eCommerce

It's difficult to understand at first glance the many differences in web design and development services just from looking at a few ads online. Some advertise very cheap prices for simple sites. Others focus more on their own portfolios than their clients.

No one is going to be "everything for everyone".

Ubercart (with Drupal) is not the only eCommerce package that we have used or could use for open source software-based eCommerce web development. We've built eCommerce sites in other platforms like Zen Cart, and we've checked out others like Magento. In the open source software category, there are many decent platforms and some that really excel in specific ways.

We've discussed some of the issues merchants have encountered with the ProStores online store product in the past. We had mixed reactions when ProStores Version 9.0 was released earlier this year. Some of this was discussed in a previous blog post. With Version 9, ProStores made some needed changes to better integrate with the main eBay platform, something that was necessary in our opinion given that ProStores has advertised integration with eBay as one of its strong points.

It was another week of working on accounts with some of the “big names” in the eCommerce and web hosting world. The “size” of the name is almost directly proportional to the level of headache that I get from trying to handle even simple tasks. To clarify, I’m mostly thinking about cases where I am trying to build some type of PHP-based website.

A number of very large companies have helped small businesses and individuals make their start selling online by providing hosted eCommerce solutions (websites with a shopping cart). These include Amazon, Yahoo, ProStores (eBay) and many others. In some ways, this has been very good, as many of their customers may not have ventured into online sales had they not run into an advertisement from one of these large internet companies.

That really is not the question for many budding online sellers.

The options provided by open source eCommerce software is incredible. Many of the top programs are surrounded by a strong community of developers who continue to improve the product; create free themes/templates; and develop an extensive array of add-on modules to add extra power to the program. Just a few examples of open source eCommerce software with strong developer communities are Zen Cart, Ubercart, and Virtuemart.

ProStores, an eBay company, is expecting to release version 9.0 of their eCommerce product on March 19th, 2008. I was pleased to see that among the many enhancements will be a better synchronization between ProStores and eBay in a number of ways. This includes:

• A quick store set-up in which a ProStores-based online store can be configured automatically from eBay listing, category, and other data;
• eBay Product Sync which allow changes to fixed price listings on eBay be mirrored in in a seller's ProStores catalog;

I'm one of those who got really excited when I was first stumbled onto the open source software being developed by Magento Commerce. Since that time, I have tried to follow the development of Magento, but alas, I haven't had any first hand experience with using any of the beta versions.

Sadly, I've now tested in on several hosting accounts, and I have yet to get all the way through an installation. The installation process itself is a beast, and it usually requires me to make a number of changes to file permissions, PHP settings, etc. But for really great software, I don't have a problem suffering through a troublesome installation. That is, if the end I could actually get to the fun part of trying out the system.

Not that I have a general problem with commercial software, I am happy to see that numerous open source software communities and initiatives continue to thrive. Yes, there exists many die hard fans of open source software, just as there are some who think it is the bane of the software world. I happen to sit somewhere in between - I can appreciate both. And I use both.