Elaborating on the previous post (WordPress or Joomla?), next often asked question that we at Zealus Web Design see is which shopping cart should one use?This one is just one notch easier. First – we already know that customer wants a shopping cart solution. Second – he is aware that whatever choice he makes is going to affect him in the future. Uploading or entering inventory is a time consuming task and not many people have time to experiment with that. But the ultimate question remains the same – what kind of problem the customer has? What is he/she selling and in which quantities?
Speaking from experience, I’ve seen customers who’s only reasonable solution would be an eBay. Some people can use quick shopping cart options, like PayPal’s shopping cart or even CafePress. Some could benefit from ZenCart, osCommerce, VirtuMart or peers. Sometimes company grows out of bunch of Excel spreadsheet and starts using CRM, sales and inventory tracking systems, such as RegKeeper, some flavor of QuickBooks or other platforms.
Using full-blown shopping system if you only need to sell two flavors of your widget is unwise. Using PayPal for web store with thousands of clients may cost you significant percentage of your business. Each tool has its own (limited) scope of use.