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I’m in the preliminary stages of considering opening my own online store for backpacking gear. In addition to working out how to become a reseller for several of the manufacturers, I’ve been looking around at shopping cart software. The software offered by ashop is among the best I’ve come across so far, with a couple of minor drawbacks.

The customer interface on the shopping cart software is fairly straight forward and easy to follow. It allows for the customer to get information about the items, see a picture, read about it and select from a number of options. It works fairly well in both Firefox and IE (7) and is really eye pleasing in its basic form and layout.

The cart software does require that a customer create a login or login to an already existing account, something that is pretty standard these days among shopping cart softwares.

I was a little put off at first with the admin area when I wasn’t able to use Firefox to login. I don’t know if this is due to some special code they’re using or just because they have a checker in there to make sure that you’re using IE 5.0 or greater, but the fact that I cannot use the admin section in Firefox is a little alarming (since its the second most popular browser today). If the shop section works in both, the admin section should as well.

That being said, it is fairly easy to admin items, add items, check stats on items, send newsletters, look at order status and some other options. For more information, check out ashop shopping cart software and try their demo. The nice thing is that they have demos of both the shopping cart itself and the admin section and they offer a trial period. Pricing is by the month as this is a hosted solution (you host your shop on their servers) and is inexpensive if your shop is actually selling items. For those looking for a self hosted solution, this may not be the best thing for you, but give it a go with the free trial.

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