39 replies to this topic

[zobert]

Hello all! Great thread.
I have been following the forums and reading the newsletters for 2 years. Thanks Jill. I have built 2 ecommerce sites since that time. The first was a ecommerce package that was purely static. The second was the lighter version of X-cart, Litecommerce, same company. I used Lite because the first package had little or no admin functionality. Lite does have the ability to create SEO friendly html catalog, but each page does require attention. It took me hours of tweaking the package for the right look and feel. I am back to the original site and looking for a SEO friendly ecommerce package yet again.

Thanks for all the insight. Our sites aren't lost in space anymore.

[Scottie]

I'm really liking PDG cart so far, but I'm not through testing it. It's not free, but so far seems well worth the money.

[torka]

Ditto to that, Scottie, on the PDG shopping cart software. I had taken a look at it some time ago when researching a project and it looked very promising.

Yeah, it's not free, but it's very reasonably priced for the robust set of features you get, IMO.

--Torka

[atlantaec]

Thanks for the mention Scottie and Torka.

We're working hard towards creating that "perfect seo cart" and value any opinions on other useful features. We've tackled most of the needs mentioned within this thread, and are always looking for additional ways to improve on the software's abilities.

With regards to pricing, any designers, SEO folks, hosts, etc. can take advantage of PDG's resell program. Just use the contact form on the site and I'll be happy to send detailed info.

[darciusrex]

great conversation and I've learned lots!

a few that I've heard of but don't see any mention of anywhere are

IBM Wehsphere
Fry Open Commerce Platform
Blue Martini
Acquity Commerce on Demand

anyone familiar with these or have any opinions of them? From what I can tell it's 6 in one hand and half a dozen in the other. The clients in all of their case studies are inconsistent as far as getting a feel over how much they've made them SEO friendly.

[smp]

Pdgsoft is a cgi package. Any one know how well it work with the database?

CRELoaded ? most "friendly" carts require to add a module for url rewrite. So the se robots take the modified urls well?


Hi Jill.

[Jill]

Welcome smp!

[QuillDesign]

Take a look at SiteDirector by our group QuillDesign.

It is open source, has been around for about 6 years now and has just released it's latest version v4.0 which is VERY search engine friendly.

It utilizes static pages as it's product/department and content pages, no query strings to bog down the search engines. It also allows you to add seperate meta keywords and meta descriptions.

The page templates are fully customizable and recommended out of the box to be customized to fit your own look and feel.

There are many great shopping carts out there, we of course feel ours fits many bills and will continue to become more and more feature rich.

I hope this helps!

<edited to remove live link per [url=http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?act=boardrules]Forum Rules[/url]>

Edited by torka, 26 June 2006 - 11:56 PM.

[emikey]

I have been using WebCart for my store since 1999. Until the last few versions they never offered an SEO friendly cart which used to suck because none of my products would get ranked by google. The last two versions added some really cool SEO features which have been working out really well for me!

[Edited to remove live link per [url=http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?act=boardrules]Forum Rules[/url]. ~Randy]

[jmhonline]

Custom coding a cart from scratch isn't an option for me. 

From an SEO perspective, I can understand how it would be beneficial if the cart doesn't kick in until a customer decides to purchase (as mcanerin stated), but the CMS aspect of shopping carts makes managing the site much easier (eg. adding products, managing products, setting prices, customer management, creating categories, etc.)

It doesn't matter from an seo perspective if a search engine is indexing your dynamic page or your "static" page. Content matters.

<edit>No personal testimonials. I get jealous when I don't think I am the best - Mike</edit>

Edited by projectphp, 08 September 2006 - 07:38 PM.