Best SEO friendly eCom solution?

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stevehnsn

Slave to The Man
Jan 3, 2007
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I am going to be converting an eCom site from Monster Commerce to a self-hosted, SEO friendly solution with blog integration, for a store with about 300 products. Currently I am trying to decide which software solution will fit the bill. Open source versus commercial doesn't matter that much: I would willingly drop $300 to have the best solution. The prospect of building a custom coded website doesn't appeal to me. I've successfully gone that route in the past, but I wish to avoid it if possible, and being a programmer myself, I don't want to pay another programmer $2k to develop it for me.

Requirements:
SEO friendly URLs
Blog integration
Slick admin interface

Bonus:
Affiliate system

So far I am leaning towards WordPress eCom: WordPress e-Commerce Plugin a WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin by Instinct | Instinct Entertainment

I am also looking at: CRE Loaded with SEO URLs plugin - CRE SEO URLs Ecommerce Software by CRE Loaded - Shopping Cart Products

I would entertain Magento but I believe it is still slow and buggy.

Any other opinions?
 


Thanks for the responses. I'll have to check into both of those products when I get a chance. I think the integration with WordPress is really what is selling me on WP eCom.
 
Plus it's free, isn't it?

stevehnsn said:
Thanks for the responses. I'll have to check into both of those products when I get a chance. I think the integration with WordPress is really what is selling me on WP eCom.
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If you know Drupal you might want to look into Ubercart. I started a couple stores with it but never finished them. Everything got indexed without any promotion and I get steady traffic even though no one can buy anything. I really should finish them some day.
 
Magento is awesome if you could take time to learn. And I haven't seen any bug with it yet -- which I can't solve by reading their forum.
 
I have two CRELoaded carts and its basically a hack of OSCommerce. They added some community provided plugins, some interface upgrades, and maybe one or two custom plugins and called it their own. The code is sloppy, there are always security holes and upgrading will ruin your template 8 out of 10 times. I'd pass on it or just go with OSCommerce and customize it with the plugins you need. Some other good ones:

Zencart
Magento
CSCart
 
Well, ive done some research on the subject as i need to work on a solution for one of my clients, we decided to go with XCart solution, they have affiliate and its seo friendly, we are just in the starting phase did not actually integrate yet but it seems from what we saw so far that it will be fairly easy to integrate custom designs.

so check it out, and if anyone has some experience with xcart and KNOWS that one of the other options mentionned here, please let me know, i might be able to change as im still in the 30day free trial of xcart :p
 
Lord B said:
Magento is awesome if you could take time to learn. And I haven't seen any bug with it yet -- which I can't solve by reading their forum.
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What kind of crack are you smoking and where can I get some?

Having had to build a clients website with it for my 9-5 my experience has been... interesting.

The problem with Magento is there business model doesnt lend itself to modifying things. Magento released the product for free, but its so complex you either need to pay them, or a magento certified developer to do the work, or, you need to become a magento certified developer to make any sense of it.

They have a real problem with releases, changelogs, etc. They have yet to clearly document or provide a meaningful API to anyone in the community and any requests for changes or mods fall upon deaf ears, or rather, the ears of someone who wants to charge you out the ass for it.

Also, someone mentioned XCart - Do yourself a favor and dont do that either. XCart is awful and there templating is atrocious at best. Unless you feel like calling Eastern Europe everytime you need something done, its not in your best interest to use it.

It seems that the outlook for Ecomm solutions are crappy at best. The only ecomm solution ive used that I was even somewhat ok with was Pinnacle Cart. Its $500 but at least there is some method to there madness - It looks nice, has quiet a few features and is worth looking at.

/rant
 
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