I mean, what are the advantages over version 2?
I’ve been with CS-Cart for over 3 years now. I’m still on 2.2.5.
I’m ready for a new look and have been considering upgrading to 3.0.4 but having some (so far) insurmountable problems.
So is it worth it? Should I just stick with 2.x for a few more years or are there compelling reasons to upgrade? If so, what are they?
I’ve also been looking at other carts. If I can’t upgrade from 2.x to 3.x without paying a developer to do it for me, I could sink those dollars into a totally new software.
What are your thoughts?
2.25 is great and i'm also still on it, but in the process of moving to ultimate.
If you don't need version 3's options, you could stay on 2.25. But since you are ready for a new look, I would upgrade to version 3.
3 fixes some pretty important issues though (and adds some, haha), and the way skinning works is really nice. I think with 3.1 coming and getting a REST API cs-cart is only getting better.
If you don't necessarily want to host yourself or need multiple languages, there are some nice alternatives though. But all have their issues and if you already know cs-cart and the many little tricks and stuff, I'd stick with it. It is always easier to upgrade cs-cart then to totally switch systems.
Hope this helps!
Thanks for your thoughts, Flow.
Why are you moving to Ultimate?
Any change will cost money (if not hard cash, your time). Make sure it's a good business decision. Will the investment generate more revenue or add other value to your business? How long will it take to recoup your costs. In the internet world, any ROI longer than 6 months should be avoided because the market can change completely in that time frame. Give high weight to quality over cost. Low cost without quality is basically worthless. High quality is worth its weight in gold. Same applies to service and support.
Do you “market” through your site or do you do outside marketing to get people to your site (Google, print media, uTube, forums, blogs, email campaigns, snail-mail mailings, coupons, etc.)?
Do most customers come to buy or come to shop? Buyers are your most valuable visitors. Always best to attract buyers rather than shoppers.
Are your products somewhat unique for the industry you are selling in? I.e. do you have a lot of stiff competition? Or are you pretty much the only show in town? If the only show, then my advice is that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Many times familiarity is more valuable than a new look.
Personally I believe most marketing is really done off-site and that the goal in an internet business is to attract buyers versus lookers. So most sites should be geared toward converting visitors into buyers If a new look/feel will do that for you, then go for it. If it just makes things prettier but won't have a measurable positive impact on your revenue then stay with what you have and invest the same money/energy into marketing your business.
Good advice. Thanks Tony.
Does anyone have a list of CS-Cart 3's improvements over version 2? What are the most compelling new features that makes this a worthy upgrade? Or aren't there any? That's really what I'm trying to find out.
[quote name='kingsleypress' timestamp='1357759799' post='152523']
Thanks for your thoughts, Flow.
Why are you moving to Ultimate?
[/quote]
Pretty simple: so I can have a shared inventory and admin area - we have a wholesale as well as an end customer shop, and might add 1 or 2 brand-shops later this year.
[quote name='tbirnseth' timestamp='1357767249' post='152529']
Are you pretty much the only show in town? If the only show, then my advice is that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Many times familiarity is more valuable than a new look.
[/quote]
Totally agree with you on that one. I've seen sites upgrading their design - making it better for new visitors - but loosing 20, 30 percent of their regulars who after the redesign must have thought: if I have to find out how everything works again, I might as well checkout some competitors. So when doing a redesign, I would try to at least stay very recognizable. My new site will almost looks the same, it will just be a bit more modern and it will have a couple of new features.
I think an extremely modern look (you see a lot of sites with a lot of white space between the at the moment) look isn't always good at all: people think you will be new and inexperienced which can make them loose trust. I also hate sites that are very wide. On my 24" screen, i experience these sites as looking a live tennis-match, my head moving from left to right all the time.
If your site looks good enough and works well for your customers (most important: can they find what they want to easily), leave it and focus on other things like working together with blogs, write a blog yourself, try to get some press, do a promotion on facebook, and so on.
Concerning 2 vs 3:
- It's much easier to change your layout entirely in 3. You can simply move a part like the shopping cart from right to left. While this is pretty cool, once your design is done, you won't use it much.
- There are some bugfixes that are important for some. For example, the reward points tax bug has been fixed. This was a lot of work for cs-cart so they decided not to fix this for 2.x
- cs-cart 3.1 is getting some kind of rest api so it will be much easier to implement 3rd party apps.
If I were you, I'd take a good look at my site to see if there are things I would really like to redo and how much work this is. Is it just a couple of edits, I'd stay on version 2 for now.
If you really would like a new design, I'd slowly start building your 3 store and go live when you are ready. The store importer really is pretty good (although it has it's quirks) and a developer should be able to upgrade your shop (not talking about skinning) in a couple of hours. What sucks though, is while your old shop is still live, data will be updated constantly. So I would advice to first make a new skin in v3, import some test data, and only when you are completely happy with the shop, run the importer or have it done by somebody. This way your latest data will also be transferred Maybe just do it at night and make the switch so you hardly have downtime.
My big gripe is that with v3. You must to provide an additional email address if you elect to have a delivery address. It's a massive PITA if your business is stuff bought by one person to be sent as a present to another person.
k
You can just go into Customers => Customer profile fields and just uncheck the email field in the shipping address section to remove that field.
Thanks,
Brandon
ohh, Tks Brandon, It must have changed in the latest version
Can anyone comment on how upgrading to version 3 affects SEO? Are there significant impacts either way, positive or negative?
In my experience, only if you use Extended Filter types does V3 have an advantage over V2.2.X in terms of SEO. In 2.2.X, for some bizarre reason (which CS-Cart could not resolve nor find why?!) extended filters pick and choose what and when they want to be generated, thus the link to the filter page (for instance, a Brand page) is not always generated. I recently upgraded one of the problematic stores and no longer have this issue, filters type 'extended' works each and every time, as it should. Still have no explanation as to why this was - and still is - happening on v2.2.X stores.
I don't think there are any other changes in terms of SEO. The majority of SEO factors in the cart is the clean, semantic code generated, which of course is majorly down to the template the store is using. SEO was one of the only things I could praise Interspire for at the time, the rest of it was doo-doo.
The one major feature which convinced me that V3 was the way to go was the addition of Ultimate. Yes, there were/are some bugs and gripes which are being ironed out, but on the whole, CS-Cart Ultimate is the best solution I have found for multiple stores in any shopping cart software.
I also much prefer the block layouts, if - and hopefully when as previously hinted - CS-Cart allow Grids to be moveable like Blocks currently are, the design side of things will be fantastic.
How long is it feasible to stay with CS-Cart version 2.2.5 rather than upgrading to 3.x? At what point does staying with 2.x become a bad decision? Any thoughts?
[quote name='kingsleypress' timestamp='1359424034' post='153882']
How long is it feasible to stay with CS-Cart version 2.2.5 rather than upgrading to 3.x? At what point does staying with 2.x become a bad decision? Any thoughts?
[/quote]
I plan on staying on 2.2.5 as long as it works. Right now the “hassle” > “benefits”
[quote name='kingsleypress' timestamp='1359424034' post='153882']
How long is it feasible to stay with CS-Cart version 2.2.5 rather than upgrading to 3.x? At what point does staying with 2.x become a bad decision? Any thoughts?
[/quote]
For now, not much. For building stores from scratch, I much prefer V3, but upgrading is another story. In some instances I think 2.2.4 serves better than V3 due to some functionalities being removed, most importantly for me, the Suppliers feature which I have had confirmation it will be restored in 3.1. I'll look to upgrade all current V2 sites to V3 once V3.1 is stable.
Once 3.1 is released and stabilised, and if the API is all that is hoped for, I would expect CS-Cart to experience serious growth in terms of addons and application integration. This can only bring a lot more benefit to upgrading to V3.
Depends on the change in your business… I.e. if you dig holes and have been using the same shovel, switching to a newer shovel may not get you a better or deeper hole. But if you change to digging ditches, then something more powerful and geared toward trenching might be in order.
I.e. if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Look at the number of V1 sites that are out there (quite a few). However, if you want to add functionality of fix something when it breaks, the older version you are running the more difficult it might be to find support.