "rental" of a Miva Merchant licence for a much smaller fee compared to an outright purchase direct from Miva Small Business. Anyone considering this option should be aware that using a hosting company's licence means that licence will remain with the hosting company even if they decided to leave. Miva Merchant does provide for import and export of customers and products, though, so a new cart can be setup at a new host with relatively little inconvenience.
Miva Merchant, in its basic form, provides a robust shoppin
There are a number of things that I don't like about ebooks or written books that talk to people regarding technology. There are too many assumptions made about the people that are reading the publications.For the most part the authors and publishers are under an albeit false impression that everyone is a techno-wiz and that we all live and breathe every verse of every tech manual ever devised.What they fail to realize in this country especially is that the reading level for the populus is decreasing at an ever rapid rate. We in tech (I have been guilty of this as well) are not educating our audience. We're preaching to them instead of
osCommerce
osCommerce is an open source shopping cart solution offered by many hosts. To the frugal, its most endearing quality will be the price tag, which is non-existent. Being open source, osCommerce is available free of charge for anyone's use. Simply jumping at the cheaper of the two solutions is not the ideal way to proceed. osCommerce provides all the basic functionality to run a store, add products, categories, and manage customer account information. The look and feel of the store can be modified somewhat through the use of templates, but the basic layout will remain fairly static. Visit one osCommerce store, and it will be fairly easy to identify the cart in the future. This is not necessarily a drawback, as some customers may appreciate using a familiar shopping cart if they have had good experience with another osCommerce store in the past.
As open source software, osCommerce's primary method of support is via its user community. There is no "official" support support channel, simply forums and user groups that discuss the program and even develop add-ons for it. This means the primary method of support in an osCommerce environment will be via your host's technical support department. This makes finding a host with reputable technical support very important. This is the primary trade off with most open-source software, economy versus supportability. Paying a large sum of money for any piece of commercial software not only pays for further development, but also for the software company to maintain support channels for that software. Open source programs don't have that luxury, they rely on the user community to provide a means of support.
Miva Merchant
Miva Merchant is a large piece of commercial software, and as such will require a more significant capital investment than osCommerce. Fortunately many website hosting companies offer what is essentially a "rental" of a Miva Merchant licence for a much smaller fee compared to an outright purchase direct from Miva Small Business. Anyone considering this option should be aware that using a hosting company's licence means that licence will remain with the hosting company even if they decided to leave. Miva Merchant does provide for import and export of customers and products, though, so a new cart can be setup at a new host with relatively little inconvenience.
Miva Merchant, in its basic form, provides a robust shoppin
Invoice factoring companies can provide immediate, short-term funds for companies that are unable to obtain a traditional bank loan. Financing from traditional banks generally requires commercial borrowers to have two years in business and showing a profit. Banks tend to favor loans secured by tangible assets like machinery, inventory, equipment and real estate.Working with factoring companies, in contrast, are less restrictive. When you sell your invoices - often called factoring - you don’t incur any debt so there are no monthly payments. Plus, you can control your cash flow by determining how much to factor and when. Young, growing compani
As open source software, osCommerce's primary method of support is via its user community. There is no "official" support support channel, simply forums and user groups that discuss the program and even develop add-ons for it. This means the primary method of support in an osCommerce environment will be via your host's technical support department. This makes finding a host with reputable technical support very important. This is the primary trade off with most open-source software, economy versus supportability. Paying a large sum of money for any piece of commercial software not only pays for further development, but also for the software company to maintain support channels for that software. Open source programs don't have that luxury, they rely on the user community to provide a means of support.
Miva Merchant
Miva Merchant is a large piece of commercial software, and as such will require a more significant capital investment than osCommerce. Fortunately many website hosting companies offer what is essentially a "rental" of a Miva Merchant licence for a much smaller fee compared to an outright purchase direct from Miva Small Business. Anyone considering this option should be aware that using a hosting company's licence means that licence will remain with the hosting company even if they decided to leave. Miva Merchant does provide for import and export of customers and products, though, so a new cart can be setup at a new host with relatively little inconvenience.
Miva Merchant, in its basic form, provides a robust shoppin
You just spent hundreds, or in some cases, thousands of dollars placing a direct marketing ad. The day it comes out you are anxiously awaiting the response from potential clients. You have done everything right. The ad meets all the criteria of a good response rating, the magazine you chose is your target market, and you have placed the ad in an opportune location. Now you are ready for the calls to start flowing in.There is a "five finger" rule that you can follow that could dramatically increase your income from advertising. It is simple, effective and profitable.Finger Rule #1: Tell the person who you are. Introduce yourself b
Miva Merchant
Miva Merchant is a large piece of commercial software, and as such will require a more significant capital investment than osCommerce. Fortunately many website hosting companies offer what is essentially a "rental" of a Miva Merchant licence for a much smaller fee compared to an outright purchase direct from Miva Small Business. Anyone considering this option should be aware that using a hosting company's licence means that licence will remain with the hosting company even if they decided to leave. Miva Merchant does provide for import and export of customers and products, though, so a new cart can be setup at a new host with relatively little inconvenience.
Miva Merchant, in its basic form, provides a robust shoppin
Your marketing could be pulling in clients and profits like a magnet. Think about how many people could benefit from your products and services. Even if only a fraction of them bought from you, you'd be amazingly successful.It doesn't matter if the economy is headed up or down, there are plenty of people looking to spend money to solve their problems and meet their needs. People are happy to spend money on things they want, whether it's a five thousand dollar painting, five-dollar cup of coffee, a golf lesson, a new computer or a new web site.With all these prospects searching for products and services to buy, how can you attract more
Miva Merchant, in its basic form, provides a robust shopping cart environment able to handle a large number of products. Like osCommerce, it is software installed on the web server that is administered via a user's web browser. The browser based interface includes many "wizard-driven" processes to accomplish basic tasks, such as product and category setup, that ease new users into the administrative system. Once comfortable with the basic functionality, an advanced version of the administration system is available for more detailed and efficient management of the store. Miva Merchant is highly customizable, affording the ability to style the store to mimic the appearance of the parent website. More advanced store styling features have been added with the recent version 5 release.
Like osCommerce, support for Miva Merchant will come primarily via the hosting company, though Miva Small Business offers direct support channels for a yearly fee. Purchasing support from Miva allows users to bypass their hosting company's technical support and speak directly with a Miva Merchant representative. Also similar to osCommerce, Miva Merchant has a thriving "module" community. Modules are programs installed to Miva Merchant that offer increased functionality. If the core functionally of Miva Merchant "out of the box" lacks a required feature, it is likely that feature can be added by a module. Unlike osCommerce, these modules will come at a cost.
Conclusions
Miva Merchant and osCommerce are both powerful carts with strong, basic feature sets that will fit the needs of many online stores. The mostly non-existent cost of osCommerce provides a low barrier of entry for many smaller stores without a significant amount of capital. Though attractive for that reason, it is best to examine the feature sets of each cart and determine which one is most appropriate for the needs of the individual store. Making a wrong choice can have long lasting consequences. Switching between web hosts will seem easy after attempting to switch between shopping cart programs.
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