Hello, I'm looking for a new shopping cart solution. Don't ask me what we are using now, because I kind of inherited this and I can't find the name of the system anywhere on the site.

Anyway, the current shopping cart is bulky, hard to use, and confusing. It requires login before shopping, so if a customer browses and adds products to their cart, when they try to complete the order it clears their cart and asks them to log in. I'm sure it's been the cause of many lost orders, and it needs to change.

Our company has thousands of products that can be broken down into about 20 main catagories, and I think I'm looking for an amazon.com type of system to help organize everything and make it more user friendly. Any ideas?

For most shopping carts it is the same to use whether you have 10 items or 10,000 items as they are all database driven. A little research, even right in this forum, will turn up lots of alternatives to your current cart that don't require logging in to shop.

have a look at www.jshop.co.uk - you can offer a choice of ways to checkout -

Checkout without opening an account
Open mew account then checkout
Login to existing account then checkout

thanks for the help, I'll check out jshop and the sitepoint list

Even if they don't specify in the features list, often there may be a modification to allow visitors to shop without logging in.

Here is an e-store that is easy to use and very flexible. Easy to create multiple levels of sub-categories. Also your customers don’t have to log in before shopping. Here is a link http://www.ihoststores.com The hosting plans are some of the best I have been able find with out paying for transaction fees. It is a customizable cart that does not require you to be a programmer.

They even offer free domain names when you sign up if you go to https://signup.ihostnetworks.com/_v2...9&promos=z5050

I don't know why so many people go for those ecommerce packages that some hosts offer. You can purchase web hosting usually cheaper and with more space/bw and just install your own software. You could go with something like zencart or oscommerce since they offer shopping cart functionality out-of-box but I'd prefer something like Drupal. I use drupal for my online shop. It takes a bit of getting use to but the more time you're willing to put into it, the better off it will look. It's all about what template you can cook up (or pay someone to do it). Drupal has an ecommerce module that I use and I think it's pretty good.

You can try out the default install of what I've named on http://opensourcecms.com, they have them in the demo section on the left side. Drupal is in the section for portals.

oscommerce is pretty nice.

The number of items is rarely a problem with carts. Some really simple carts are only designed for a handful of products but other than them, it shouldn't matter whether you have 100 or 1000 items.

I'd recommend thinking of other features you need in a cart - things like inventory management, built-in CMS, shipping integration, multiple pricing levels, etc. Find all the features you need and then look through the list mentioned above to find the one that has the most features that you need.