Hi all -
I'm new here and hoping you can give me some advice/insight. We're about to launch our company and now working to have our website done (custom website from a designer). Originally my thought was to create a website (with the bells and whistles of flash, a dynamic site etc etc). I was then going to use a shopping cart that the site will link to. The more I look around the more I see sites just customizing a shopping cart and doing it all in one package.

Here's my dilema...most shopping carts I see is just that a shopping cart (not a whole lot of content as to who they really are). Our idea is to create a strong website that will house a lot of info on who we are, what we do for the customers etc. If you take a look at a site like www.dynamicmotorsports.com. They use a content rich site that gives visitors all the information they need. This is the type of site I'd like to create, however one that has a shop integrated with it (as opposed to creating a separate cart that is linked to the site). Does this make sense?

My question is...is there any shopping cart that will allow a designer to custom create a website with relative ease (one that is dynamic with flash etc)? I reason I say with relative ease is because obviously the more complicated the cart is to customize, the more the designer will charge to customize it. If so what do you recommend? I like the look and feel of sites such as www.empirepaintball.com, www.foxracing.com, etc. However these sites all link to an external cart (which was my original thought to do)

OR is an external cart the way to go in this case as opposed to trying to customize a cart to do these two thing as one package?

Thanks for your help. I'm very confused in this matter on the most efficient and economical way to approach this.

Lastly, if you go to www.empirepaintball.com and click on their online shopping cart. It seems to mimic their main site. Does anyone know what cart they used for this?

Thanks much!

It really depends on your budget and what you like best.

Personally I like a cart integrated directly into the website. The user doesn't have the possibility of being confused by a change in navigation.

But, there really aren't any simple to integrate carts out there that I have found to be of a decent quality. For that reason we eventually designed our own cart, and integrated it into the website. Not saying that there isn't anything out there, but I haven't found anything I would recommend.

Based on that, you can have your web developer to design a cart if they are proficient enough, and they aren't too expensive. Otherwise, you may also try hiring a freelance programmer to write you a shopping cart. It would most definitely be lower cost, and there are a ton of very qualified, and professional freelance designers out there.

I recommend getafreelancer.com, or rentacoder.com if you go the freelance rout.

Yes there is, have a look at www.jshop.co.uk - it's built in such a way that you add the shop components to whatever design you want and not the other way aroundas most carts do. You could use the cart as the engine for the site and use it's templating system to call whatever other site features you want.