E-Commerce articles for startup companies

E-Commerce basics related articles

X-Cart related articles

E-Commerce software comparisons

For the ecommerce newbies we have also collected some materials regarding the nuts and bolts of this new rapidly developing industry. If this sphere is new for you, start with reading the materials on common e-commerce questions, the basic terms of it and the common problems faced by anyone who starts his own online business.

What are shopping carts? How to obtain one for yourself, how long will it take and what resources are necessary for that? Find out the basic details regarding online shopping systems in this publication written especially for the e-commerce users.

Finding a decent web space for your store might be rather complicated task especially if you are new to the site building industry. There are so many proposals available at the market that one might be confused by the range of prices and hosting plans. This article describes the factors that should be taken into consideration when you're looking for a hosting company.

Payment gateway is another important part of your store functioning. This article describes the main differences between the credit card processing schemas and tells about the options and features you can expect and choose from.

The majority of consumers now expect security to be integrated into any online service they use, as a result they expect any details they provide via the Internet to remain confidential and integral. The article explains what is SSL and how you can ulilize SSL certificates to activate the core security technology available on your existing webserver.

Step by step instructions to set up SSL on your Apache webserver.

Step by step instructions to set up SSL on your Microsoft IIS 5x webserver.

This article explains how good validation processes play a critical part in the preservation of a trusted e-commerce infrastructure.

What do you need to know about starting a successful affiliate program? Here are some useful tips for a successful affiliate.

It's not always easy for the newbies to get oriented in the world of new terms. E-Commerce as any other industry "speaks its own language" and there are many special definitions used to describe its main points. This article explains most of the basic terms of the e-commerce world.

After you downloaded the distribution package, it's time to perform your store setup. Following this step-by-step instruction describing every aspect of setup process you can (in most cases) easily do the installation on your own.

What should you start with after you've done with the installation procedure? There are some recommendations regarding primary store configuration before you start selling in a live mode. Read further to find out the starting directions.

X-Cart allows manual adding and editing of each item in the product catalogue. However, it's often a question of vital importance to be able to import your existing catalogue stored in some external format. Find out the details of product import into X-Cart database.

Want to change the logo, color scheme, layout of the structure of blocks on your pages? Using X-Cart template features, one can change the standard design features beyond recognition and make an unique look for his storefront.

New versions of X-Cart contain many useful improvements, features and bug fixes. That's why it's so important to stay on top of the actual state of this product. For this reason we have developed a simple and clear upgrade mechanism, and this instruction explains every step of the upgrade process.

The fact that you're not satisfied with your current hosting company does not mean that you'll ever have to loose all of your data and completely re-install X-Cart distribution on a new hosting service. Your store can quickly and safely be moved to the new destination and start functioning as if nothing were wrong.

Some time after your storefront starts its live functioning you might notice the slow down of its performance (the pages download slower, the pause between page movements increased etc). It doesn't necessary mean you need a new hosting plan with more powerful and more expensive server hardware. Take some basic steps described here and you will easily improve the performance of your store.

X-Cart and LiteCommerce are e-commerce solutions offered by Qualiteam Software.
X-Cart is a well-known shopping cart product used on thousands live online stores worldwide. It has almost all features a web shop owner can dream of. LiteCommerce is its younger e-commerce brother yet flexible and more end-user friendly for beginners in e-commerce.

Nowadays Google Analytics is very popular among website owners - it offers a lot of features, has clean and intuitive interface, provides many website statistics reports, features built-in integration with Google AdWords and best of all its free. Compare Google Analytics with other website analytics solution - Sales-n-Stats which combines website analytics, "live help" and visitor tracking functionality in one package.

AgoraCart is a free shopping cart software with a long history. There are many storefronts based on this ecommerce solution and the community of users is quite large and active. This ecommerce software is constantly developing and the new releases become available several times a year.

Actinic Business is a highly functional and feature-rich out-of-the-box online business system. It has very flexible design engine which allows easy integration of available solutions. Also it has very rich import/export and integrative features.

CubeCart is one of the best-known free ecommerce storefront solutions. The license fee is only taken for the company information removal; the free version is heavily filled with CubeCart labels and information.

Miva Merchant is shopping cart software with module-based architecture and very flexible storefront design functionality. Shopping cart engine provides open API which allows built-in modules creation by third-party persons and companies.

MonsterCommerce is one of the best-known hosted shopping cart solutions. It means that you'll receive completely pre-setup hosted ecommerce system with ready hosting solution and turn-key installation.

If we speak about free shopping cart software, any comparison review would mention osCommerce as one of the best-known open source software for online business. This product has one of the largest community of users, developers, volunteer contributions, there are hundreds of modules available for free download.

ShopFactory ecommerce solution has various modifications greatly varying in functionality. This software has many strong sides for those who look for out-of-the box storefront solution with easy installation and feature-rich design engine.

SunShop is the shopping cart software from the same price range as X-Cart. This product is very flexible if we speak about storefront design, taxes, shipping and many other features. The company which sells this ecommerce platform also offers a good range of services such as design, web development etc.

VP-ASP is open-source ASP-based software for online business. It is offered via several distribution packages varying in price and features (in our review we examine the features of the most powerful package).

PinnacleCart is one of the few ecommerce products offering two kinds of licenses for your choice: hosted (monthly fee) or distribution package (one-time fee) for which you can choose some third-party company. The store builders highlights include flexible shipping system, payment configuration and wide range of promotion tools.