[quote name=‘snorocket’]Yea it’s s nice cart, looks impressive, has some more interesing features then CS, but overall it is not better then CS. CS has alot more to offer for alot less.[/QUOTE]
Sno,
I agree with you. I feel that CS-Cart has more to offer for less. However, I believe that small businesses need marketing solutions that capitalize on the Social Media and other external opportunities and they need a simple solution. BigCommerce has done some of those things like:
Sell and Manage eBay listings
point-and-click export BizRate, PriceGrabber, Shopping.com and Shopzilla
Email Marketing connection to Mail Chimp
Mobile Commerce
Sell on Facebook
If we can get CS-Cart to focus on some of those tools that help drive traffic back to your store, it will really help the CS-Cart product and as a result each of our businesses.
Just my two cents.
Adam
Jegemaci,
Yes, thanks, those are some things I’m talking about. I think these are very important features that you really need in a modern webshop to get more visitors.
Also, the sites run very fast.
F.e. http://www.wowlingerie-vetex.nl and [url]http://sloggies.nl/[/url] are 2 interspire sites.
Would love your opinion… I’m quite new to all this and could use some expert opinions so I can make the right choice!
Both those sites are train wrecks…held my attention for about 60 seconds. Very unorganized and techy looking in my opinion. Granted they are Dutch but I’m not seeing anything at those sites that would pursued me from the Cs platform.
I know the big problem here is the use of Social Networking and price comparison sites, but I believe Interspire is having problems and many bugs with both of those features. I’m sure Cs-cart will jump on board at some point in time once they are finished playing around with the multi-vendor cart. Lets hope anyway.
I was looking at Interspire/BC a while ago, but couldn’t find just cause to switch. I have too much control in the back end of Cs that I’d normally have to pay a developer to perform. I can tell your back and forth on your choice and not sure what to tell ya but try both of them. However, Sno is one of the forums most well respected members and I’d listen to him.
I’d have to say my overall opinion is Pro Cs-Cart and this is from someone that is in the “luxury” web site business. Plus I wouldn’t use these social network and shopping comparison sites until you have your business processes down to a “T” The last thing you want to do is piss off a customer on a technicality and them spread the word via social media. By the time you’re up and running I believe Cs will be on board with those avenues of marketing.
Good Luck
Stu
[quote name=‘Flow’]I think these are very important features that you really need in a modern webshop to get more visitors.[/QUOTE]
You are correct, these are very important features. I feel that CS-Cart needs to focus on these features.
[quote name=‘Flow’]Would love your opinion… I’m quite new to all this and could use some expert opinions so I can make the right choice![/QUOTE]
I actually used to be on a little known ASP shopping cart for years. When it finally wouldn’t do some of the things that I needed and the company wouldn’t respond to customer feedback, I started searching for a replacement.
I reviewed and compared over 20 different shopping carts. It took me 3 months to review and test the different products. In the end, CS-Cart was the best.
Despite these lacking features, I would stick with CS-Cart. They do a very good job with their product and I am very pleased. I will continue to request that they improve their cart in new ways, but I will stick with them.
Hope that helps.
Adam
That says it all…Flow, save yourself some time and hard-ache. Cs-cart!
Stu
Haha, yeah we will go with CS-cart… we made the decision…
Still I wasn’t talking about the sites how they are build up, etc… but about their speed. They run really fast here!
[quote name=‘Flow’]Hi Clips (and others ofcourse),
I was wondering if you went with Bigcommerce in the end or not… we are starting a new shop and are in doubt between CS-cart and Interspire 6 (which is basically bigcommerce).
Thanks![/QUOTE]
No, we have not gone with BigCommerce yet. We have checked back in with them about once a month to see if they are “PCI Compliant” yet and they are not. I know that CS is not either, but I really don’t want to jump from one to another without that basic feature being fixed. Interspire may be compliant, but it would then depend on your server.
The biggest thing we are looking for is how to easily integrate with more of the social commerce and also shopping comparison sites. The search clicks I am not worried about as we have pretty much figured this out…at least until the rhythms change again.
[QUOTE]No, we have not gone with BigCommerce yet. We have checked back in with them about once a month to see if they are “PCI Compliant” yet and they are not. I know that CS is not either, but I really don’t want to jump from one to another without that basic feature being fixed. Interspire may be compliant, but it would then depend on your server.[/QUOTE]
Why don’t you just put your CS-Cart store on a PCI certified host and run a PCI scan to verify that you meet compliance? (Several CS-Cart users have successfully passed the PCI scan on their own.)
[url]https://www.cs-cart.com/pci-compliance.html[/url]
I think as of today, Interspire has an edge over cs-cart. I would hate to have to move to a different cart solution other than cs-cart for my next stores, but I need to have ebay export, facebook store export and most of all, have Google SEO working properly in the latest versions.
The ebay export feature is an old request and we also talked in this forum about the Facebook store export and the Facebook connect for the products reviews section. I would have liked to see cs-cart take the lead and introduce those features. Let’s hope they’re a priority for the development team right now. Otherwise, no matter how many upgrades, bug fixes and releases we see down the road, cs-cart will have some trouble competing…
[quote]
The biggest thing we are looking for is how to easily integrate with more of the social commerce and also shopping comparison sites. The search clicks I am not worried about as we have pretty much figured this out…at least until the rhythms change again.
[/quote]
I would really like it if someone could generate actual sales/cost info for the social sites like FB. I have not seen where any real business is generated from these sites, only links in. What do the analytics show and what percentage of clicks actually convert into sales (for products, not informational services). I tried using a FB page and went for their ad marketing. Out of over 10,000 impressions, I got zero clicks and it was to be shown to people with “web developer” (and related) words in their profile. Was a complete waste of time.
Regarding the shopping comparison sites, we provide an addon that does exactly that. It works with Google Base/Merchant, Shopzilla, shopping.com and pricegrabber.com. It will work anywhere that will accept a Yahoo Merchant style objinfo.xml fomatted feed. Info can be obtained at: [url]http://www.ez-ms.com/addonproducts/xml-data-feeds.html[/url]
Hi Tbirnseth,
I don’t have stats but here is an interesting article:
[url]http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-sell-products-via-your-facebook-page/[/url]
Social media is the way to go and there is no doubt that FB and other social media outlets are changing the way customers are doing their research, sharing reviews and opinions and thus, generating leads.
I don’t like Interspire closed interface and I prefer how we can play with cs-cart, code stuff, benefit from the community add-ons, etc… But it would be awesome if we could have for example the following features supported natively on cs-cart, within the check of a box…:
- eBay export
- facebook Like/Recommend on Product page
- facebook connect on the Product comments
- facebook store (see: [url]http://www.bigcommerce.com/socialshop.php[/url])
- mobile version of the website
- and a robust integration of a third party email marketing software (mailchimp?)
My 2 cents…
[quote name=‘tbirnseth’]I would really like it if someone could generate actual sales/cost info for the social sites like FB. I have not seen where any real business is generated from these sites, only links in. What do the analytics show and what percentage of clicks actually convert into sales (for products, not informational services). I tried using a FB page and went for their ad marketing. Out of over 10,000 impressions, I got zero clicks and it was to be shown to people with “web developer” (and related) words in their profile. Was a complete waste of time.
Regarding the shopping comparison sites, we provide an addon that does exactly that. It works with Google Base/Merchant, Shopzilla, shopping.com and pricegrabber.com. It will work anywhere that will accept a Yahoo Merchant style objinfo.xml fomatted feed. Info can be obtained at: [url]http://www.ez-ms.com/addonproducts/xml-data-feeds.html[/url][/QUOTE]
This is exactly why service provider links should always be welcomed in the forum. Thanks Tbirnseth for the links as I didn’t know that you had this particular addon.
Stu
[quote name=‘Struck’]Why don’t you just put your CS-Cart store on a PCI certified host and run a PCI scan to verify that you meet compliance? (Several CS-Cart users have successfully passed the PCI scan on their own.)
[url]https://www.cs-cart.com/pci-compliance.html[/url][/QUOTE]
Our CS-Cart sites are on a compliant host and we have passed the scan. So we are okay on that side.
It is BigCommerce that does not yet have the PCI Compliant thing yet. BigCommerce has a lot of bells and whistles, but they are not quite compliant yet. This has been the biggest reason we have stuck with CS so far. I am also holding out hope that CS will jump in to the “social” side of things a little more and allow us more. Mods would be great too, but I almost hate to get too many mods with CS because every time CS “fixes” something, they break the mods. Having better mobile capabilities was the other thing we were searching for. What we are thinking about doing is sticking with CS on some of our sites and then “testing” something like BigCommerce with one of our new sites…if they ever get their servers compliant.
[quote]
every time CS “fixes” something, they break the mods.
[/quote]
Not if the mods are done correctly and are supported by the developer. Of course changing from like 2.0 to 2.1 will break things and the developer should address the issues. But generally, I’ve not had addons break from minor version to minor version.
You talk about BigCommerce servers… Is this a hosted solution? A hosted solution is a whole different beast than an installed solution. PCI compliance aside, need to ensure that the provider can guarantee performance and 99.99% uptime.
For a server, PCI compliance is not very difficult. You need to ensure that you are protected from viruses and that you have basic protections in place for security. From an application standpoint it’s pretty simple too. Do not store CVV codes, control who has access to CC info, always ensure CC numbers are encrypted till they reach the browser and that you don’t store CC numbers past the time when you need them (like after order completion plus a return period). CS-cart has most of this other than the encryption of CC numbers (in the logs table).
Just looked… Wow, they are much more expensive than a hosted cs-cart + back-end solution…
Well, after we were unable to upgrade one of our sites from 1.3.5 sp4 to the latest CS we have decided to give Big Commerce a shot. We will still have 6 pro sites we are running on CS and quite a few CS “community” sites, but this will give a chance to see how Big Commerce does. I also hope to learn from some of the stuff they have that CS does not.
Just out of curiousity, does Magento just not ever enter the picture as a viable solution? I’ve known a few people who set them up and complain about the steep learning curve, but I’ve heard it’s pretty developed.
In another life, we used Virtuemart through Joomla and it made me want to kill myself. CS Cart is our second leap into the ecommerce world and while it hasn’t been perfect, I’m pretty happy. Cart is easy to use, it’s fast as hell, checkout is a breeze with a lot of options, and we’re making far more in sales in our first weeks than we did when we first started in Joomla.
Interspire was the other one I was considering, but their “Pro” version was so much more expensive.
Just curious. I feel like the natural propensity is to think the grass is greener on the other side, but when you get there the integration seems just as buggy but in different ways…
Think about Mageno’s business model… We’ll give it to you for free, but charge you an arm and a leg for support. Hmm… Reminds me of a drug dealer I used to know… Not for the novice or merchant who wants to focus on their business rather than their storefront.
Note: 9 times out of 10 it isn’t the storefront that sells products. It is other marketing. However, a slow or non-intuitive storefront can definitely drive potential customers away, but it’s rarely a reason that someone buys from you…
The cart you purchase/use should enable you to run the sales side of your business with as little effort as possible and without professional assistance. You (the merchant) are the market for the storefront. The consumer is the user of your storefront.
I’m sure others here will disagree with my opinion…
[QUOTE]Well, after we were unable to upgrade one of our sites from 1.3.5 sp4 to the latest CS we have decided to give Big Commerce a shot.[/QUOTE]
Well, after you wait for 18 version releases from Big Commerce before trying to perform an upgrade, do you truly think it will be an effortless process? And at that time you will most likely wonder what you were thinking I would imagine! 
I learned the hard way… stay away from anything associated with Interspire.
I have looked into starting another site with either bigcommerce or 3dcart. 3Dcart at this point looks really nice but I have heard a lot of bad things about bigcommerce and the customer service. For now I will be sticking with cs-cart.