pelago

Zen Cart can be a tricky beast (not just for developer’s but for folks that have to actually use the admin interface), but at least support for it continues to grow. I just stumbled across this Wiki:

Zen Cart Wiki

We’ve been using Zen Cart for a few of our clients and have been fairly happy with it so far. Zen Cart is an open source shopping cart application. The functionality is great, but the directory structure and conventions take a little getting used to.

Blackbird Design Studio has this nice directory map that can be used as a handy reference. - Michael

In this detailed report, 37signals analyzes, reviews, and rates the search engines and search results at 25 popular e-commerce sites.

The best way to learn is by doing. Along the way, e-commerce has found that some ideas that seemed promising at first are best left in the dustbin of technology history. A host of solutions to various problems have been tried, and in many cases discarded just as quickly.

Venture capitalists nodded while startup geeks assured them that if they could get just one-tenth of 1 percent of the market share for furniture, everyone involved would become instantly wealthy. Of course, getting that one-tenth of a percentage point proved more difficult, more expensive and more lengthy an endeavor than anyone had anticipated. Many dreams withered or died entirely without being realized.

Badly designed websites are damaging the prospects of firms doing business via the web.

Some of the factors that have to be considered when weighing the value of an e-commerce business model are delivery and convenience, which were vastly underrated or oversimplified in some of the Net’s most infamous e-commerce duds. What may appear to be convenient at first glance, may turn out to be much more complicated when actually implemented by consumers.

While online retailers are tallying the results of a strong holiday shopping season, their customers may be enumerating their service failures, according to a report released Thursday.

There is a lot about e-commerce that confuses many people. The information in this article is from first-hand experience that I’ve acquired while having to set up an e-commerce website for selling products and accepting credit cards over the internet.

We’ve all heard the hype: Putting up a good Web site takes only a few hours, and you can start taking orders immediately. It’s easy to start generating sales, and you’ll begin to achieve ROI right away. You don’t need a Web consultant. And don’t worry too much about advertising and marketing; if you have a good Web site, your customers will always find you.

Are any of these statements true? Nine times out of 10, no.