I have found that many (most?) of the shared web hosting services that offer shopping baskets tend to become pretty slow about the time that most consumers are browsing sites and wanting to make purchases.
We have created solutions (for artists and other small-time operators) by cutting to the basics. Use the advantages of shared-hosting while limiting their drawbacks as much as possible. Keep the shopping-basket static, except for maybe some javascript UI friendliness.
Create a page that summarizes all the items for sale, allows buyers to choose/fill quantity, automatically provides totals, and collects credit card and other data. On submit, an email is sent to the proprietor to get an order from the admin page.
The proprietor logins to an "admin" page consisting of 2 frames, 1 with instructions (how to print other frame) and a button to delete the orders. The other frame displays the order data, where each order's info is appended to the file.
Essentially, the web orders are treated like any other fax order.
