Introduction to the Favorite Shopping Carts Survey

In February 2003 we received 140 survey responses from readers of Web Marketing Today, Doctor Ebiz, and Web Commerce Today, asking them to vote for their favorite (and unfavorite) shopping cart programs, and to comment on them if they desired. Our readers selected about 50 carts. Here's how our readers voted. The graph on this page includes the most popular programs. (A bar graph appears on the detail page.) Actual data from the survey is below. Note: not all respondents gave reasons why they liked a cart, and a couple of respondents voted for several favorites, but not so as to greatly skew the results.

You'll see my observations at the bottom of this webpage. First, the data.

Whenever we do this kind of reader's survey, some software developers write us and blame us for being unfair, for not giving them a chance, etc. I encourage such insecure developers to "grow up." This does not presume to be a scientific survey. Nor are all the readers' candid comments necessarily well thought through or completely fair. They are just candid opinions -- but as such are quite valuable. I have excluded a couple of comments that I felt overly puffed one product or overly downed another, but other than that I have allowed my readers' comments to come through clearly. I hope you find their comments useful.

Types of Sales of Respondents

You might be interested in what kinds of products are sold by these respondents. Here's what they reported:

Leading carts varied on the kind of products sold:

Most of the respondents reported modest sales. But a few reported rather large monthly sales revenue.

A chart of Shopping Cart Systems Used by Higher Revenue Stores is found on its own webpage.

Results of the survey on Order Management Solutions are found on another webpage.

My Observations

• The best carts are not necessarily represented by the most votes. Microsoft Commerce Server is arguably the most flexible cart listed and was voted for by only one respondent -- one that does over $1 million per month in volume.

• The most popular carts also tended to receive the most negative votes. All this means is that more people know about them and have tried them -- and some had a bad experience with them. Yahoo! Store and Miva are popular, but have a substantial number of cart-haters -- Yahoo! Store especially, probably because of their pricing changes.

• The e-commerce software market is diverse and maturing. Several years ago I predicted that the shopping cart software market would contract to just a few vendors. The opposite has happened. Dozens of carts are used, with hundreds still available. And all carts are much better now than a few years ago, with more options for product display, shipping, inventory, e-mail marketing, affiliate programs, etc.

• I see some relative newcomers that weren't on my radar before. This survey brought to my attention some newer hosted carts that include order management capabilities -- Mals-e.com (www.mals-e.com) and Nexternal Solutions (www.nexternal.com).  osCommerce (www.oscommerce.com) is an open code system based on PHP and MySQL that can run on both Unix and Windows servers. Interchange (www.icdevgroup.org) is another open systems cart with great flexibility to hook to both new and existing databases. Both are "free" but will take a good bit of customizing and perhaps debugging.

• There is no single right shopping cart choice. Unless you're looking for an enterprise-level shopping cart system, probably many carts will meet your needs. Yes, they vary -- some are simple, some are flexible, some have many tools available, some are priced at different levels.

• Brief user comments, both pro and con, are most helpful. Take the user comments on shopping carts with a grain of salt, but you'll probably avoid some bad decisions in choosing a shopping cart by reading the user comments. Some will steer you clear of problems you didn't know existed!

Have fun as you learn from your fellow e-commerce merchants!