Finding the Right Online Shopping Cart Solution

A small 12 point checklist to refer to before integrating an 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. Selecting An Online Shopping Cart
Online shopping cart features.

By Sabinder Kaur

Shopping Cart Software

CRELoaded and osCommerce shopping cart software makes it easy to add an online shopping feature to your site.
Shopping cart software, such as CRE Loaded and osCommerce make it easy, for those starting an online shopping site, to design and launch. With thousands of pre-made templates to choose from, online shop owners have the ability to customize the designs and match it to their site needs and message.

A shopping cart is an essential piece of any online shopping site, but can also pose problems and be difficult to implement for new business owners. With shopping cart software, the hard part is done. The software used in CRE Loaded and osCommerce seamlessly integrates with the online shopping sites and handles receivables, inventory, shipping. These back end features are critical to running any business that deals with products and incoming payments.

A hosting company is very important when launching these kinds of sites. Not just any hosting company will do. Online store owners should work with a hosting company that specializes in ecommerce and shopping. CRE Loaded and osCommerce require ecommerce hosting solutions for small businesses that work to run the back end more efficiently than any ordinary hosting company. Think of the shopping cart software as part of your front end service and the hosting company as your back end service. All of these components must work well together for any business to be successful and to turn a profit.

Leven Ten Hosting works with CRE Loaded and osCommerce to provide hosting services catering to the specific needs of online shopping sites. Some hosting companies cannot deal with the intricate needs of the shopping cart software features that a site will have. As with anything else, if a company specializes in something, they are typically the best at it and a great choice for what you are trying to accomplish.

CRE Loaded and osCommerce shopping cart software allow online stores to process sales quickly and effectively, resulting in return visitors, referrals and ultimately more revenue. A sticky site is a site that visitors linger on and a sticky site statistically produces more revenue. The longer visitors spend browsing your site the more chance they will make a purchase. A well designed site with fast connectivity speeds will offer a much better user experience than one that does not. These sites will retain more visitors in their user friendly environment. Do not lose customers because of slow browsing speeds or a poorly executed shopping cart function. If you have a great product, make sure your site is great as well. Level Ten Hosting
Shopping Cart Software.

By Ray Subs