Here is a quick summary of the options available to you, and the decisions you need to make before a development cost can be established:<\/p>\n
There are dozens of good solutions, and which to choose depends on a multitude of factors… do you have a site already with a CMS ? do you mind offloading visitors to a 3rd party “hosted storefront” like Shopify, which is a great service…\u00a0 or do you prefer to keep them on your site throughout the checkout flow?<\/p>\n
Is your site running as a self-hosted WP blog, and thus could use an on-site ecomm plugin instead? There are a few popular plugin options for this scenario.<\/p>\n
Further, if you already use PayPal, do you want to simply add a Paypal checkout button?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
See a site that does this:\u00a0 http:\/\/depotpublishing.com<\/a>
\nYou can do this method on both a website or a blogging system.<\/p>\nIf yes<\/em> to Paypal, do you want to continue using PayPal but need a true cart, and want a seamless, integrated checkout flow where the user never leaves your site? Then, we use the PayPal Pro api to make any type of cart system. See my site\u00a0 http:\/\/moultonfarm.com<\/a> and go to the online store.<\/p>\n
Or, you might want a full-featured shopping cart using a different payment processor, like authorize.net<\/a>, and you want it hosted on your own site… ?
\nsee\u00a0 http:\/\/kieve.org<\/a>
\nor\u00a0 even http:\/\/choiceliteracy.com<\/a><\/p>\nAnd lastly, how do you handle the backend accounting and inventory management, if at all? Do you need QB integration? (troublesome!)\u00a0 They need a store like bigcommerce that can send all sales data to QB on a synced basic. But setting up this scenario requires a true QB expert on hand.<\/p>\n
The options go on!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In some cases, you may not want to use Paypal, and already have a 3rd-party gateway and merchant service. Therefore, you need a very simple “cart” that does only what you want, that talks to the API (interface) of the gateway.\u00a0 A common gateway is Authorize.net<\/a>. It has APIs with which you talk to their systems.<\/p>\n
Or, you may not have a merchant account yet. In that case, you could use an all-in-one procider like:\u00a0 e-onlinedata.com<\/a><\/p>\n
And now, we get to the technologies with which your site is coded… php? asp? jsp? python? ruby? We here at PDG&Associates use only php and sometimes python.<\/p>\n
For php, there are lots of choices.<\/p>\n