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How to Choose a Shopping Cart Program |
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Submitted by Writer's Cramp Syndications
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Using the right shopping cart program can have a drastic effect on the success of your e-business. If you have a poorly designed shopping cart system, you will lose customers regardless of how great your website is. Consider the factors below when choosing your ideal shopping cart.
How many items do you have to sell?
Many people make the mistake of using shopping carts when there are only a couple of products being sold on the website. In this instance, it is much easier to just setup an online order form. Don’t overdo it with shopping carts unless you will have more products in the near future. Shopping carts, just like the physical tool, are designed for purchasing a large number of products. You wouldn’t haul around a shopping cart in a grocery store just to buy a pack of gum, and neither should you in the online world.
Software or Service Provider
For most small businesses, I recommend using an ASP, which means the shopping cart service is hosted by a third party company. For ASP shopping carts, setup was designed to require no programming skills and very user friendly. Some ASPs also offer packages that include a merchant account and a payment gateway. This takes care of the painstaking process of setting them up separately.
The downsides to an ASP system are the limitations of the control you have over your shopping cart system. For instance, there is only so much you can do to the appearance to your shopping carts. Other features, such as customer tracking, may not be available at all.
ASP Shopping Cart Suggestions
SecureNetShop.com
–Uses HTML pages for setup
–Offers many options such as customer tracking
GoEmerchant.com
–Includes merchant account in package
–Painless setup
Popular Software Options
Miva
– Can be hosted on your server or a remote server
– Browser based admin
– Wizard setup
– Preconfigured payment processing
– Easily expandable
QuikStore
– Low price
– Must be hosted on own server
– Wizard setup
– Configuration editor
– Catalog Wizard
These are just the basics of what the companies above offer. For more information please visit their website.
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LinkedIn Recommendation:
 Jamie Pratt - Market Developer at Turboware - Teo helps me with the daily management of my customers' social media accounts. He has an entire system dedicated to social media management, and it is easy to use, provides easy reporting and allows me to communicate with my customers through the system - they can log in and participate. I haven't seen anything else like it on the web. It's not available to the general public, yet - I was one of the beta testers, but if you need something like this, just ask Teo and I am sure he will send you some details. Great system! - March 19, 2012, Jamie was Teo's client |
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