Need some advice on shopping cart solutions

[Zilla]

Does anyone know a good shopping cart application that is scalable? I'm looking for something that I can start small (couple hundred orders a month) easily upgrade to be able to handle a few thousand orders a month, and not a pain in the butt to manage. I'm looking around but I'd really like to hear the opinion of someone who has experience with online shopping cart products.

Thanks in advance!

[webgal]

I've used cube cart and squirrelcart. But I think yahoo is one of the best. A client of mine has 6 yahoo stores and she started off small and is now huge. The great thing is you never have to update the software. That is HUGE.

[italian_job]

hello

if you are looking for a scalable solution, then i would definitely go with yahoo store IF

- your market is in the US
- you sell physical products (or dropship them)
- you intend to promote your site using yahoo search marketing (pay per click), yahoo product submit (yahoo shopping)

I do recommend you to link your future yahoo stores with the yahoo directory. That will cost you USD 300 a year per site, but it will definitely help you to be well ranked (assuming your site is SEO optimized) in the FREE part of the search engines.

I do own a yahoo store (last year I sold over USD 150,000 with it) and I like the integration with FedEx to send tracking numbers.

You will need to make sure you are accepted by a merchant account provider (credit card processor) that can be integrated with yahoo stores (paypal PRO is a good solution).

It will be easier to setup a yahoo store if you reside in the US, because most of the yahoo store compatible merchant account providers will ask for your US social security number (aside from one....which is the one I use!).

some other features i like about yahoo stores are the cross sell feature, the coupon manager feature (extremely important if you want to solicit repeat purchases). What i do not like is their email marketing, but you can find another resource elsewhere.

hope this helps

dan

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www.The-Y-Store-Review.com

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[webgal]

Good point about it being a U.S. based business Danny.

I like some of their SEO features as well. Yahoo stores rank well and the $300 per year for the listing is a must-do. Yahoo is teetering financially but I don't see them going down. Maybe they'll get bought but they have such a good thing going no one will let that one swim away.