Need advice on what type of shopping cart to use on my site

Hi I am not too sure where to post this question so if it is posted in the wrong spot please move it to the appropriate spot, thanks :) OK here is my question, I have been all over the web looking for a suitable shopping cart that will be able to be attached to my existing hosted site. I was looking at starting my journey by first dropshipping and hopefully expanding to carrying the inventory physically at my residence,but for now dropshipping seems the best to get my feet wet,so to speak. However I am noticing a lot of the eCommerce shopping carts are not equipped to deal with dropshipping. But, I am sure that many of you are dropshipping and I am wondering which shopping carts are being used? I realize that this is a very broad question but any input would be helpful to me thank you in advance.

How do you mean that they are not equipped to deal with dropshipping? It would be easier to try to help if the problem was more clear.


Frank

Look at Magento. It's quite expansive for what you can do with it.

You can always ask for someone to build a module for you that'll place orders with external sites for drop-shipping after you've received payment?

But it is quite powerful even then without that automated step.

I looked at the price for magento and it is too steep for me. What I meant by dropshipping is that some shopping carts need to be tweaked in order for them to be easier to use when dropshipping. Thanks for the one helpful reply but I guess I am gonna have to run with this one on my own and check out other forums. I was reading a whole bunch of posts and I have noticed that salehoo seems to be geared more towards those that want to sell on ebay. I for one don't and will not change my mind period. Thanks anyway.

Hi sher123,

You're selling SaleHoo short by thinking it is geared towards ebay sales over other selling platforms. Absolutely no doubt that the over whelming number of members are all looking at ebay as their preferred market, and we respond to their inquiries as we should.

The majority of members are also looking at Drop Shipping as their primary supply source, however responding to Drop Shipping posts doesn't make us geared towards drop shipping over any other supply resource.

We encourage our members to open up as many avenues as possible, in relation to both supply resources and distribution avenues, we don't favour one over any other.

Reading your original post, I don't quite grasp what you are looking for specifically in a shopping cart, however as suggested by another members, perhaps a custom developed option would suit your requirements.

Have you considered talking to a developer about having a module designed?

Thank you Fudjj for your reply after thinking a little bit more of what my original question was I do agree that I wasn't quite clear as I should have been in my original post. Ok so here is what I am hoping to do .. I was hoping to set up a shopping cart on my already built site ( I built it myself!)and find a supplier to dropship their items. Meaning I will have their items on mysite and a buyer will select said product where I will then in turn send the order to my supplier who will then ship it to them with my store name on it. I of course will pay them first before the order is sent. I meant to put that in before I said they the supplier will ship it out lol !. However, my problem seems to be finding a shopping cart and I in my original post was wondering (albet I wasn't clear enough my apologies) what shopping carts do other people use. I was looking at zencart but it seemed a little daunting and the other pay ones wanted me to set up hosting as well with them. But. as I have mentioned I already have a hosting site that I am happy with. So what do others use for their sites assuming that they need only a shopping cart not a hosting site. Phew ! I hope I was clear... I tend to get a little windy at times . Once again I apologize if I came across as hostile that was not my intent, however being that this the internet and not being able to see my face or hear my voice it was impossible to tell that I wasn't mad just maybe I teensy bit frusterated as I have been looking for about 1 week straight lol .

Many shopping carts that I've been researching lately don't seem to be especially well-suited for integrating with an existing website; it seems like most people use the shopping cart as the platform for the entire site.

It isn't open source but it looks like one of the major selling points for Avactis is that it can be easily integrated into an existing site. I haven't used it myself, but I've heard favorable reviews.

That being said, your decision to steer clear of eBay may be very wise, depending on what it is your business sells. The company I work for maintains a strong presence on both Amazon and eBay in addition to our primary and subsidiary websites. While we do generate a decent level of revenue from eBay, the margins are usually much thinner and the support costs are traditionally much higher as I've found that there are many eBay customers that use the threat of negative feedback to leverage unreasonable demands that cost substantially more time from our customer service reps to resolve.

The overwhelming majority of our profits come from sales through our website.

Good luck.

Hi Sher, no offence was taken lol, I was just clarifying things for all members benefit. I can understand the frustration, been in plenty of those situations plenty of times myself :)

As with what vandaexpress wrote, most carts are their own sites these days, I don't really know of one that you could easily integrate into a custom written site without some level of code being required.

The Avactis option seems like a decent avenue to look at, but no way around some level of coding no matter what option you choose I wouldn't think. For my money, I think I would get a custom module built. That way I could get it to do exactly what I wanted, maybe drop in a few nice features that only you offer, that type of thing.

Would be the more expensive option, but if you are going to be using your own website as your lead marketing tool, then you really want to have it sharp.

In regards to steering well clear of ebay, I can tell that you don't want to have anything to do with it, but I can only suggest that you don't discount the platform altogether. It can be a great marketing resource to develop customers for your own website if you use it wisely.

Selling from your own site is absolutely the best way to go, but it's also the hardest to market, and no traffic, no sales. I con only suggest that you also consider other avenues such as ebay, but also the free listing sites to establish a profile.

Social networking sites, Facebook, Myspace and the like. I'm a big fan of cross marketing wherever there is an opportunity. It can never hurt, even if it doesn't end up helping :)

OK, I know that wasn't much help lol, but I'll keep my eyes open, see if I do see something that would fit what you need.

: )