You got a product to sell. How are you going to do it? I have been asking myself the same question. This must be a problem that has been solved. So now I just need to get that solution on my own web site.The overall goal is to get a shopping cart up and running with as little cost as possible. Most options involve a recurring monthly cost. Some make you pay an up front setup fee. The ones I like the most are those that charge a certain percentage of your sales. That sounds best because it limits the risk in case nobody buys my goods.
The costs are sometimes tricky. Often times shopping carts require you to have a merchant account, which itself has a monthly cost. Once the pricing structure is down, I would prefer a solution that does not require a lot of technology on my web server. Those technologies may bump me into a higher web hosting plan.
I would like the user experience to be optimal. That means I prefer the cart to work seamlessly with my my web site. It would be better if the user did not have to leave my site to go to a payment processing site. And it is easier for me if I don't need to do a lot (or any) customer programming to get the shopping cart working on my site. Let's see what is out there that meets my needs.
