I'm about set up my first eCommerce site. I was hoping you could recommend some shopping cart software. What are the perks of using pre-built software rather than developing some simple solution catered to my needs. Also, are there pre-written Terms and conditions for sites? Or templates that outline what aspects need to be addressed? What other things should I look out for when building this website?
Also, I develop in PHP server side, so software in that language would be best.
Google Checkout is probably a good starting point for a clean base to start from: http://checkout.google.com/sell/.
The hands down easiest all in one ecommerce platform IMO is the Yahoo Small Business platform - you have a number of options there, including using hosting and php. It's not free, but you get EVERYTHING you need to run an eCommerce store all in one painless spot - your cart, ssl, content management, integration for merchant gateway, shipping rules, integration with ups realtime rates... Order processing, the whole nine.
There are two ways to develop on this platform - using their proprietary RTML language, or use the hosting that you get with it and access the items in your catalog through what they call store tags.
So I wound up writing my own shopping cart software because the site is not based in the U.S. and services like PayPal and Google Checkout do not cover it. I coupled my cart with an API from a national bank to charge credit cards. This required SSL which was easy enough to set up.
I found a Terms and Conditions generator online and used that to lay out the basics of the document. Then I added site specifics myself and tried to sound as much like a lawyer as possible.
I use osCommerce a lot, but this software is a bit outdated. Magento is a good alternative for setting up a commerce website.