eCommerce Tycoon

**fdstd** · 12-25-2006, 08:42 PM

Hello

My name is Dan and I'm new to this forum. I want to open an online store this year , most probably in February - March 2007 and I have a few questions before I do that since I never administrated one before. My store profile will be: tobacco & accessories sales and I need an , I don't really know how to name it, the best "seo friendly" shopping cart script. The only script that I know is osCommerce but I've looked over hotscripts dot com for others and I liked following ones : cs-cart , squirrelcart, sunshop, digishop, viart, in-commerce and avactis. Their demos looked great from my side of view but here comes the real issue: which one is the best "seo friendly" one ?

I'm worried about this since the region were I live now doesn't have such websites and I really need to attract some potential customers from web searches, the shopping cart script + an adwords campaign should return good results in a couple of months. I don't mind if I have to pay for the script or if I have to use a free one. I can handle the administration part (I saw the most scripts have almost the same admin panel and they are very easy to configure).

Please take 1 minute and post your opinion about the best "seo friendly" one. The security must be good too, I won't process credit cards (yet) but in the future it might be a possibility to do that, but I want the script to have at least medium grade of security against mysql attacks and other vulnerabilities.

Sorry for my poor english, it's not my native language.

I'm waiting for your thoughts about this.

Best regards and a Happy New Year

**ADAM Web Design** · 12-25-2006, 11:18 PM

The shopping cart itself will not provide the security. No shopping cart will do that, unfortunately.

Security comes from, and only comes from, a Secure Socket Layer (or SSL). This is the little component on a website that encrypts sensitive data and is indicated by a lock (in IE) or a key (in FF) or...well, I'm not sure in other browsers, but it'll be in the bottom right corner usually.

It also includes an S after the http . The S indicates "secure".

For example:

https://eopen.microsoft.com/EN/default.asp

That's a secure site.

As far as your SEO friendly shopping cart question is concerned, the answer is that there are very few, if any. Personally, the best solution I've ever found is to "do it yourself". The coding is always leaner and meaner, and SEO can easily be incorporated by a good designer into any cart. This also leaves room for cart customization and additional features specifically used for the cart.

What I would suggest you do is contact someone like vangogh or chrishirst on this board. If they're not busy, they'd be two people who could easily build you something ten times better than what's out there now. It may cost you more in the short run, but it'll come back on you 20fold in the long run.

**fdstd** · 12-26-2006, 06:49 AM

I don't have the ability to code myself the whole script so I rather buy one, there are a few on the market which I can't decide.

I know what is a SSL certificate, I can buy one from Godaddy let's say , I was reffering about the script's security to all kind of exploits who work with ssl on too.

**ADAM Web Design** · 12-26-2006, 01:18 PM

Ahhh. I gotcha. But if you're going to buy a script, that's going to be a problem you face no matter what. The more popular a script is, the more likely it is that someone will try to exploit it. That's one of the other advantages to learning how to DIY (Do It Yourself)...hackers can't be bothered trying that sort of thing for the most part, because the reward is relatively low by comparison (they can only gain access and information from one DIY-coded site vs. potentially thousands that use osCommerce, for example.)

If you're going to buy one, it's going to be very difficult to find a search-engine friendly cart. osCommerce, for example (sorry to use it again, but it happens to be the best one), creates URLs containing session IDs, which are a big no-no when it comes to search engine stuff. That's the biggest problem I've seen with a lot of them: unique identifiers in URLs.

Most of them (e.g. storesonline.com and to a lesser extent osCommerce) tend to create bloated code as well. Code is important from a user standpoint since load time is what keeps users coming (or sends them on their way if it's a long load time), and bad code impacts load time.

If it's a hosted solution (e.g. storesonline.com again), there may be an issue involving domains and carts. It's hard to explain, but with certain hosted solutions, two customer domains with identical URLs after the domain (e.g. www.a.com/store/online/page/1 and www.b.com/store/online/page/1) will show the exact same cart. That's mega-bad-mojo from both an SE standpoint AND a user standpoint.

In other words, the scripts you're going to find simply contain too many weaknesses. I know it's not what you want to hear, but a custom cart is simply the better way to go IF coded correctly.

**talk2christie** · 12-28-2006, 10:31 AM

I agree with Adam..the best way s to do it yourself to make it SEO friendly. Adwords is good but decide on your keywords..thats very important. Expenses here can easily shoot out of control. Do some blogging for free advertisemnt also.

Christie

**djrob29** · 12-29-2006, 01:00 AM

Try PDshop from Pagedown Technology, full featured ASP & ASP.net shopping cart that has great SEO features. I have a few clients that use it, and recommend it, http://www.pagedowntech.com

**vangogh** · 12-29-2006, 02:16 AM

Dan, I agree with Adam here. I would think most of the carts you mentioned will have done some things security wise, but it's true that the more popular they are the more likely it might be that someone has figured out a way in. Chances are they'll be fine for what you need, but understand that nothing is ever 100% secure. Some programs are just more secure than others.

I once used squirrelcart and would recommend it. It's been awhile since I used it and it was before I really knew much about either security or seo so my recommendation isn't based on either. I can't say one way or the other how it compares. What I can say is the support behind it was great. They always answered questions very fast and when I needed something custom added to the cart they did it for me in a couple of days. I did pay for the custom work, but the response time was good. Again I don't really remember much about the cart itself, but since the support was good and they were good to me once I wanted to return the favor.

As for seo most carts probably aren't going to be very friendly. I'm sure there will be some that are more seo friendly than others, but I doubt most will be great. The issues will be duplicate content like Adam mentioned and the session ids in general.

All is not lost though since there are things you can do to remedy the situation, like redirecting to more search friendly urls and ensuring only the pages you want to be indexed are actually indexed. It likely won't be built into the cart, but there are most likely solutions to any unfriendliness that comes with the cart.

Also keep in mind that seo is a lot more than having a search friendly cart. You can have the most seo friendly cart ever created and it's no guarantee your pages will appear in search results. You'll still need to optimize the content on each page and build links to the pages and the site as a whole.

And your English is fine. Had you not mentioned it wasn't your native language I never would have known.

**Web Graphics** · 12-31-2006, 11:17 PM

http://www.creloaded.com

it's oscommerce on steriods!!

But there is many contributions that can make your url's search engine friendly, changing them for a .php extension to a html extension wich is better for search engines.

The main thing in making a site SEO friendly is CONTENT, that is full of relevant keywords.

Now if you look at my site, it is oscommerce cre loaded with even more custom programming to change the url's to make them search engine friendly, but I have spent a fortune making the url's search engine optimized.

The results have paid off, if you google "cre loaded web design" I come up number 3 on page one of google.

So I guess I am saying you can make any cart SEO friendly with some advanced programming, great content, and keywords.

**colbyt** · 01-01-2007, 10:11 AM

No one has mentioned cubecart. You might take a look at it.

It can be free or paid. Will work with or without SSL.

**bzimage** · 01-05-2007, 01:23 PM

I was just going to do that colbyt! I use cubecart and I am ranked number 1 in several terms. Of course this is not because I use cubecart, it still has been optomized by myself for my specific keywords. Id be happy to pm you some info about cubecart and how ive done it, aswell as provide any service you may need to get a cubecart site up and running with ease! Cubecart is free so its worth it!