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 Overusing.
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, time
outs 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.
Evan
Stevens ([http://www.evanstevens.com]) is a professional web developer.
This article reviews ecommerce online shopping carts.
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