I am probebly going to end up accepting google checkout (are they still offeing 10x on adsense, is that a limited thing ) to sell products and memberships and so on - But I dont want one of these shopping cart deals where i have to take their templates for loading products. I want to design
my own website and the only time the shopping cart comes into play is when the user clicks Checkout - although i do want to show the total, like amazon, adding up as more items are bought. Im gona float this question out there too - do I need a shopping cart package, can i get something that just deals with the final form to put credit card in, while doing everything else with database software.

So whats the solution Im new to ecommerce and shopping carts - so any hyperlinks for info would be useful too. Am i right in thinking google are much cheaper than papal and any of the others, about 1.5 and 10p / 25c per transaction.

I should warn you, shopping carts are extremely complex to build. Unless you have a good ability with PHP/whatever language you're using, i would suggest getting more practice before attempting one.

That aside, the only way i know how to build them are through paypal. I don't know how to personally accept credit cards/other payment without going through it (then again, i've never tried any of the shopping cart software thats out there).

Does anyone know if you can use Webassists e cart 4.0 with google checkout. Ive not purchased the software yet so anyone got an opinion on it, is it
good, possible alternatives and so on.

I want to use Google checkout for my payment option, but I dont like the sound of users having to sign up to google checkout first. I want to be able to say, YEP your using google checkout, (and it costs me less than 1/2 paypal ) but all you have to do is put your credit card on my site and thats it, like a proffessional web store. At the moment google checkout stands at 1.25 or 1.5 and then 10p with adwords incentives - it cant be beaten, with any online competitor or taking out a merchant account that isnt going to give you less that 2 percent. Any opinions / corrections on the above. Anyone think that google will introduce single credit card payments without membership? Maybe its a waiting game, we have to wait for google to dominate the e commerce market so EVERYONE has a google account, cos at the moment i see, having to sign up to them, just cos u want to buy 3 items off an online store as a 50 percent turn off rate, i.e. 50 percent of sales fall through when this has to be done. If anyone knows of anything that can compete with google, spill the beans.

These questions are all relative to your original thread, so please stick to one thread at a time.

Also google can be surprising informative...

I agree with RC.. the only cart I have had to do I done it all myself and the check out went to paypal and used there HTTPS server and stuff. Even for a paid paypal account it is worth it all not having to worry about all the secure stuff with cards. That is one thing I would not want to tackle.

osCommerce is surprising easy to use and customize and is also open source.

RC is right, shopping carts are extremely complex. Why try and reinvent the wheel though? Use an existing application and customize it to your liking. I believe osCommerce can do Google Checkout now too, not sure.