Actinic and shopping cart questions

Hi, need some advice.

We have a number of domains that have been using free shopping carts, but
it's getting to the point where I need a cart that is faster and easier to
deploy and configure without extensively hacking the code. I've looked at
OsCommerce as an upgrade as I've seen some nice stores using it, but figure
that I'd only be in the same situation as I am with my existing carts, that
is hacking away at the code to get the feature I want, or adding some some
members code which might not work with the next update! I'm particularly
looking at Actinic Developer as it seems to fit the bill. Things that are
important include:

1. Easy to set up and alter the layout,but at the same time not be entirely
dependent on templates i.e. we can do some things ourselves!
2. Choice of creating a customer account or putting an order through as a
guest.
3. Easily configurable shipping -flat fees to begin with based on geographic
region, but may at some point be dependent on weight.
4. Easily configurable discounts (fixed or percentages) which must include
the following: Mix and match discount within a category e.g. buy 2 get
cheapest free; discount based on number of items total or within a category,
or based on total amount spent or amount spent within a certain category;
discount based on type of member. In a nutshell, configurable and flexible.
If my boss tells me we're going to discount X category products e.g. buy
four and get one free, I don't want to spend hours trying to work out how!
5. Cross selling/Upselling: being able to group like products together or
promote the sale of something more expensive; have a "previous customers
also purchased these items..." display; bestsellers list; prompts at
checkout saying "have you thought about buying this" -basically heavily
featured for selling.
6. Incorporate Free gifts based on order amounts.
6. Abilty to email the order as opposed to store it on the server, obviously
using pgp or similar.
7. Be search engine friendly without having to do do extra work outside of
the shopping cart.
8. Ability to upload/integrate existing flat file products database.
9. Abillity to configure the "thank you for your order" page to work with an
affiliate program e.g. image call based on subtotal of total order.

Is the current Actinic (or others) capable of all this fairly easily and
quickly? I would go for OsCommerce but I don't relish the thought of having
to brush up on PHP and MySQL for what could end up being 30 or so
differently configured stores. I'm trying to think smarter as the Actinic
Developer cost would far outweigh my time spent configuring OsCommerce
multiple number of times.

Any thoughts on this or confirmation that Actinic can do the above?

Thanks

David



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On Thu, 27 Nov 2003 11:08:10 -0000, "Dan" <dan.TakeThisOut@spamawayaway.com> wrote:

 >We have a number of domains that have been using free shopping carts, but
 >it's getting to the point where I need a cart that is faster and easier to
 >deploy and configure without extensively hacking the code. I've looked at
 >OsCommerce as an upgrade as I've seen some nice stores using it, but figure
 >that I'd only be in the same situation as I am with my existing carts, that
 >is hacking away at the code to get the feature I want, or adding some some
 >members code which might not work with the next update! I'm particularly
 >looking at Actinic Developer as it seems to fit the bill. Things that are
 >important include:

Howdy Dan,

Ramble around <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://bizycart.com" target="_blank">http://bizycart.com</a> and do some comparisons. The only thing
to install is a little asp launch script. Everything else is handled with
compiled server code and what's in the web pages and data base.

If you click the DESIGNER SAMPLES link, at the foot of the block diagram is
a link where you can log in and review the entire web mangement with live
screens instead of pictures.

BIZyCart has a remote mode so you can continue where you are currently
hosted or shift to BIZynet hosting.

Thanks, Chris <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.bizynet.com" target="_blank">http://www.bizynet.com</a>
BIZynet Coordinator cgunn.TakeThisOut@bizynet.com
Moderator of biz.general, biz.marketplace.discussion, biz.healthcare,
biz.marketplace.web-design, biz.marketplace.international & others<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->