Question
I posted this on AuctionBytes but thought I'd post here too as there is a different set of thoughtful folks here. We need a more simple program for our website than we have with MIVA. Despite MIVA's robust potential, we are not programmers, and have failed miserably at employing someone with the knowledge, talent, AND reliability to help us maintain that site.
Here is an explanation of our needs:
Our inventory is challenging because of its size (more than 1000 products) and its complexity - for example, a glass dome comes in about 20 sizes. Each size has 3 - 6 different bases associated with it. Those attributes alone would not make it too hard, except for the fact that each choice has a has a different price (with a different inventory number that needs to be associated with it) - if one is dealing with shirts, for example, and each style has a different color and size, the price is typically the same. That challenge typically confounds most programs, unless you want to put a picture of the same dome up 12 times (and that looks, well, amateurish).
TIAS has come up with an attribute selection option (whch has really helped a huge part of this problem) but we still have to put differently priced options in as separate inventory options. See this example:
http://pages.goodbuygirls.com/326/In.../381378/1.html
Alternately, with MIVA, we can do this (best viewed with IE - it looks horrible with Firefox - another issue we have no clue how to resolve):
http://www.displayanything.com/Merch.../CTGY/1D-Domes
If any of you have any suggestions, I am all ears! Anyone know of a robust catalog plus shopping cart option that works pretty much off the shelf?
Answer
Your Question: If any of you have any suggestions, I am all ears! Anyone know of a robust catalog plus shopping cart option that works pretty much off the shelf?
Our Answer:
Y.E.S.! YukonSoft E-Business Solutions
See http://gatewayequipment.com/item383567590.html
What you get with the Y.E.S. Suite: http://www.yukonsoft.com/brochures/PNPBrochure.pdf
Web Page Generator to create goodbuygirls.com
Built in Shopping Cart for e-Commerce Sales
Barcoding / Inventory Control
P.O.S. - Point -of- Sale, Our P.O.S. Software loaded on your PC as a Cash Register (Hardware Available)
Complete interface with QuickBooks 2003 or newer
Launch/Schedule "Custom Pages" or individual inventory items as eBay Auctions
Post inventory automatically to Froogle and Yahoo Directories or Search Engines
$ 599.99
Web Hosting for your Website
150MB Storage Space
25 pop e-Mail Accounts
$ 50.00 One time Set-Up
$ 24.95 Per Month (Billed Quarterly)
Credit Card Processing through the above Shopping Cart via "Secure Gateway"
$ 95.00 On-Line Merchant Account (Can use your existing On-Line Merchant Account # to set up the Payment Gateway, this would waive the $95.00) *
$ 295.00 One tine Set-Up
$ 24.95 per Month which includes 500 transactions per Month (Billed Quarterly)
Total $ 1,189.69 + 49.90 per Month
You can Download the 15-Day Demo version from our Website www.yukonsoft.com
It's not product related but look at one of our other customers sites built with the Y.E.S. Software http://www.priority1store.com
Call or e-mail me with any questions or concerns that you may have concerning our products.
* - The current rates for our Merchant Account is:
2.19 % of the Transaction
.25 Cents per Transaction
$ 10.00 Monthly Account Statement Fee
$ 25.00 a Month Minimum in credit card sales or $ 25.00 is charged
Regards,
Ron Sweeny
V.P. Sales
YukonSoft Corp.
(724) 722-7067 Ph.
(724) 722-7068 Fax
(724) 787-3722 Cell
rsweeny*yukonsoft.com
www.yukonsoft.com
Answer
How about posting a half dozen links to "product" stores - that is, after all, what I am looking for!
Answer
Mr. Sweeney - You may want to click this link and read the notice of affiliation procedures.
Welcome to here.
Answer
The link he gave is to a "framed" store which in my opinion is worthless.
Mike
Answer
They claim to have been in business a couple of years, I would like to see a few "existing" sites. His site isn't even indexed in Google.
Mike
Answer
OsCommerce (http://www.oscommerce.com) handles this pretty well. You can have unlimited attributes, each with unlimited options, each with it's own price adjustment (+ or -), and you can include an inventory or tracking# in the option description.
The software is free - all you need is a good host. Some hosts even include an install of OsC (such as www.ipowerweb.net). If your host can handle a server-based PHP program, than you can run it. If not, Ipower is a good deal - One year in advance is only $7.95/month - and that includes a free domain name, 3 GB storage, 50 GB Traffic/mon, 500 email accounts, MySQL database, FTP, daily backups, lots of cool add-ons (guestbook, Nuke, Chat, Polls, BBS, etc), scripts, CGI, PHP, Cron - basically a full featured webhost. I've used Ipower for 4 different clients over the past few years, and currently use them to host my webstore. I've had less than 4 hours of downtime in 4 years.
There are literally thousands of free add-ons too. Just about every payment gateway is supported, including paypal.
But best of all, if you are not technical or want some very specific modification, there are many companies dedicated to OsC support, and the PHP source code to the entire system is included.
I've been using it for a few years now - extremely stable, expandable, and customizable - and you can't get any cheaper than FREE I have about 500 different items for sale - across 13 main categories. You can also have unlimited nested categories in the menu tree, and you can cross-reference any item in as many categories as you want (basically, you have a main "item" page, and then link it to other categories so it appears multiple times in your catalogue).
It's at least worth a look