The Shopping Cart Solutions
Choosing the best shopping cart is critical to the success of your business. If you’re currently in the market for software and would like my recommendation read on.
What is a shopping cart?
It’s a simple script that tracks the number and value of items a visitor wants to buy until they proceed to your virtual checkout. Shopping carts do not handle an entire financial transaction, they act as a front end which passes information via a secure connection to a payment gateway like paypal. For that reason it is very important that the process look and feel official from start to finish.
There are hundreds of shopping cart services to choose from which might be too many choices really as it becomes difficult to choose just one. All of them claim to have the superior product of course. After having worked with over 30 different shopping carts over the last 3 years I should know, they aren’t all created equal.
Free vs Premium
Simple answer – it depends on want the cart to be able to do. You really don’t need all the bells and whistles offered by expensive packages but there are some critical features that are an absolute must like security from someone redirecting difference prices into your cart after examining your code to get something at huge discount.
If you want a free cart go with Paypal. Bluntly said their cart integrates most basic shopping cart functions with a payment gateway that is trusted worldwide. Not only will paypal handle the transactions you’ll get paid on time. I recommend you start with Paypal if you’ve never used any shopping cart software before.
Shopping cart software has evolved in recent years and many packages are advanced to the point they have become entire store fronts and can actually be your complete web site. Some shopping carts will evaluate the customers choices and suggest other products to compliment a customers current choices. This tactic proves quite successful when applied properly. Discounts and coupons are another reason you may want to consider a paid cart over the free carts.
Bizshoppingcart offers a quality Online Shopping cart that manages coupons extremely well and will allow you to issue special offers as part of your marketing campaigns. I strongly recommend use of a shopping cart that supports coupons like the bizcarts, they’re too powerful a sales strategy to ignore.
Protect your paypal account by using paid cart software. For the very reason I recommend paypal to new merchants I recommend a paid cart to experienced merchants. The reason being you need to protect your paypal account if you want to stay in business, you don’t want to lose it, and your cart, in one shot if paypal decides to cut you off. I’ve heard horror stories of a client reporting being spammed with regular email offers after making a purchase and paypal reacted by closing the merchants account. Paid shopping cart software uses an opt-in autoresponder and newsletter to bypass those risks.
Shopping cart scripts come in many different formats including PERL, PHP and ASP. Be sure to check with your Internet host before purchasing a product. Remotely hosted services make it a non issue, and offer support for your scripts, but as always a self hosted script is best if you can handle the code yourself.
Tips: If you are selling real products that need shipping you’ll appreciate the ability to calculate different shipping options, check to see which shipping companies accept which carts.
If you are selling software and want to make online deliveries you’ll need specialized features to handle file distribution. You wouldn’t want a customer to share his link with his friends and find out 100 of an item was given away for free would you? Bizcarts come with a temporary URL that is unique to each customer and only available for a few hours after purchase before being deleted.
Scalability. While you may not require fancy features now your needs may change in time, can you anticipate needing specific features in the future? get them now. Bizcarts offer a modular format which allows for future scalability. Be sure to check module prices in advance and ask if you can lock in a price you see today but might not need until next year.
Credit card transactions. If your current shopping cart software does not support credit card transactions you’re in trouble, more and more online providers DO provide this service so eventually your competition will get a bigger share of sales from credit card users YOU could have handled… but they left your site frustrated.
Don’t fret – there are still people who refuse to use credit cards online so you need to offer other forms of payment like money orders and e-checks. Bizcarts can handle this too in my experience.
cart support: Every cart out there claims to be simple to install and configure. Very few of them actually are. If you don’t have the technical expertise to set up a shopping cart hire someone who does. You might find installation is free with some carts, hint-hint.
Test the support system early by sending a random question to the sales department. Their response time and quality should impress and are a good indicator of what you can expect in the future from them. Read ALL fine print before spending hard earned cash, read real webmaster experiences like this one and don’t settle for less than you want. In the shopping cart business you can’t afford to play Mickey Mouse, it’s too critical a step in selling your product. Save money wisely, the feature you skip on now may haunt you later depending on the company you choose to go with.