Good SEO shopping cart

[art4x]

Hi,
I couldn't find the category for this type of discussion, and nothing really came up in searches for "shopping" or "ecommerce" or "cart"

I hope nobody is offended by this blatant question, but what are some good SEO shopping carts to use for an online store. I've heard of apple pie, but it's a little on the expensive side per month. Is there any software, free or otherwise, that I can install on a web server or my computer and upload?

Thanks for the help, sorry if this is the wrong forum.

~Mike

[fathom]

I have worked with numerous eCommerce shopping carts, full solutions, simple buy buttons with PayPal & WorldPay and custom proprietary solutions from various private developers.

Some opening comments & reviews:

Full eCommerce solutions are quite good nowadays and really easy to setup and none 'can't rank'. Additionally, search engine "rank wise" they will perform as well or better than static pages with buy buttons.

In general, as a Content Management system (CMS) you cannot go wrong with these solutions and most are expandable. Being expandable is a major factor for successful virtual stores as changing to a new solution when success has been developed can be a major challenge in both cost and time for redeployment.

Expansion is a big time saver for inventory/drop shipping with plugins as opposed to drop & change, start over approach. Having known and worked on many cart systems on the market they each have pluses & minuses. Like anything else - the "perfect system isn't perfect for all businesses".

OSCommerce (http://www.oscommerce.com)
OSCommerce is an exceptional product if you are savvy in open source (it's also free software). While it doesn't come with technical support it is used by a growing market and a forum is available and populated by current users where any problems you may have are likely answered by others that have worked through it themselves.

CAVEAT: A client; a mother of two, not techno savvy knows OSCommerce inside out so the learning curve isn't really a big one for the person willing o sit down and take a little time to self teach.

While OSCommerce is strictly php, it is highly recommended if your sales are primarily Search Engine based as this cart is extremely search engine friendly.

It also can be made W3C compliant.

Advantage: Open source, free, the "open" part means easy to expand with programming [php] experience.

Good choice of modifications including, currency, coupons, etc.

Disadvantage: No formal technical support
Volusion (http://www.volusions.com)
Use to be Store2003 boughtout and renamed Volusion is another eCommerce full solution cart with free setup (but monthly fees for inventory size (starts at $100/month US). This cart allows html page generation which is often a concern for virtual business people - but major search engine don't have a problem with dynamically generated .php pages.

While toll free 24 hour tech support exists, I think the owners under-estimated their success as you can almost never get in contact with them.

CAVEAT: This was when the company was Store2003 so as Volusion this deficiency may have changed.

The cart is also extremely search engine friendly. It also can be made W3C compliant.

Also all things being equal - if you intend doing your own Search Engine Optimization - this is likely your very best option.

Advantage: Extremely search engine friendly, best solution for do-it-yourself SEOs. Good selection of modifications including, currency, coupons, etc

Disadvantage: 2/7/365 toll free support - difficult to get through to.

X-cart (http://www.x-cart.com)
X-cart also has support (but licensed software) so you pay for it (I believe it starts at $400, plus monthly support fees). While it also includes html page generation like Volusion there is a small problem in that the top link hierarchy is always in php thus the breadcrumb trails leading back to mainpage that is not html (but the dynamic .php). While a search engine and/or visitor start out at html pages - the hole in the top level at some point switches navigation to php (and you can't get back to html). If using html page generation you are not going to have easy success in search engine rankings because of this ,php hole. Additionally, as the secure checkout pages MUST be .php if you edit to be fully html visitors can lose the contents of their shopping cart "if they decide to continue shopping".

I do say this is only a "small" problem simply because you don't need the html conversion. Today, html page generation is a deprecated requirement for search results listings.

The greatest value (as oppose to a lose to owner) if the html generation is extremely effectively to segregate PPC traffic (robots.txt excludes stop the duplication of content on html pages)... this is particularly useful if you don't deploy a robust tracking solution.

I will stress - it best not to use html generation for ranked results [the need for static html is pure paranoia] as you will not have coherent link architecture of the website in this format. Clients are quite happy with the support provided with X-cart - in fact it appears to be the only operations you don't need to wait of anything and staff are easy to work with.

Also interesting X-cart appears to be a composite of OSCommerce open source software and modified for licensing (not 100% sure of that - but that code appears quite similar).

Also noteworthy this company is Russian but to date zero problems have developed over language barriers (written or verbal), cultural differences, or technology concerns, and they seem to respect every client - they impressed me (Support to SEO)- even though I don't actually use their solution.

X-cart can also be W3C compliant.

Advantage: Exceptional customer support... respects every client. Tons of modifications including, currency, coupons, etc

Disadvantage: If using html page generation -hole in the top level... at some point switches navigation to php (and you can't get back to html) lacks coherent link architecture for the website.

While there are tons of others these are my picks.