Make Dreamweaver a Complete E-Commerce Package

Thirty percent of the 4 million registered Adobe Dreamweaver users are active in some type of e-commerce, according to WebAssist's president Eric Ott. If you're among those 1.2 million users of the popular Web site design software, the San Diego-based company offers a range of extensions designed to build on the features of Dreamweaver.

Dreamweaver extensions basically add features beyond those Adobe includes. WebAssist offers a wide range of them — 15 to be exact — including eCart, shopping cart software designed to give Dreamweaver users a way to build and customize e-commerce sites.

eCart nows lets you chose from any PayPal option available. (Click for larger image.)

In a move to offer more shopping cart options, the San Diego-based company today announced the latest version of eCart. The product now supports Website Payments Pro from PayPal.

Announced in June 2005, Website Payments Pro is designed to let you offer more payment options, so your customers can pay through PayPal, a credit card, by phone or on your Web site.

The PayPal Website Payments Pro suite comes in three parts: Express Checkout, Direct Payment API and Virtual Terminal.

Express Checkout is designed to steamline the checkout process to three clicks, according to PayPal. The Direct Payment API lets you accept credit card transactions. Payments are processed through the PayPal system on the back end, and PayPal remains invisible to the buyers. Virtual Terminal supports phone, fax and mail orders by providing you with an online interface to manually enter credit card transactions through the PayPal system.

Regardless of which PayPay option you go with, WebAssist aims to work make eCart play well with it. "We will work with anything Paypal," Ott said.

New Way to Pay
WebAssist also announced that eCart is now available through a subscription model. Instead of paying a one-time fee of $249 for the server based software, you can now subscribe for a monthly fee of $19.99 plus a one-time activation fee of $19.99. Subscriptions may be canceled at any time, Ott said.

WebAssist's eCart is designed to let both quickly get a shopping cart up and running and then customize it later. (Click for larger image.)

Ott said that most hosted stores are easy to set up, but are inflexible. "If you want to make the shopping cart look different you're stuck," he said "It's the Soviet approach."

The new hosted eCart is designed to bridge the gap between those hosted services and code-based (or server-based) offerings. eCart, Ott said, lets you get up and running right away, but then you can go back and customize the shopping cart to better reflect your business and your customers' need.

Another difference between eCart and other shopping carts, Ott said, is that small business owners and Web professionals can build as many stores as they like with eCart at no additional cost under either the subscription or the standard licensed plan. Many online shopping carts charge by the number of stores.

Ott also said that WebAssist, thanks to the recent announcement of its Digital File Pro, lets Dreamweaver users more easily sell digital goods such as software, photos and music. Using Digital File Pro and eCart, you can restrict downloads and set date ranges without needing to hire a third party, Ott said.

Dan Muse is executive editor of internet.com's Small Business Channel, EarthWeb's Networking Channel and ServerWatch.

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