A Shopping Cart System For Your Storefront

Coming To Grips With The Search For A Shopping Cart Solution

If you plan to sell things online, you won't be too far from needing a shopping cart solution, sooner or later. The shopping cart is one of the key components of an e-commerce suite, which also includes a payment gateway and a merchant account. The truth is that the mechanics of online sales and payment collection often gets confusing and even overwhelming to the average person. While the good news is that much of this is automated, you still need some knowledge to understand how it works, and more importantly, to choose and pick from the wide array of vendors who offer competing products. The later is critical because solutions offered by individual vendors could vary markedly in functionality, bundled services, other flavourings and service terms.

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What's A Shopping Cart System
Take your mind to what happens in a regular offline supermarket: you pick a cart (shopping basket), walk through to browse the racks for what to buy, throw each item you select into the cart and, when you're done, head to the checkout desk for billing and payment. You get your purchases packaged and delivered to you and transaction is closed. When you buy online, a similar facility is provided, though virtually. The online shopping cart allows you to browse the pages of a website, select any items you decide to buy and have them in the cart until you want to head to checkout to pay for the items. The shopping cart saves the trouble of returning to past pages to retrieve selected items, since they remain in the cart until you decide to close the transaction. Most shopping carts today also provide added functionality like summing up the value of items, building in shipping and tax (where applicable) computations, discounts, etc. The cart also collects the buyer's payment information like credit card details (via a secure form) to initiate the payment process and routes this information into the payment gateway for further processing action.

Broad Solution Options
Your shopping cart can be hosted locally on your server or remotely by a service provider. The former entails full acquisition of a software package while the later is basically a service lease option. Each option has its pros and cons, including in areas of cost, payment flexibility, control, ease of set-up, bandwidth requirement, etc. The package can also vary from a basic e-commerce solution to a full-feature service with plenty of icings on the cake. You could also take an integrated option, with a catalogue, secure payment gateway and merchant account services bundled together on turnkey basis. Your choice will depend on need, affordability and scaling expectations.

Why You Need To Bother
Your online storefront is a 24/7 operation, requiring that the critical support systems, including the shopping cart, prove effective and consistently dependable. Otherwise, you will lose business or even kill your effort. Therefore, not only must the technology of your shopping cart work, the design issues must also support your objective. If they don't, you could suffer a high abandonment (aborted transactions) rate. Consequently:

» put in place an effective system you can afford
» simplify information requirement - don't suffocate the buyer
» Protect privacy and security - buyers worry about identity theft, spam, etc
» Avoid surprises - like high shipping costs at checkout point
» Provide support - to clear issues and ensure buyer comfort
» Ease the process - visible buttons, easy page rendering, clear processes, etc.

Key Factors To Consider When Selecting A Solution
The following features must be given careful consideration if you are to make an enduring and rewarding choice:

Requirement: Your immediate and projected need - based on your skill (can you develop an own system?), number and volume of products to offer, etc.

Budget: Your outlay will dictate at what level of the feature profile of solutions that you will fit in.

Hosting support: If hosting is provided by a separate service provider, confirm they support the script for any shopping cart you acquire.

Security: Security is at the root of online purchases and payment and must rank highly in your choice of a system.

Scalability: Anticipate growth and consider the scalability of a system you want to settle with.

Payment Options: Basically, credit card acceptance is critical. Also,other payment options should be possible - cheques, etc.

Stability: Is the provider solid, stable and tested. You don't need costly disruptions.

Disaster Recovery: Part of solidity of operator is in its disaster recovery capacity. Check its history and performance profile.

Gateway Compatibility: Again, if you don't take a turnkey service, you must ensure compatibility of shopping cart and intended gateway before investing.

Service Support: To keep your sanity, you need a provider with a track record of good customer support and prompt action. Will they install and configure? Will they charge for upgrades? Will they provide confirmation information to your customers?

Delivery System: Especially for info products, how will downloads be managed to ensure control and prevent abuse?

Browser Support: Is the solution supported across browsers. Check that you don't have undue limitation of your market.

Tracking Capacity: Confirm that the system can track and capture information on visitor action that can help you optimise your offerings.

Enhancers: Evaluate additional flavourings that are bundled into the cart solution.

What Shopping Cart Systems You should Use
The points raised above should help you evaluate the options available to you, giving consideration to your circumstances. It may be a wise idea to start with a simple system that you can afford, especially one that can be scaled up if your online business grows. It's important to note, however, that if you plan to offer a product or service that has to be paid for online, a shopping cart system should figure in your budget.

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