Just spent the last few days going through several online shopping cart options readily available trying to find one that would suit my needs in selling prints and products as a photographer. There is a large number of free open source options available and most worked perfectly if I wanted to sell regular items like most stores. Instincts WP e-Commerce had an easy to understand interface and seamless integration with Word Press (the backend of my site). The main issues with it were to do with bugs in the variations of a product (in my case print sizes and prices) and also this not being an option with its integration with the Next Gen Gallery plugin.
Finally with a bit more searches on Google I found a shopping cart by Pictures Pro called Photo Cart. Compared to the open source carts it is a little pricey at $329US but is one of the very few carts available specifically designed for photographers and furthermore it’s the closest you’ll ever get to an all in one total solution. I had a good play with their online demos for over a day before making the purchase as I wanted to be sure it did everything I needed it to and so far have no regrets on the purchase. I’m still in the process of styling and customising it to work with my site and needs but I’m very impressed at how well developed it is and would recommend it to any photographer also wanting to sell prints online.
I’m hoping to get everything all setup and with the site accepting orders and payments by the end of the week. Initial card payments will be through the Paypal system until the weekly sales are high and consistent enough to justify the cost of getting a payment gateway directly on the site.
Hey Chris,
Have you got any further feedback on Photo Cart? Would be interesting to see how it panned out for you.
Also another solution similar to Photo Cart is Photography Orders. It’s a little simpler and cleaner than Photo Cart, and a little bit cheaper as well.
Cheers,
Luke
Hi Luke
At the moment I’m fairly happy with the Photo Cart. There off course things in it that could be improved and some things regarding to my particular pricing and discounting structures were fairly difficult to implement but there were always a work around. There is also a good active forum for support and ideas.
I have still to utilize 75% of the features available in Photo Cart and one important thing with any of these online sales tools is coming up with a good workflow. From capturing images, editing, uploading, to sales, order fulfilment and delivery.
Something totally lacking in Australia are easy cost effective third party printers that these tools can be used with. There are plenty of companies overseas that do this but the only Australian based ones I’ve found were too expensive or complicated. I’m self fulfilling any orders at the moment but the ability to have most or all of this completely automated would allow more time to focus on other aspects of the business.
Kind Regards
Chris