48 replies to this topic

[k8kat]

I need to choose a search engine-friendly shopping cart solution and am wondering if anyone has preferences between applepiecart, zencart or oscommerce? The product line I am marketing is fairly basic (less than 75 products and no fancy customizing needed). My main concern is the seo-friendliness of the system. Any feedback? Suggestions? Thank you!

[Randy]

I've not ever used applepiecart, so I can't comment on that one.

OSC and Zencart were both reasonably search engine friendly the last time I checked on them ages ago. There's an old thread around here somewhere regarding some module suggestions for osCommerce. I just tried to find it and couldn't, but I think the consensus was that there were three modules recommended to make it both really user-friendly as well as search engine friendly.

Hopefully someone who remembers that post better and/or someone with more recent experience with your three cart choices will chime in.

[jodo]

Oscommerce can be made se friendly. #1 pages in google and yahoo... it's done everyday. It does take some modification of the basic cart.

BTW if INM Zencart is a fork of oscommerce.

[sparkdigital]

Hi there,

Although I can't personally answer your question, I thought I'd reply to this post. I'm looking for something along the same lines, but preferably from a box as I'm not keen on programming. I've made a wish list of what an ecommerce solution should do for me. Maybe someone can reply with their findings.

* must create static pages with names that i can optimise for the search engines (I don't have an apache server)
* access for client to upload new products / prices, preferably with different authorisation levels
* froogle export
* .xls or .cvs import function
* no frames, good ujncluttered source code
* developer version so I can build multiple stores on 1 licence.

I'm willing to pay up to £1500 ($2500-$3000) for this. Any suggestions, or am I to demanding?

Thanks,

Konrad

[OldWelshGuy]

As it happens we are just about to have one built, we may well make it available haven't decided yet. The problem with making it available for sale though is that people will want support, and I am not really into support for software as that isn't what we do. so I may release it as a free to use, but with a caveat that we have a link from it. It will be in php though, so it might not suit what you want

[chrishirst]

sounds almost like the one I'm building Having looked at many other ASP carts and finding they all lacked something. Written by programmers for programmers mainly and many with double that price tag.

First live site went up last september does well in Yahoo and MSN, but still waiting in Googlivion. Hopefully an established site will be using it in the next 2 months. The client is testing the admin interface currently.

Has most things in it apart from the static pages. Mainly because provided querystring are kept sensible there is no issue with crawlers and filenames are of such limited benefit it is a lot of wasted effort and server resources.

and the froogle feed is on the todo list.

[Betty]

We use MIVA - with several additional modules installed. I haven't found any trouble getting pages listed in SE's. It also was included as part of our hosting package with e-businessexpress.com. We did pay for the additional modules however. Having no prior shopping cart experience I found it fairly easy to learn to use. We now use it two ways - one as a photo album sort of thing for custom products (showing previous work that can be search on as well as sorted into mulitiple categories) and also as it's intended purpose as a shopping cart for our wholesale line (which has fixed prices - where as our custom job's do not.)

[k8kat]

It sounds like there is money to be made from marketing your shopping carts that are in the works to seo specialists. Froogle feed is on the minds of a lot of folks right now. There would be no guarantee that you wouldn't be bothered for a lot of support, but on the other hand, there is such a need for this out there that the demand might help to hire someone to deal with the support! If you decide to make it available, please let the forum know! Thanks for the replies. I did find the other threads on OSC and Zencart yesterday -- but, I still have not found a good review of Applepiecart -- except that Dan Thies briefly mentions it in his Search Engine Marketing Kit published by Sitepoint. I respect his work a lot, but would like a few more reviews/experience reports before I jump in. Will keep checking back here and see if anyone else throws in their two cents.

Thanks for the posts so far!

k8kat

[Randy]

Just piling on...

I agree with everything said above. Especially the bit Chris mentioned about carts being built by programmers for programmers.

Grumpus was also building a cart some time back too. No clue if he's still working on that or if it's finished and available. Knowing how Stock does things I would expect that one to be 100% search engine friendly out of the box, so hopefully he'll stop by as well. I know he's looked at a lot of these carts over the years.

[sparkdigital]

Interesting stuff...

As an (internet) marketer I feel there's a real need for a GREAT ecommerce solution. I've found there's always something lacking.

I strongly feel that to make a store really work, you need to step away from the standard template and create something that actually encourages people to buy something. 99% of online stores are soooo boring and don't offer any customer experience whatsoever. Imagine what would happen if highstreet shops looked like the online ones...

And then there's the whole SEO thing...

I couldn't agree more that most ecomm solutions are built by programmers for programmers, instead of marketers for customers....

Konrad



[URL removed, feel free to create a signature in the my controls section of the forum. - Jill]

Edited by Jill, 10 May 2005 - 08:34 AM.

[Matt B]

There are some products I've seen at the SES shows, such as Monster Commerce, Hot Bannana, etc. I've not seen those in action, but they do promise to be search engine friendly.

Your best ally is a good programmer, as they can take your suggestions and work those into a good program. The downside is that you will also need a good HTML person to make it look pretty. I've got a programmer that makes incredible CMS and Ecommerce applications with all of the SEO "stuff" I need, and he can do it in either in .Net or PHP. The downside is the sticker shock on the price tag. Some think it's reasonable, some have a heart attack.

It can be done in-house, but it takes good coordination between someone who can design an intuitive interface to solid programming in order to make it work for the end user.

[sparkdigital]

Hot banana looks interesting but doesn't say anything about ecommerce. Monster ecomm has some great examples of good stores, but the url's aren't static.

How important do you think this is?

Oh, and about your PHP / .NET programmer comment: Can you give us an indication of the price tag?

Thanks,

Konrad

[OldWelshGuy]

Actinic is search engine friendly and I woudl recommend it, but it aint free. It fully integrates with dreamwaver also, and there is a plugin available for froogle feeds.

[mcanerin]

I have a quick question. We have discussed (in the SMA) the possibility of "certifying" certain things such as SEO friendly directories and training seminars, etc.

This sounds like the type of thing that may be a good fit to that line of thinking. What would you guys think of a seal of approval or something similar being made available to e-commerce packages that had passed stringent testing from a search engine friendly standpoint?

Then, in theory, all you would need to do is look for the little logo and you would know it was SEO friendly. Knowing that, you could then focus on things like price, performance, useability, etc.

Would there be any interest in this? If so, what things would you feel an ecommerce package should provide in order to qualify?

I'll start:

* Ability to generate static URLS
* Ability to generate custom title, metadata and other header information

I know there is more, but I'll start with that. Anyone else? Remember, we are talking about SEO friendly - not just general e-comm shopping cart stuff.

Ian

[qwerty]

Good idea. I can't think of any requirements I'd have off the top of my head, but I'll be watching to see what's suggested.

I was going to suggest that the organization try to get discounts for members on approved shopping cart systems, but then I had second thoughts, thinking that some might come to view the seal of approval as nothing more than a trade for the discount.