Electronic Commerce with SoftCart
By Chris Baron
Online shopping is becoming commonplace as Web stores, I-malls, and electronic shopping boutiques spring up across the Web. Often the electronic shopper will collect his treasures in a virtual shopping cart, an efficient and familiar way for users to do their shopping. In the early days (1995), virtual-shopping-cart systems were either custom built or created using freely available but minimally supported freeware components. This approach was fine for rugged pioneers blazing trails in Web commerce, but a new generation of Web tenderfeet demands solid, commercially supported products to build their online stores.
Mercantec
FigureSoftCart v2.10 (www.mercantec.com) aims to answer this need. With a list price of $895, plus an optional $175 annually for support, SoftCart is definitely not aiming at helping Junior sell his baseball-card collection over the Web. Compared to the cost of a custom-programmed system, however, SoftCart's price tag is quite reasonable. Targeted toward professional developers and ISPs, the clean architecture and simple configuration allow any Web developer with a site or two under his belt to create an online storefront quickly and easily. No knowledge of CGI, Perl, or C programming is needed.
What's in the Box?
In a word, nothing. SoftCart is distributed in electronic form, although a boxed version is in the works.
