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Some notes from my experience to people looking to use this as a solution:

- When you set it up you will HAVE to enter in the access key ID, access key and associate id (amazon will assign it normally)

- You must use the "Blended" search index and then add keywords to the "anti-keywords" to modify the listing and get a search-like functionality.

- You will have to edit the CSS and deal with caching, you will not see your CSS updates right away.

- You must create a new navigation item and enter in parameters to get a Category listing.

- Cart functionality does work and transfers over to Amazon Checkout, which is useful for Google not penalizing you.

- There will be no support, there are quite a few posts in forum that are weeks old without replies, not sure what's going on there...

So I was asked to connect an Amazon Site to Joomla for a Client after many letdowns and a quick rundown of the functions I decided to buy the component which worked pretty much as it says on its site, i'll list the pro's and cons below.

Pro's
1. Installed without issue

2. Connected to Amazon Account perfectly and was able to sell in minutes.

3. Worked inside our default template without too many issues (more on this below).

4. It is the ONLY option for Connecting your checkout / merchant account there is for J! out there - However for regular affiliates / A-store owners there are other options which will actually work better with less hacking, styling and development and manage give you a search function.

5. Money Back if you aren't happy .. I cant speak about this area but if they are true to their word you cant go wrong.

6. As always it has to be said - its not free, but not expensive considering how much it'd cost to develop something like this from scratch.

Con's
1. Default Styling SUCKS - I expected it would look better and possibly have a few templates options included.

2. There was issues with the included defualt CSS and IE. Easy to fix if you know what you are doing, but will cause a headache if you dont.

3. No Amazon Search Function - If you were expecting this you are out of luck.

4. Setting individual product or specifying generic ones for each part of your store can be difficult and means swapping between amazon/joomla to get the right search option.

5. I kinda expected that the entire checkout process would remain on the clients site, the cart really just transfers the purchases to Amazon for final payment which might be off putting to customers not expecting a redirect to Amazon, it also isnt the prettiest option.

Note: This was my bad for not playing enough with the demo.

Overall:
A great "starting point" component if you are willing to put the time into adjusting the styling and layout, or paying a developer to do it. If you arent familiar with CSS/HTML and a Lil bit of PHP be warned!


Future Requests I'd love to see to take this to the next level.

1. Search Function - its technically included already when you set up pages, surely this could be included as a module or store function instead for drilldown ?

2. Template Layouts and schemes - a few decent ones

3. IE fixes - this is Major for some clients.

4. Easier Template System to the component and Modules for non-techhies e.g. just change background images to match to your site... and make all non generic references in the CSS e.g "button" where not needed.

5. Keep users on site throughout checkout, both for signin / signup. This really would be the icing on the cake - I don't know if the API allows for this, i thought Zencart allows it though.

Honestly if the above was put in place it'd Rock more than it does... I have a VERY Happy Client though who's been screwed over by multiple developers who said they could integrate his shop to amazon for the past 6 months with no avail and lots of $ spent. Thanks to this I had it running within minutes and styled and tested within 48 hours.

Thanks