Store Front Packages

[Kevin]

Can someone recommend a good store front package? I know there are 3rd
party websites, but I was wondering what the best system was for hosting it
locally.

Thanks.

[Maggie Owens]

What exactly do you mean by "packages?"
For creating a store?
Or for hosting one?
Or both?

In article <3c881161$1_1@dnews>, nos...@nospam.com says...

[Kevin]

"Can someone recommend a good store front package?"

"best system was for hosting it locally"

> For creating a store?

> Or for hosting one?
> Or both?

Both.

[Lauchlan M]

There's a gazzilion (or some large number anyway) of them. The question is
what you want. Do you want some shopping cart you can plug into your
website? Do you want the whole web pages done for you? Do you just want
components to do the credit card processing, and you write the rest yourself
in ASP or something?

You are asking a very unclear question in a space where there is a very
large number of products. I had a quick look on google and
http://builder.cnet.com/webbuilding/pages/Business/Affordable/ might get you
something you like. If not,
http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Business_to_Business/Retail_Manage
ment/Online_Store_Builders/ is bound to have something.

ICat used to be well regarded, but the above mentioned google search
revealed they have burnt up in the docom fizzle.

If you want to build your own site and just have the credit payments handled
for you, all the online credit processing products basically end up using
Authorise.net or Echo, so you might as well start there. There are Delphi
components you can get that use these gateways (one of the echo guys was a
Delphi programmer, and offered some source code for using their system with
your app! Helpful guy!). If you are non-US based, skip that and go with
PlanetPayment (or PaymentPlanet??) which accepts non-US currencies for
payments. You can probably also get a local bank to set you up with a
merchant account and online processing facilities.

But, in many cases, you don't even need that. Something like RegSoft or Kagi
or PayPal can handle processing of credit cards etc online. Maybe one of
these sites can handle your e-commerce for you. They charge aroud 10% of the
sale price as a fee.

This gives you a few options

- build your own?
- build just a storefront using a storebuilder
- get someone else to handle your storefront for you and you just give them
the product data and codes

HTH

[Kevin]

Yes, I realize now I was a little vague. We are going to try Commerce
Server to start and see how that works.

[Richard Angeles]

The cnet article is from 1998. It would be obsolete if it was written spring
2001, much less 4 years ago.

I'm looking for the same thing, and having trouble getting a definition of who
the major players are offering a catalog + shopping cart + ups shipping
calculation. Hosted or software.

[Lauchlan M]

"Richard Angeles" <an...@anon.com> wrote in message
news:3C8B05BC...@anon.com...

> The cnet article is from 1998. It would be obsolete if it was written
spring
> 2001, much less 4 years ago.

Well, sorry for trying to help!

Lauchlan M.

[Richard]

No, I'm just saying that a recent review would be a big help.

I mean, just think about what the internet world was like when that review
was written in 98...

[Roxanne Grandis]

Hi Kevin,
My company, BV Software, offers an excellent store front package.
We're new, but we hope to become a major player! We offer more
features for less money, and the designer of the software worked on
sites like 1-800-Flowers, Eddie Bauer, Crate and Barrel, etc...Come
check us out and see what you think. We're currently in Beta testing,
so our web site isn't fully up to speed, but I think you'll be
impressed with the demos. Built with .NET. Real time shipping.
Reporting and tracking features. E-mail to a friend service.
Gift-wrap. Image generation in three sizes no FTP required. Super easy
to customize the look knowing only HTML.

Storefront demo: www.bvsoftware.com
Administration demo: www.bvsoftware.com/demo/admin (password:
bvcommerce)

Thanks,
Roxanne Grandis
BV Software
www.bvsoftware.com
1-866-NICE-WEB

[mrpcman]

Kevin,

Personally, I like webcortex.com (it's windows based - nt server, wk2000 or
better as far as I know). Last time I took a look at them, they were working
mall capabilities within they webstores. The product is called
webstores2000. Take a look and tell me what you think. I believe they have a
working demo you can download too! So give it a shot!
Maurice
ps: you can find a lot of other one's up on aspin.com and some other good
stuff about asp programming. Good Luck.

"Kevin" <nos...@nospam.com> wrote in message news:3c881161$1_1@dnews...

[Kevin]

Thanks for the input!!

"mrpcman" <mr_compute...@msn.com> wrote in message
news:3c8ee05f$1_2@dnews...

[Maggie Owens]

Kevin,

I've been using two products called Actinic Catalog and Actinic Business
(Business is the same as catalog, but with a lot more features). Actinic
Business has a link to UPS built in, along with all the UPS shipping
calculations done automatically. They will work in any environment
(i.e., Windows or Unix) where you've got (or can install) Perl.

This stuff is really fantastic. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

A basic store set-up is very easy to do and can even be done by an end
user with little training. The thing is also very customizable, although
at a certain point this has to be done by somebody with a *very* good
command of HTML. I was able to set up an example store immediately
without cracking the manual. The customization did requier a bit of
reading.

I just started working with it a few weeks ago and now have a site up in
test mode in a unix / apache environment. If you contact me off-list, I
will give you the url.

(Remove the invalid's from my address to reply.)

In article <3c890105_2@dnews>, nos...@nospam.com says...