I’ve been looking over shopping carts for weeks, and wow. All carts are not created equal. Good developers make a cart that works. Really good developers know we need—

• A smoothly paved checkout for our customers, not one filled with roadblocks and speedbumps (like registration and logins),
• The shopping cart to look a lot like our blog, so customers won’t feel we’ve dropped them off in a foreign land, and
• A really short distance between the Buy Now button and the Thank You! page, so most of our customers will make it to the end.

Here are 5 shopping cart solutions developed particularly for WordPress. There are both plugins and themes here, all created by really good developers, with all the right features (plus a few that may surprise you).

Ecwid

I really like the look of Ecwid, let me count the ways: 1) Easy-to-install plugin, 2) Realtime shipping quotes and realtime tracking, 3) Data import and export with good ol’ comma-separated data files (CSV), 4) A vanilla HTML version for SEO and mobile users, and 5) It’s free. @ecwid on Twitter

LemonStand

LemonStand is customizable down to the bone. We can make it look however we want, and even shorten a lengthy checkout (like in their demo) down to a single page. There are the usual bells and whistles for our customers, but they reserved the really good stuff for us. Under the hood are Google Analytics-style graphs and charts for tracking orders, products, coupons and such. @lemonstand on Twitter

Shopp

This was the first WordPress shopping cart plugin I saw, and it left a mark. Featured at WordCamp Boston, Shopp pretty much covers all the bases: Sidebar shopping cart, a variety of discount and promotional tools, lots of tracking, and product RSS feeds. Having to buy add-ons for shipping rates is a bit of a bummer, but there’s plenty else to like about it. @shopplugin on Twitter

Sarah-neuber.de

Sarah has developed some of the most elegant storefronts I’ve seen. Aside from their clean style, what makes her themes better than most? Each is an ecommerce work horse. That’s right, a full-featured shopping cart—tangible and digital products, coupons and international shipping, and more—is built right in. @srhnbr on Twitter

WP eCommerce

Another WordCamp Boston feature, Instinct’s WP eCommerce plugin installs in a few clicks, has all the features you would expect, plus it ties to Google Base/Google Product Search. I didn’t see a demo and the Help area isn’t searchable (ugh!), but the client showcase and affordable premium upgrades make up for it. @DanMilward on Twitter

What do you think?

Are you using (or have you used) any of these plugins or themes? Have you heard they’re good, bad, or meh? I looked them over, but haven’t had a chance to play with them. I’d love to hear what you think…do tell!