StoreFront 6 AE Reviewer's Comments
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StoreFront 6 AE by LaGarde, is a very good shopping cart. StoreFront is a Design-Tool E-commerce shopping cart. Which really means it is a plug–in for FrontPage¨ and Dreamweaver¨. StoreFront is the best of the three design–tool products on our review list. The other two are JustAddCommerce and SalesCart. It is simple to use, and allows for great customization of your website. The main drawback is you need other software to run this type of shopping cart. If you are familiar with these products ( Dreamweaver or Frontpage )and want the ability to create your own website and still have great merchant tools then StoreFront is your answer.
Feature Set:
There are many great features StoreFront offers. Their built–in affiliate program is a great and easy utility giving you the option of setting the commission price. The software allows you to set up price groups and you can set individual customers to certain price groups. You can then build individual relations with your consumers. Storefront offers great coupon and discount options allowing you to make any type of coupon you can think of. Importing your existing product database is a snap with storefront. Another great option is that you can integrate live chat into storefront. StoreFront’s shipping capabilities are great and easy–to–use. You can easily customize options for UPS, FedEx, USPS. You can also determine which countries or locations that you won’t ship to, calculate shipping by weight, price, and many other configurations.
StoreFront AE has only a few limitations. The traffic report leaves something to be desired. There is only one traffic report available from the hosting side.
Ease of Use:
Storefront's merchant tools are very easy to use. Because it is a server–based shopping cart, nothing is actually installed on your hard drive. In your browser you will see a title bar on the left hand side that has all the topics to edit and use. This product is more complicated due to the fact you need to know Dreamweaver or FrontPage to make your website. There are no built–in Wizards to design your website. If you have never used Dreamweaver or FrontPage there will be a steep learning curve to get your website up. You can’t just simply choose from a variety of templates to start building your website like our top three shopping carts.
Ease of Installation:
StoreFront has an online help manual for you when you try to install StoreFront. If you are familiar with Dreamweaver or FrontPage then the installation is fairly easy. If not, ShopSite Pro would be a better choice for your shopping cart needs.
Help/Documentation:
The Help is excellent. There are Knowledge–based questions, quick start guides, tutorials, and an online community. There is context-sensitive Help on each page, which means you get your answers to your specific questions without trying to maneuver through a large index of help. Whatever you are working on or have highlighted, if you push the help button, it gives you help about what you are on. The help button is easy to see. The other great help service is the online chat. It’s easy to use and you get your questions answered as fast as you can type.
True E–Commerce Solution:
Is StoreFront AE an E–commerce solution? Yes. StoreFront AE will host your website for you.It gives you the merchant tools to manage your website, offers the ability for credit card processing, allows flexible shipping options, they have a built–in affiliate program and you can integrate your products into available marketplaces, all while making your website as secure as possible. The only downside in this solution is there is no web page wizard setup. In other words, you have to design the page using other software. If you use Dreamweaver or FrontPage this would be a great product for you.
Summary:
If you do not need to build a website using wizards and templates and are familiar with Dreamweaver or FrontPage then StoreFront is a very good choice. The ability to pay month–by–month makes it an exceptional buy.
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