Help, I need a shopping cart!

I just introduced myself in the Introductions forum.

So, here's the deal. I have an embroidery business. I have a URL and hosting. My URL is dancingbayembroidery . com and my hosting is through HostGator. The next step I need to take is to have an online store where I can reach a larger audience for my items.

Currently, I have a tenth way done website which uses WordPress, Cart66, and Gravity Forms. I can find no documentation to tell me how to marry these 3 together, especially Cart66 and Gravity Forms. I work on it a while and then get frustrated and quit for a few weeks or month. It's been going on for over 6 months now and I just have to get something up and running and looking good. This looks pretty terrible.

Each items I sell needs theses questions answered:

- Quantity
- Item Color
- Thread Color
- Font
- Type of Monogram or other text
- Additional Embellishment & thread color for additional embellishments.
- and a text box for special orders like custom made logos and such

Then on some of the products I need to know if the customer wants
- rhinestones (and how many)
- feathers (and feather color)
- ribbon (and ribbon color)

Additionally for apparel, I need to know size.

So, lots of product variations.

One of my wholesalers has a website with a csv file that I believe is created dynamically from their database. The main thing I'm interested in from this csv file is the inventory. A lot of times, when something is sold out, it's sold out for the season, or possible not restocked at all. I don't want to offer for sale, accept money, etc... for an item in December that I cannot get until September, for example. So, I'd like to have the option of extracting that info from the csv file. The csv file actually contains everything I would need to display the page for each item. There's a short and long description, wholesale and suggested retail prices, link to the image, SKU, weight and inventory totals. I have written a little script that reads that file and dumps the information into an array which runs great at localhost, but have not uploaded it to my server. I don't see any reason it won't work live.

Payment gateways. I'm not interested in a merchant account like Authorize . net. I ran numbers and I don't come anywhere near having enough sales period, much less cc sales to make it worth my while. I have a PayPal Standard account and a Square cc reader for my phone. I also have a Stripe account and a Mijireh account that I have not used yet, but plan to when I get my site going. There is a break even point, however, and if I ever get there, then it will make more since to have a merchant account than to use PayPal.

I've struggled to figure out if I can use the information in the csv file with Wordpress or Cart66, but cannot get straight answers, especially from Cart66. I've been on their forums numerous times asking for help, even offering to pay, but all I get is comments over my head, or Cart66 can't do that, or condesionion. Gravity Forms documentation is also pretty criptic for someone who doesn't know the termonology. For instance, I don't really understand hooks, but they keep tell me that I need to use a hook. Could you give me an example of a hook? So I get one, but no information on where to put it or how to use it ect... At this point, I'm ready to throw WP/Cart66/GravityForms out the window and start over. It can't be any worse than it is now, right?

Can you tell I'm frustrated? This past week, I started looking a stand alone shopping carts like TomatoCart and AgoraCart. I know what I want and what I need, but what I really need is for someone who has experience with a shopping cart that will meet my needs to give me some advice.

So, can anyone please give me some advice on what shopping carts I need to consider?

Thank you,
Alisa
Dancing Bay Embroidery

throw at least $1000-2000 at a developer that knows what they are doing, depending on the work may need a little more. Give it a few weeks. Shopping cart software is all the same really the only difference is that they are built different and look different but do the same job so you just need someone to rewrite all the code into what you need. there is no documentation on this because it is all custom work. Hire a developer that is trust worthy and knows what they are doing, don't cheap out on it either and invest into your company not cut corners otherwise you just get messy crap that does not work or gain sales. Make sure SSL is on every page too and secure checkout linked to paypal also so you have trust worthy payment system.

Wish I had that much to spend, but I spent most of my money on the embroidery machine. To pay someone to do the site, I will have to wait until I can save it up. I would love to have something that looks decent and will at least boost my sales some so that I can save the money for a decent site faster. If I can't pay for something without a loan, I don't buy it.

I've been looking at ZenCart today. It looks pretty good and is open source, so I think I'll give it a try. Doing more research though on templates and such.

Thanks,
Alisa