Micro Shopping Carts: A Quick Survey
Posted by | Posted in ecommerce | Posted on 10-02-2009
Setting up a one or two person business to sell online often seems like a daunting task to people. It really shouldn’t be, as there are lots of micro e-commerce solutions available, allowing for low cost of entry and quick setup. Here’s a brief rundown of what’s out there.
E-junkie – E-junkie is the somewhat unfortunately named service that provides a Flash-based shopping cart for a low monthly fee. You can sell digital content, process through Paypal, and host images on their site. The interface is fast and clean, but does require Flash Player, which may be a hindrance to older computers or inexperienced users.
Foxycart – Foxycart is a PHP/AJAX solution that fully supports standards-compliant XHTML and CSS for $15 a month. What’s that, you ask? Well, it’s a bit too much to go into here, but your web designer will love it. Use your own payments gateway, and use an existing non-eCommerce website to just add a line of code to each link you want to turn into a product. It’s a stripped down, clean looking cart that lets power users spend time on designing what they know instead of being pushed into the limits of antiquated and non-standard shopping cart code.
BigCartel – BigCartel provides quick, good looking web stores, mostly for tee shirt companies and boutiques. The ease of use for the catalog and the speed of setup is really hard to beat. I think of it as a mini Shopify.
Etsy – Etsy is an online community and mini shopping destination for handcrafted goods. If you knit, make clothing or stationery, do art or photography, you can make a nice store that is also interactive in a more personal way. There are no monthly fees and listing fees are low, but you have to pay them a percentage of sale on top of transaction fees.
Mintd – Mintd is another hybrid social networking-meets-shopping site based in Australia that has a unique interface to buying and selling that is either going be unusable, or really awesome, depending on your point of view! Worth a look to think outside the box of what is possible.
PayPal – PayPal is the elephant in the room, used for everything from eBay to buying things off of forums. What most people don’t know is that a free business account allows you to set up a free shopping cart with Buy Now links that link directly into your account. While limited, the best part is that there’s no monthly fees, only the standard PayPal transaction fees. If you have a low volume store, or just want to experiment with a few items and options, you can do it with no financial risk or commitment.
That rounds out the contenders for today. Remember, finding a web store solution for your small business doesn’t have to hard or expensive!
