Finding The Right Online Shopping Cart Solution

A shopping cart serves as the frontend that transfers information through a secure connection to a payment gateway. The payment gateway interacts with your merchant bank account to process the information. It then sends back a confirmation or denial back to the shopping cart software.

Building your own customized shopping cart may not give you as many features as available in third party shopping carts. There are a number of online shopping carts available. Before purchasing a cart keep a small checklist handy so that you can pick the right one.

Script compatibility with the hosting
Shopping cart scripts are written in many different coding formats - PERL, PHP, ASP etc. check compatibility with your host before purchasing.

Installation and code modification
How easy is a cart to install on your server? Can the code be modified to give the same look and feel as your website? These are some areas you would need to check before making a purchase.

Back-up files support
Check on the support for backing up files and allowing for export into a variety of formats.

Payment gateway services supported
Most carts support multiple gateway services. Before purchasing your cart, review the gateway services supported as well as the compatibility of the payment gateway with your merchant account.

Order Completion Details
Ensure that the shopping cart has an option to send an email confirmation when a customer completes an order as well as a reminder to print the order details.

Provide a choice of Shipping Carriers
For confirmed orders the customer should be able to link directly to the carrier site so as to track the progress of shipment. The shipping should be able to offer a choice of carriers. In addition the cart should be able to calculate shipping and tax in real time from USPS, USP, FEDEX etc. as well as provide an option to include or keep shipping costs separate.

Multiple Product upload
The cart should give you the option of bulk uploading of products. The product pages should be SEO friendly. While uploading product images do you have to put in one large image and one small image of every product or can you just put in one image and auto generate thumbnails? If you auto generate thumbnails you save time, web space and bandwidth. In addition you should also be able to create and manage your product attributes.

Content management tool
Check if the store has the option to add new content pages. This is important as you need to serve content pages for the crawlers to pick up and display your web pages.

Newsletter functions
This should not be a critical feature but having a newsletter option would help in an online website promotion.

Gift certificates, promotions and discounts
Having auto responders to gauge customer satisfaction as well as to inform about special offers and promotions would help with the online marketing.

Search Engine Friendly features
Some shopping carts provide a number of search engine friendly parameters that can be customized for all the uploaded products. Check if the cart supports addition of title tags, meta tags, alt tags, breadcrumbs for optimization. This would be an important aspect as you want your products to be reachable to a wider audience.

Most product pages are displayed with query strings and hamper indexing of the site product pages. Since the main purpose of selling products is for the product pages to be “found” it is important that the cart provides an option to change query strings to static urls. This will ensure that the site is accessible to search engines and may contribute to improved search engine rankings.

Also check if the cart provides the option of a sitemap or an XML sitemap generation.

Affiliate modules and Banner Advertising controls
Some carts support affiliate modules. If your website has a requirement then check to see that affiliate module should be able to handle the signing up process, track statistics, provide payment details made to affiliates.

Keep the checklist in mind, however base your choice on the type of products you sell and the catalog of products.

Listed below are more articles related to the above article from the "Ecommerce" article category.

People interested in the above article "Finding The Right Online Shopping Cart Solution" are also interested in the related articles listed below:

 

On E-Commerce

Just a couple of days back I was having a chat with my friend. He was celebrating his baby’s 1st birthday and had to run between his native in Kerala and Chennai, his working place. He and his better half traveled between these places at least 4 times in last one month.

Salehoo Or Worldwide Brands?

If you have been doing e-commerce for any amount of time, you would have known that there are more scamers than genuine providers of wholesale dropship directory services. In the world of e-business, Salehoo and Worldwide Brands are both reputable service providers that have gained popularity in the past several years.

Salehoo - A Reliable Wholesale and Drop Ship Recource

If you have ever been an online retailer, you probably have already heard about Salehoo or even used it to your advantage. If you are just starting out with your business, you might be confused with the mixed Salehoo reviews out there. Now, let us take a look at what Salehoo is really all about and the services they offer which many tend to overlook.

Ecommerce The World’s New Online Shopping Mall

How many people do you know that have purchased something online? If your like me quite a few, that’s why ecommerce is the world’s new online shopping mall. But who runs these online retail stores? People just like you and me, that’s why this business is booming and will continue to boom now and well into the future.

Benefiting From Drop Shipping Electronics Services

If you are a huge fan of the latest electronic products, you might be tempted by the idea of running your own electronics business online. It is not that hard to get started when you take the full advantage of the right drop shipping electronics service and there are plenty for you to choose from.

The Benefits To Owning Your Own Online Retail Store

Did you ever go into your local convenience store and wonder what it would be like if you owned it? Would you be a good owner, will the people like you ? Well this article will show you the benefits of owning your own online retail store, or commonly known as e-commerce that differs from a real local convenience store.

Escrow Wolves in Sheep's Clothing

Online Escrow Fraud is becoming rampant. The word unscrupulous does not go far enough to describe those who seek to gain by others’ misfortune or bad luck; we have to add words like devious, deceitful, cunning, and not least of all merciless and cruel. There are, however, good ways to fight it. You owe it to yourself to stay informed on this important topic.