Are you a website owner or a web designer/developer? If either applies, I would venture to say that eventually you'll need an online shopping cart for one of your websites. In fact, almost all new websites today need some sort of ecommerce built-in, for the purpose of selling goods and services in the online marketplace.
The greatest challenge is to find the perfect ecommerce shopping cart solution for yourself and/or your client. This task can be very overwhelming, considering, if you type 'shopping cart' into Google.com, this search alone returns over 14.4 million hits! Most of us don't have the time to sift through more than a few pages of a search engine to find what we're looking for.
For the last 3 months, much of my time has been devoted to researching as much shopping cart technology as I could get my hands on. In general, shopping cart software ranges in price from free to over $2000 for a single license and web hosted carts range from $5 to hundreds of dollars per month. The studied carts cover the spectrum of all web programming languages (ASP, ASP.NET, Cold Fusion, Flash, Java, JavaScript & Perl shopping carts) and provide limitless features as a whole. The problem is that locating YOUR perfect cart with YOUR specific features can be a big task.
But no fear, just follow this guaranteed step-by-step guide to locate it:
The Top 10 Steps to Finding the Best Online Shopping Cart
Cost
How much money do you have to spend on an internet shopping cart? The nice advantage is that there are shopping carts with hundreds of features and they don't cost you a dime. They are generally open source products. The only problem is that these same "free shopping carts" can take hours of installation time and be fairly difficult to configure. For a monthly fee, web hosting shopping carts are made for users with little programming experience and allows them to have an online storefront presence in no time.
Hosting vs. Software
There are two options in selecting your overall shopping cart solution. Either you get shopping cart software, download it, install it on your web server, then configure the shopping cart OR you get an online storefront (aka a hosted shopping cart) where the configuration is very basic and the required setup time is minimal. If you have some programming skills, I recommend buying a script and installing it on your own. The nice thing is that you pay a one-time fee for shopping cart software and the license is good for a lifetime. It's approximately the same price to have a hosted solution for a year compared to most one time shopping cart license fees.
Supported Gateways
What do I mean by gateways? Gateways give shopping carts the ability to connect and securely process credit card orders in real-time. Not all shopping carts are created equal. Make sure that your client's merchant account is supported by the cart you select. I have found that almost all carts support the larger online payment processing companies, such as Authorize.net, PayPal and Verisign.
Shipping Options
Will you be shipping physical products? If so, there are shopping carts that have built-in real-time shipping options through DHL, UPS And USPS. Often times, the cart gives the user the ability to view tracking orders and order status all from within your secure shopping cart web interface. Also, there are shopping carts with options to ship digital goods as well (files, programs, pictures, music and others).
Technical Support
What kind of technical support does your shopping cart offer? If you choose to purchase a script, be sure to also subscribe to the shopping cart creator's newsletter, so that you can stay on top of future updates to the software. Be aware that technical support is generally available on a pay-per-incident basis, as a yearly fee or in the rare case, free. Be sure to know what kind of customer support guarantee the shopping cart comes with.
Security
Please, only buy a shopping cart if it supports SSL (secure socket layer), with 128-bit encryption. As an online storefront, remember that you are responsible for the safe transfer of sensitive information (credit card and bank account information) that is processed through your store. If any of the sensitive information is accessible (stolen) from your website, you could be liable. Be sure that you're purchasing a secure shopping cart solution. Ask the creator's of the shopping cart what they do specifically to protect the secure transfer of sensitive information.
Style Compatibility
Can you customize your shopping cart to look like your website? There needs to be a seamless transition between your website and your shopping storefront or your customers might get hesitant in purchasing your products. There should be similar colors and style layout to look professional and believable.
Extra Features
I just wanted to mention some of the other features that I have discovered, which might be a critical point in determining the shopping cart you want.
Affiliate Program - Offer your own customized affiliate program through your shopping cart software. Quickbooks Integration - Many carts allow direct integration with Quickbooks.
Newsletter & Mailing Letter Managers - The ability to stay in touch with your current customers and keep them returning to your online store.
Custom Taxing Options - Create taxable or tax-free products and have the ability to add various global tax options at checkout.
World Languages & Currencies - Shopping cart language translation and support for world currency might be a necessary feature for your cart.
Error Free
You mean shopping carts can have errors? Of course. A private UK-based web testing firm found the following, after studying a large group of UK online shopping carts for a period of one month (24/7):"The majority of UK web sites are guilty of leaving e-consumers stranded at the checkout empty handed, once they have already spent valuable time browsing and selecting goods to purchase. This is due to erratic functionality within shopping carts, at a critical step in the online purchasing process."
"E-consumers are prevented from making purchases on UK web sites for 9 hours and 30 minutes a month on average, (115 hours a year)." "80 per cent of web sites perform inconsistently with widely varying response times, timeouts and errors - leaving consumers at best wondering what to do next and at worst unable to complete their purchase successfully. This is potentially costing e-retailers millions in lost sales from consumer frustrations." (http://www.scivisum.co.uk/report/ecommerce/)
Be sure to see what other users are saying about a shopping cart that you might be interested in purchasing. Any shopping cart errors could cost you thousands of dollars in sales. Get a stable and secure cart.
Shopping Cart Directory
The following is a link containing a directory of shopping carts that are categorized according to each of the above-stated steps. Make shopping for shopping carts a breeze!
Shopping Cart Directory
If you have any questions or comments about this article, please contact the author.
About The Author
Evan Stevens (http://www.evanstevens.com) is a professional web developer. This article reviews ecommerce online shopping carts.
Businesses, which are still sitting on sidelines and not doing... Read More
The process of learning how to accept payments on the... Read More
All of the long, grueling nights and an unknown number... Read More
ClickBank is the Internet's most popular payment processor for online... Read More
Did you know that 80% of all sales are made... Read More
E-commerce offers customers the chance to eliminate many stages in... Read More
Greetings!Friends and relitives ask us all the time " How... Read More
What does "helping your visitors" mean exactly?It means writing your... Read More
The 21st century has introduced the world to a new... Read More
The Internet has changed the way people do business today.... Read More
SSL ("Secured Socket Layer") is a protocol used to... Read More
A year ago, I had big plans to re-vamp my... Read More
Only a few manage to sell everything under the sun... Read More
Internet has opened a new era of business opportunities. Each... Read More
I have written at length about the need to anticipate... Read More
Choosing an online shopping cart is a big decision. Unlike... Read More
Ecommerce use to be about spending thousands of dollars on... Read More
As the mother of a teenage clothing fanatic I'm often... Read More
The development and expansion of the Internet has made business... Read More
Did you know that 80% of all sales are made... Read More
If you have little or no capital but you want... Read More
As e-commerce develops ambiguities in the current tax code in... Read More
Fraud is a huge issue when it comes to the... Read More
As you may have noted, there are thousands or even... Read More
Did you know that over 90% of all online orders... Read More
Data from China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) shows that... Read More
Let's face it, there's just way too much information out... Read More
Just because you've built your e-commerce website doesn't mean the... Read More
"Your home page is the world's introduction to you and... Read More
In addition to Google's Froogle shopping service (still in beta),... Read More
If you have been wrestling with the idea of applying... Read More
The days of easy money are overIn these post-dot-com days... Read More
Once your website has secured an order, you have to... Read More
Only a few manage to sell everything under the sun... Read More
To conduct business on the Internet, whether informal, one-time only... Read More
In this surreal world of the internet, anyone, even you,... Read More
E-gold is a digital currency, used extensively on the Internet... Read More
There are F words in business. We have seen many... Read More
There are two major ways to accept credit cards on... Read More
Nothing has helped international brokerage business more than the internet:... Read More
Open Source applications can bring unique value to business owners.... Read More
In my last column I discussed the process of credit... Read More
In spite of the increasing attention on how the Internet... Read More
Once your website has secured an order, you have to... Read More
Business processes are the building blocks of an enterprise. If... Read More
Can you encounter the number of times where a Credit... Read More
What does "helping your visitors" mean exactly?It means writing your... Read More
There are many tools available to a webmaster to analyse... Read More
You set up a retail business, you advertise in your... Read More
The 21st century has introduced the world to a new... Read More
Deciding when to get your own merchant account for internet... Read More
I had a rude awakening recently. I checked the days... Read More
Concept of ServiceThe current work deals with marketing offer of... Read More
The first article of this series discussed page views per... Read More
Online shopping is convenient, but many companies whose web sites... Read More
When most people think of a retirement gift, they think... Read More
Your stock is tempting, your prices right - your ecommerce... Read More
What would you do if you were sent an email... Read More
Paypal is one of the wonders of the web. Never... Read More
As you may have noted, there are thousands or even... Read More
This article will explain in depth the steps needed to... Read More
Building BridgesI have often used the analogy of building a... Read More
Congratulations! You created an impulse in a customer to buy... Read More
The Internet has changed the way people do business today.... Read More
What is electronic commerce?"Electronic commerce is about doing business electronically.... Read More
Summer must be when many work at home Mom start... Read More
E-commerce |