What is the best way to do e-commerce?

[bdp31770]

I've been doing graphic design for years but I am relatively new to web design. A client would like an online catalog with about 400 items. I've asked around and so far the best option seems to be going through paypal...registering with them, then entering each product id into their site, they in turn give me the code to copy and paste into my site.
This is still somewhat tedious though and I'm curious if anyone has a better solution. I looked into oscommerce and it seemed even more complicated. I apologize if this is the wrong place for this post. Thank you for any suggestions - Chris

[jwalsh]

If you ask me, Paypal is the worse way to setup a shopping cart. Don't get me wrong, paypal is a fine payment processor, I use them extensively... but what happens when you need to support other processors besides Paypal... or you want added functionality that paypal doesn't support? (Or you are sick of the high fees) You have to start over from scratch.

I'd suggest building something much more extensible if you have the funds, built specifically for your needs. If those funds aren't available, check out something like OS Commerce, a Open Source shopping cart with a great track record.

I tend to stay away from any third party operations that "lock me in" to using their service, and only their service.

[bdp31770]

Hi JWalsh - Thank you for the reply. I am very new to this so my questions will probably seem pretty elementary. I thought since this paypal setup could accept paypal as well as credit card payments I would be ok? Also, I looked at OSCommerce, and it seemed more complicated than Paypal. I dont know any scripting and would like to choose the method that would be the most user friendly to the newbie.

[G10]

Paypal is quite a good system but it depends on how often you will need to make changes and what you are selling.

The Paypal cart can not work out shipping zones so if you are selling products around the world and require different shipping fee's, then paypal is not for you.

I used to run my site with paypal and have recently changed the cart over to mals-e.com (mals eccomerce) which I am quite happy with.

Also, paypal doesn't allow for quantity discounts etc.

If you want to pay for a good shopping cart that is fully customisable and easy to upload different products once your basic template is made, I would consider Actinic - It does cost a little though.

[bdp31770]

I checked out mals ecom and it looks good, thanks for the tips.