Cart66 — Shopping Cart Review
Cart66 seems very efficiently developed. Unlike other plugins that try to pack-in as many features as possible, Cart66 leverages what’s already available. For example, instead of building yet another affiliates management software, they integrate existing and popular affiliate software with their cart. Instead of managing product categories, they utilize existing WordPress API to help with that.
There are two versions of Cart66, free and professional. The
free version can be downloaded from WordPress.org. Both versions are licensed under the
GPL. So, in a sense, both plugins are free. What you buy from Cart66 is the support, tutorials, documentation, and entitlement to upgrades.
Cart66 lite (the free version) is a fully functional shopping cart. But
it has limitations that any serious merchant would eventually run into. Cart66 professional (the paid version) is a more practical ecommerce solution. That’s why I bought it and it is what I’ll cover in this full report and analysis.
You would choose Cart66 if you wanted a professional-grade and well-rounded ecommerce solution for WordPress. And if you are willing to handle the presentation of your store with WordPress themes rather than have the cart handle the appearance for you.
Cart66 can manage all types of merchandise, like physical products, digital products, and even services and recurring memberships.
Because Cart66 is open source, it is very easy to install. Simply upload and activate. If you’re a real newb, though, there’s a step by step guide on how to install Cart66 provided in the members area.
Technical support provided through two channels: email and community forums. The community forums are only accessible to paying customers. The support forums are actually useful and actively monitored.
Members also get access to several detailed tutorials and a full user-manual PDF.
Upon activating
Cart66, it’ll create several WordPress Pages. These pages are important for the functionality of the shopping cart. Then to display products on your Cart66-powered WordPress site, you’ll use shortcodes. You can write the
shortcode yourself, or click on the Cart66 button in the Visual Editor to have it insert the shortcode for you.
Screenshot: Cart66 adding a productCart66 supports product variations. I’ll copy what’s said about product variations in the user manual. It’s pretty useful.
“Cart66 let’s you specify product variations. So if you are selling t-shirts you customers can select what size and color they would like using drop down menus on your website. You can even specify product options that change the price of the product. For example, if you are selling t-shirts, you may want to charge and extra $2.00 of the XXL size. Or perhaps, you are selling headphones and you want to reduce the normal price of a set of headphones by $10.00 because you have an open box or refurbished set of headphones. You can specify up to two groups of product options with as many options in each group as you like.
Suppose you are selling t-shirts that cost $15 each and you offer small, medium, large, and extra large sizes. You want to charge an extra $2.00 for the extra large size. You also have both white and navy blue colors. Cart66 has two product option group fields for you to list these product variations. You would enter them as follows:
Option Group 1: Size: S, Size: M, Size: L, Size: XL +$2.00
Option Group 2: Color: White, Color: Navy Blue
After specify these options, you will get a product button that looks like this:
The product options are simply typed in and separated by commas. Notice that all you have to do to change the price of a product is add a plus sign followed by a dollar amount. If you want to decrease the price of your product, such as with the refurbished option, you simply add a minus sign followed by the dollar amount by which you want to reduce the price.
Suppose you were selling headphones and wanted to have the option for your
customers to buy either new or refurbished headphones. You could specify those options as follows:
Option Group 1: New, Refurbished -$10.00
After specifying these options, you will get a product button that looks like this:”
The way
Cart66 handles shipping methods and calculation is very flexible and robust.
First, you can set various shipping methods, each with a default rate and an incremental amount per added item. Then, you can specify a shipping rate for each product and additional items of the same product. Or, you can specify a shipping rate based on the order amount.
Another great feature that Cart66 supports is Live Shipping Rates, which calculates shipping costs automatically based on customer location and the weight of the items in their cart. Currently, this only works with UPS. However, integration with FedEx, and USPS are currently planned.
Cart66′s tax management is made for American and Canadian merchants specifically. You are able to specify a tax rate per state or province. If your store is for another country, handling taxes with Cart66 may not be possible.
