There are some large ecommerce websites which spend a lot of money on PPC advertising. But if you try to order anything from the website, atleast 50% of the time, you will get some error during the checkout process and are returned to the home page.
It is both a waste of the buyer’s time and the ecommerce websites money.
An OS Commerce ecommerce website can be designed using the STS system which allows the design in one HTML file. It is simpler compared to designing with a standard OS Commerce module.
Using Fantastico which is available with Cpanel hosting , the process of installation of OSCommerce on your website is simplified to a create extent. The databases are created automatically.
Most web hosting companies include a free shopping cart software for Ecommerce . For some web hosts there is a script which installs the software on the website. The shopping cart software allows the visitor to select a particular item and add it to the list of products he wishes to purchase.
The web designer can create a standard web page and integrate the shopping cart by adding the relevant code to the web page, so that the check out and payment pages look similar to the rest of the website.
Paypal is widely used for online payments, since it is accepted by a large number of merchants in a number of countries. A Paypal business , premier or personal account can be opened for free . However fees are deducted from the payment received for a business or premier account.
A number of options are available for integrating Paypal with an existing website. The simplest is using the standard Paypal buy now or subscribe buttons. These can be created from the user control panel by filling a few parameters. To ensure that these are not tampered, the encrypted code should be used on the website.
OSCommerce (www.oscommerce. com) is a free ecommerce solution, available under the GNU public license. Uses PHP/mySQL , has many features needed for upgrade and the software is constantly upgraded. It has an active developer and support forum.
Zencart is based on OSCommerce and overcomes many of its limitations.
Perl : Interchange, not very reliable
ASP : VP-ASP or Comersus
ASP.NET : AspDotNetStorefront ( www.aspdotnetstorefront. com) , complete source code is available to the buyer who can modify it as required
Paypal shopping cart : free , but a fee is deducted for every payment received by a Paypal business or premier account