Do-It-Yourself Ecommerce

How do you find the best ecommerce shopping cart software?

In order to sell products online (both digital and physical) you will need a shopping cart to go with your website. I’ll get into the various types of

shopping carts but there are features you should be aware of when deciding whether a shopping cart meets your requirements. You may not need some of these features now, but you certainly may as your ecommerce business grows and, trust me, switching shopping carts in midstream is a real pain in the you-know-what.

The following are criteria of the best shopping carts:

Design. A shopping cart should match your web site so prospective customers don’t get thrown off by the sudden change of scenery. It, like your web site, should be attractive, easy to navigate and have a color scheme suited toward your audience.

Ease of Use. In many cases not just some, but MOST shoppers back out at the last minute before ordering. The best shopping carts have a flow to them with an easy path for customers to follow.

Offer Help. Your cart should have links to information which may confuse them. Many carts will at least have little icons, sometimes with a question mark in them, that open a small window with helpful details.

Shipping and Taxes. Your shopping cart should be able to pre-calculate shipping and taxes so there are no surprises when a customer goes to check out. It’s probably one of the reasons so many shoppers get to the checkout process but don’t actually buy.

Cross Selling. The best shopping carts will have features like related products during shopping… you know, “people who viewed this product also viewed”. You should also have the option of suggesting other products during checkout. Kind of like ‘impulse buys’ at the supermarket checkout, but they should be related products or accessories for the item being purchased.

Offer Discounts. You should be able to offer discounts at checkout from coupons or for your best customers (like the ones on your mailing list). You should also be able to offer quantity discounts.

Technological Aspects. Will the cart work on your web hosting server and with your Payment Gateway? That’s why I recommend working backward (see my blog on credit card processing). Many shopping carts require the latest versions of server software in order to operate that may not be on your web host.

Other things to consider:

• Can it be easily configured to suit any special requirements?
• Does it have the ability to track your customers during the checkout process so you can find bottlenecks and make needed changes?
• Is there a way for your customers to provide feedback?
• Can you use affiliates to sell your products through your shopping cart?

Security. Last but definitely not least, who will maintain your shopping cart. If a security hole crops up with your shopping cart software how will you find out about it? Who will patch and upgrade your cart? Your business doesn’t need headlines in the news about how many of YOUR customers lost credit card data to hackers.

I’ll go through other aspects of shopping carts in future posts, but keep these criteria in the back of your mind when finding the best shopping cart for your needs. Or, if you’re in a hurry, you can check out the shopping cart I use.