Consider Hiring a Professional
Unless you are seriously experienced with working with custom, or even out-of-the-box shopping cart software solutions, consider hiring an experienced consultant to help you through the process of researching, buying, installing and managing your shopping cart software. There's nothing like being able to design the exact shopping cart software solution for your business, as long as you have all the tools to do it right yourself. If you don't, ask for help from a professional.
Advanced features of shopping cart software
If you have an affiliate program, where you pay others who send customers to you, you will want an electronic shopping cart that has an affiliate module. Setting up auto responders to send thank you messages, shipping confirmation messages, and special offers can also be part of an electronic shopping cart solution. Many merchants want to offer quantity discounts and coupon functionality so you can issue special offers in your marketing campaigns. If you are selling online material rather than shipping hard goods, you will want to make sure your
Shopping for Shopping Cart Software? Ask These Questions First
If you are thinking about purchasing off-the-shelf shopping cart software as a boxed or custom shopping cart software solution, rather than a web-based or remotely hosted shopping cart software model, you should absolutely be able to answer yes to the following questions:
* Do I have the IT support to install and manage a locally hosted shopping cart solution? There's no such thing as a locally hosted, no-install shopping cart.
* Do I want to take the time to install and support a locally hosted shopping cart software solution?
* Does my commercial web host allow installation of a locally hosted shopping cart software solution?
* Do I want to shop on my own for a shopping cart merchant account, payment gateway, marketing and CRM software, and any other pieces I need to create a complete shopping cart software solution?
Boxed shopping cart software and custom solutions can be perfect for a company with the time and experience to make the software do exactly what the business needs it to do. But unless you answered yes to all above questions, it might not be right for your ebusiness.
When do I need shopping cart software?
You need an online shopping cart if you want to sell items from your web site and collect payment. The best shopping cart software can help you make additional sales as well, by suggesting complementary products after your customer adds an item to the electronic shopping cart. Shopping cart software also keeps track of payment methods, sales tax, shipping information, delivery charges, and more. There are some free shopping cart software solutions but most require your customers have an account with them as well, and not all customers want to do that. If you want to offer coupons and discount codes, keep track of your customers' previous purchases, and automatically send messages to customers about their purchases and special offers, and perhaps handle an affiliate program, you will want to add an electronic shopping cart to your site.
Open-Source Shopping Cart Software
Open-source shopping cart software offers some distinct advantges and disadvantages as an overall shopping cart software solution. Big advantage: It's free. Another big advantage: Open-source shopping cart software is almost always highly customizable, using familiar programming languages like PHP and ASP. The disadvantges? Well, you or someone who works for you needs to know PHP or ASP to install and customize the open-source shopping cart software. You need to have access to your server and the IT support to install and manage the shopping cart software. Open-source software can absolutely be the perfect shopping cart software solution if you have the time, energy and money to make the software do what you want it to do. Otherwise, it might not be the answer.
Selecting shopping cart software
Shopping cart software allows online shoppers to select and purchase merchandise offered for sale on a web site. An online shopping cart can be located on your web site, which is suitable for those with significant programming skills, or hosted by a vendor who provides the supporting infrastructure for you. Remotely hosted shopping cart software can typically be customized to look and feel like your own web site and is generally cheaper upfront, but a package solution offers more customizing features and gives you more control. Either way, a visitor essentially adds items to be purchased to their internet shopping cart until they are ready to ""check out."" Shopping cart software does not handle the financial transaction, but typically collects the necessary information and forwards it on to a payment gateway service, which then communicates with the merchant account.
How can I decide which is the best shopping cart software for my site?
If you already have a merchant account to process credit cards, find out what payment gateways are compatible with your account. From there, see which internet shopping carts work with the various payment gateways and then check the different features. Otherwise start by making a list of the features you want now (electronic delivery, coupons and quantity discounts, auto responders, types of credit cards, remote versus locally hosted depending on your programming skills, cross-selling features, and so on). Of course, if you are hosting the internet shopping cart on your own site, make sure your hosting company supports the database and language of the shopping cart software. See if your chosen vendor offers support, forums where you can communicate with other users of the software, and tips and best practices to help you get the most out of the shopping cart software.
Opt-In for Your Own Choice of Email Software
One good thing about putting together your own shopping cart software solution rather than buying an all-in-one package is that you can shop for exactly what you want. For example, opt-in email software packages are available in locally hosted options. A good part of buying your own opt-in mail software is that you can generally get much more powerful software than in a hosted combination package. On the other hand, you will again be dealing with more time spent installing and maintaining software, rather than having it done for you. Which is right for your business? You need to do the research and find out.
Beyond the shopping cart software: other things you need to do business online.
An Internet shopping cart handles your customers selecting which items they want to purchase from your site. It does not handle the financial transaction. You will still need to subscribe to other services, including a payment gateway and a merchant account. Different payment gateway services work with different shopping cart software and different merchant accounts. Make sure your electronic shopping cart can communicate with the payment gateway you select and make sure the payment gateway can communicate with your merchant account. Some hosted shopping cart software already includes connections to specific payment gateways and merchant accounts so make sure you know what you need and what you are getting.
Packaged Software Costs More Up Front, Maybe Less Over Time
If you go with an open-source shopping cart software solution, you won't pay anything for the shopping cart software. You can expect to pay up to about $200 to $300 for most full-featured commercial shopping cart software packages. However, remember that this is only part of the cost of an overall shopping cart software solution. You'll need to add software and IT support, additional required software, like a shopping cart merchant account or payment gateway.
Need an Online Merchant Account? Open Your Wallet
A shopping cart merchant account can be an expensive part of your overall shopping cart software solution. If you're setting up a shopping cart merchant account, shop around a lot to see where you get the best combination of fees and services. You can expect to pay the following:
* Set-up fee: Sometimes these run into hudreds of dollars, but many shopping cart merchant account providers will waive the fee.
* Monthly fee: Expect to pay about $25 monthly to your shopping cart merchant account provider.
* Percentage of each sale: Expect to pay 2 to 4 percent of each sale to your shopping cart merchant account provider.
* Fixed fee per sale: Usually 20 or 30 cents from each sale goes to your shopping cart merchant account provider.
* Termination fee: If you try to cancel before the end of a contract, your shopping cart merchant account provider will charge an extra fee, which can run into hundreds of dollars.
Critical Things to Remember with Shopping Cart Software
If you're considering going with open-source, boxed or custom ecommerce shopping cart software for your own shopping cart software solution, you need to take into account some critical things, including the following:
Software compatibility: It's great to be able to choose all your own software to create a custom shopping cart software solution. But make sure all your chosen shopping cart software products will work together before you go out and buy anything.
Disaster planning: If you're hosting your shopping cart software commercially, make sure your provider has solid off-site back-ups. If you're doing your own hosting, this is going to be up to you. But it's important to have a workable plan as part of your overall shopping cart software solution.
24x7 support: If something goes wrong with your shopping cart software -- on a weekend, in the middle of the night -- your customers are going to expect you to take care of it yourself. Make sure you can, with proper planning for support.
How to Choose a Shopping Cart Merchant Account
There are thousands of shopping cart merchant account providers, which makes sense given how profitable it can be to sell them. So how do you choose the right one? Do your research, especially on the complete fee structure being charged by your shopping cart merchant account provider. Here are ways to research shopping cart merchant account providers:
* Web sites that compare shopping cart merchant account services and software.
* Ask other Internet merchants who they use for shopping cart merchant account providers.
* Find out if your current business bank offers a shopping cart merchant account and see if you get offered a discount for staying with the bank for this new account.
* Study the details of any shopping cart merchant account offer to make sure you clearly understand the fee structure before signing on.