# On-site shopping cart but keep site design intact?



## shopredsox.com (Jan 19, 2006)

Hello All,

New to the forum...

Just wanted to get some feedback on adding a shopping cart to a site that is already designed with a simple PayPal shopping cart. Well, not really a shopping cart, just images of products with add to cart button and attribute drop-downs. (well, you know how PayPal's shopping cart works)

I'm not sure exactly what I need but let me try to explain...

I use PayPal and it works fine and I have setup my site the way I want it but now I want to incorporate an on-site shopping cart instead of having customers go off-site to pay. Now, I've done my research on shopping carts... ZenCart, OsCommerce, CubeCart, ProStores all of 'em. I've signed up for some with free trials and attempted to setup ZenCart and OsCommerce, but they seem to have limited design options.

Most of these seem way to envolved. I don't need manage a wharehouse full of product, just have customers buy my items on my website the way I've designed it. 

Is there anything in between PayPal's shopping cart and OsCommerce?

Thanks for your time,
Joe


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

Do you have a merchant account? 

Or do you just want the shopping cart (adding to cart, initial checkout) to happen at your site?

Because if you're still using paypal, then the customer will have to leave your site at the end of the checkout process to go pay at PayPal.

I setup a zencart recently, and you're right, they didn't make it easy to customize the look...but it can be done.

I wouldn't get turned off by all the "extra" features a shopping cart has. You can just use the stuff you need.

My current favorite shopping cart is script called Shopsite, but it's not free (or cheap).


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## shopredsox.com (Jan 19, 2006)

Thanks Rodney,

I was thinking of signing up with PayPal's Payments Pro which would act as a merchant account. Correct?

So, in that case the PayPal would just be one of the payment options. I just need a shopping cart that I can paste (for lack of a better word) into my existing site. Is this possible, or do I have to setup my site all over again through the shopping cart system?

About the features of the other carts...I know I will eventually want to use them but I was looking for something more than what I have with PayPal but not as involved as the other big cart companies during my growing period.

Thanks
Joe


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## shopredsox.com (Jan 19, 2006)

Rodney,

I just checked out Shopsite and found kind of what I was looking for.

The OrderAnywhere feature is for adding "buy now" buttons to existing pages. But I'm not sure if you then go off-site to pay or not. I would like customer to always see my domain in the address bar.

Is there anything else like that without such a high monthly fee?

Thanks
Joe


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

With shopsite, the customer never has to leave your site. 

I don't know of any free carts that are super easy to customize...they all require a bit of work. Even zencart and oscommerce *can* be customized with a bit of work. The good thing is that once you've done the work once, you don't need to mess with it again, and it makes it a lot easier to add and manage products. You can then use HTML to add the shopping cart buttons to existing pages (but I would recommend using their cart pages).

You may want to check out this cart as well:
http://www.dansie.net/cart.html


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## rabid (Jan 10, 2006)

I use Ultracart, which is a hosted shopping cart solution that preserves my original site design and has the option to serve the cart pages on your own secure certificate so they all look like they come from your domain. Paired with Payments Pro it'll appear to customers like they never leave your site. 

The cost is cheap and based on how many products you have in your store. Their pages are highly customizeable and the thing offers every feature I was looking for in other carts. You can customize the button images, all text styles and colors, it only places a frame in the center of the browwser so your surrounding html makes it look like it's totally your site. I looked at Zencart and OSCommerce before going with them.

Also, their support is great. they gave me a lot of help even before I was paying them. You can sign up for a fully-functional 30-day trial too. Getting your products in there is pretty easy, I imported mine with a spreadsheet and then added some options from there.

Holy crap this sounds like a commercial. Sorry.

B.


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## Shirt_Off_My_Bak (Oct 1, 2005)

Checked out your site, I like the design and will check out Ultracart based on your comments. Regarding your "do your own design" section, is this something available with Ultracart, or did you have to do this separately?


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## suzieh (Feb 8, 2006)

Brian, just went to your site. Funny concept! Anyway, your Ultracart
looks nice and easy. Amazing how far shopping carts have come. We'll probably go with OSCommerce for our new websites. Susan



rabid said:


> I use Ultracart, which is a hosted shopping cart solution that preserves my original site design and has the option to serve the cart pages on your own secure certificate so they all look like they come from your domain. Paired with Payments Pro it'll appear to customers like they never leave your site.
> 
> The cost is cheap and based on how many products you have in your store. Their pages are highly customizeable and the thing offers every feature I was looking for in other carts. You can customize the button images, all text styles and colors, it only places a frame in the center of the browwser so your surrounding html makes it look like it's totally your site. I looked at Zencart and OSCommerce before going with them.
> 
> ...


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## rabid (Jan 10, 2006)

Shirt_Off_My_Bak said:


> Checked out your site, I like the design and will check out Ultracart based on your comments. Regarding your "do your own design" section, is this something available with Ultracart, or did you have to do this separately?


All of it is my design except for the code that goes into the buy buttons. After that, you're sent to the ultracart site but it's branded in a way that it looks like my site. The only difference is the URL.

B.


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