When you are ready to start setting up your own ecommerce site, you’ll need to pick the best shopping cart for your needs. There are numerous different kinds of shopping carts and many are free. While some prefer the extra capability of a paid cart, for most applications, the free carts work just as well. Regardless of whether you pay for it or use a free cart, there are a couple of things that you will need to keep in mind when you are making your choice.
First, the cart should be as user-friendly as possible. While it is important to have a cart that is easy to administer, you will also want to think about your customers. Most shopping carts will have a demo available so that you can what the front end will look like. Take your time going through all the aspects of the cart. If it is not easy to find items or it is a little convoluted, you will need to move onto another cart.
Next, you will need to focus on the back end of the cart. This is very important, especially if you want to manage your customer’s information correctly. A shopping cart should have the capability to store orders, customer information and their credit card numbers securely. You will need to pick the cart with the best admin panel for your needs. Some of them can get pretty complicated, so it is a good idea to find the one that you think is easy to administer.
When it comes to the checkout process, you are going to want one that is as streamlined as possible. Customers get irritated with a multiple step check out process and this is one of the main reasons that shopping carts are abandoned. You are going to want to make it as easy as possible to check out. If you can, try to find a cart that has no more than three steps for the entire process.
You will also need to make sure that your shopping cart will integrate with your merchant account. Most free carts have modules that will work with the majority of popular merchant account gateways, but it is a good idea to double check just in case. If you don’t see your gateway supported, you’ll need to find a cart that does offer this capability.
It is also important to consider how you will process the orders. If you prefer to run the credit cards when the item is shipped, then you will need to find a cart that has a manual processing option. This will also work if you have a gateway that is not supported by your cart. Otherwise, you will need to integrate the gateway and the cart so that orders are processed automatically.
Once you have all of these items figured out, you’ll be able to pick the cart that is right for you and your customers.
Share With Others
(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)
Loading ...
February 13th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Lots of good advise. Would sure be nice to see a list of shopping carts available and perhaps a rating and/or review of each.
April 13th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Some great information there. I’ve always used the first shopping cart that I came across. I never actually thought about the process being quick and easy for the customer. I agree with James, some reviews of carts would be fantastic if you could provide it.
April 25th, 2008 at 1:11 am
I think adding photos or even links to sites for examples of a good shopping cart would be very helpful for us beginners with shopping carts. The tips and advise on this article is really good and I’m sure it would help a lot of beginners.
April 25th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Very good points and thank you for the helpful suggestions. We will make sure to include links to shopping cart products in our new webmaster directory which we are hoping to bring online in the very near future.
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Wow, I am new to all of this, I didn’t know there was so much to building a site to sell stuff. Yeah and I agree, you should post pictures to show what a good cart would look like.
May 25th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Great suggestion about posting a few pictures. This is something I should be doing and will try to make an effort to include them in future articles. This will not be our last article on shopping carts
so stay tuned.
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Well the key elements were missing in this one as far as I am concerned. Where are the lists on carts available? Why was there no discussion (or further discussion) of the shopping cart scripts vs. the online shopping carts that are available.
Those are both two very different aspects of shopping carts, and although it is easy to install scripts, you have to be able to understand how they work in order to make sure they are functioning properly.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:51 am
attagirl, you have raised some very points regarding the article. Will work on doing a followup article that provides the type of detail you mentioned. Thanks for pointing this out!