A Shopping Cart Solution To The Rescue!

Source: Articlesbase

I know I know, you have been searching forever to find a shopping cart solution, and no matter where you go you can’t find proper information, read on then.

There’s a few that are occasionally right up on the top of my list. I do however need to tell you about something very important that some people do – but shouldn’t.

You will almost certainly fail if you assemble your own shopping cart solution by hiring someone to do it for you. The end result will be that you will not have an error free shopping cart, it will actually be very buggy. Let me explain why.

Quite merely creating a shopping cart solution is very hard work. The people who have got it right have spent tens of thousands and have used the intelligence of hundreds of people to create an error free, and robust software package.

You will be creating a lot of headaches for yourself if you hire a single freelancer to make you shopping cart solution. What will happen is that they will offer you the world and they will deliver quite a bit to begin with, but as the fine tuning comes into play, and certain development changes come into effective, you will start to see some fearful signs.

There is a much better option to go with, and that is to basically purchase a shopping cart solution. The big provides out there are Volusion, Shopify and BigCommerce. They have many satisfied customers, their prices are quite good and you’re getting a really high quality shopping cart solution!.

This is the way to go, you will be saving a lot of time and money by going down this path.

Can’t be bothered, or don’t know how to install the software? You see, that’s the brilliant thing about the 3 shopping cart solution provides that I mentioned above, you don’t need to as it’s hosted all for you. All you need to do is get onto their sales form, fill in your details, and within a couple of minutes will be off and away selling whatever it is you have. Than once you upload all your products, you’re off and away selling as opposed to spending months, or not years developing your own shopping cart solution.

As you can see, there are significant advantages in using one of the big ecommerce software companies out there instead of doing it through creating your own.

Move to Innovative Shopping Cart with Cart2Cart online migration service

Source: Articlesbase

Unique web shopping cart migration support Cart2Cart achieve the transition from one particular shopping cart to goal one particular relaxed. This program supports this sort of shopping carts as Volusion. Cart2Cart will transfer every single chunk of your data automatically. You can transfer merchandise, purchasers, orders, makers, solution sorts, icons as well as other articles of your keep.

All the things you’ve to perform to initiate working with this program is enter for the totally free accounts on Cart2Cart and pick form of migration: your recent shopping cart and focus on a single. Afterwards, select files for migration: bids, buyers, product or service, and so forth. You check out this course of action in Demo quick seem – various products, clientele, ranks, etc., from those people you have choose might be transferred to VirtuMart shopping cart.

Cart2Cart services propound you define and good migration to enhance shopping cart. Bodily transition of all of the files would acquire you month. Migration with Cart2cart will take you barely not a lot of several hours. This program tolerates you to transfer hundreds and thousands of goods. Time and charge of migration will depend about the mass of items, orders, customers, and many others., you desire for to move and about the sort of migration you have preferred.

The Wizard will direct you by way of factor by action shopping cart migration process that is extremely plain. You can get easy commands, no ineffective data. If you comply with them prudently the process will likely be speedy and soft and migration will probably be concluded fruitfully. You usually do not have to exchange each and every considered one of the content material of your investment at solitary time. You may quite possibly reveal some independent classes: products, orders, shoppers, and so forth. This really is quite expedient as saves your time and success.

No need to think twice about switching to VirtueMart shopping cart. Together with the ground-breaking service by MagneticOne migration to Volusion will be easy and won’t give you any misfortune. Be between the first to use the prospect submitted by Cart2Cart – only one of its kind online service developed to satisfy the desires of e-tailers. Make a brainy choice for your online venture now!

What is PayPal and How Does it Work

Source: Buzzle

For an Internet user who actively participates in online shopping, PayPal must not be a new term. However, for the uninitiated, knowing what is PayPal and how does it work can be an interesting task. PayPal is an online money transaction facility that you’re entitled to, once you get registered for it on the official website of PayPal.

In the era of Ecommerce websites, it is possible to purchase anything online and hence issues about safer money transactions are of paramount importance. PayPal is hailed to be the world’s most popular online transaction account and many online purchases are made through PayPal. It has evolved to become one of the safest and hence, most popular mode of money transfer via emails. Wondering how does PayPal work, then read further…

What is PayPal: How Does PayPal Work

PayPal has emerged to be the most trusted medium for online money transactions. You can log in to PayPal’s official website and sign up with a valid email account. After that, you can get access to nearly thousands of online stores that will allow you to carry out transactions. Even on sites of Internet biggies like eBay, most of their transactions are through PayPal. Now, that we’re aware about ‘what is PayPal’, knowing about how does it work will give us more insight about this excellent money transfer option, spread over 190 markets in 24 currencies.

Working of PayPal
Once you visit the official website of PayPal, you’ve to sign up for your account type. On the official website, there are three account options available for customers viz., personal, premier and business. Personal accounts are for those, who wish to pay their money online while premier accounts are for those who wish to get paid after selling their products online.

For merchants and traders, who operate under a group or company, there is a separate account that they can get registered under and that is known as business account. In case, you’ve registered for personal accounts, you’ll have to choose your payment method. Generally, people use credit cards and even online traders and shop managers recommend the use of credit cards. Similarly, for business accounts, you have to link and confirm your credit cards registration on the website. After all this, you’ll be required to reply to an email send to you for confirmation and once you accept it, you can start the online transaction.

Why Use PayPal Services?
As we now know ‘what is PayPal and how does it work’, knowing the value of this service will help us decide, if we should go for this option. Some of the simple benefits of PayPal services are as follows.

Global Presence
PayPal is by far, the single most popular mode of Internet money transaction. And besides that, it has a global presence with 153 million accounts all over the globe.

High Protection
One of the biggest advantages of PayPal is that transactions on it are safe and secured. Owing to the high protection, PayPal has been a recipient of several awards in the Internet Industry.

Faster and Easier
PayPal services have been fast and customers are really happy to be associated to such a simple and safe money transaction system. Also, operating and managing PayPal accounts is easy. There are no complexities in transferring the money.

For buyers and for sending money to others, PayPal is absolutely free. PayPal only charges you for receiving money. Based on a specific formula, PayPal will give you a bill, whenever you get some payments from a buyer.

Hopefully, through this article, you must have got some idea on what is PayPal and how does it work. PayPal, since its formation in 1998 in US, has gained tremendous success. Nevertheless, some customers have often complained of problems in money transactions. Over all, PayPal is certainly a successful mode of payment and its positives have often outweighed some occasional problems or complaints.

Shopping Cart Solutions

Author: Hassan_Ahmed

Choosing the best shopping cart solutions for your launch into ecommerce is critical to the success of your online business. If you’re wanting to learn more about this sometimes confusing world, this guide will explain the points you should consider before purchasing a cart.

If you’re currently in the market for software or services and would like our recommendations, Please check our NextAge Shopping Cart software at http://www.nextagecart.com . They have a Powerful SEO Shopping Cart Script

What is a shopping cart?

In a basic definition, it’s a series of scripts that keep track of items a visitor picks to buy from your site until they proceed to the “checkout”. A popular misconception is that shopping carts handle the whole financial transaction, but they only really act as a front end which passes information via a secure connection (another service) to a payment gateway – a separate service altogether.

The payment gateway service then channels the requests and transfers throughout relevant financial networks, including the Internet merchant account with your bank. It then sends back confirmation or denial back to the shopping cart software. For further information on the “back-end” aspects of ecommerce; The good news is that there are literally hundreds of shopping cart packages available. The bad news is the same as the good. Sometimes, too many choices make it very difficult to make a decision – especially when all companies claim to have the superior product. I recently experienced this challenge by reviewing over 130 shopping cart programs. I hope this article may make your life just a little bit easier!

Free or premium shopping carts?

It’s very important before you begin reviewing software and services to be to be very specific in what you actually want the cart to be able to do. It may be that you really don’t require all the bells and buzzers offered by high end packages – if this is the case, then a good package will cost around the $US150 mark. Some companies offer free shopping carts, but bear in mind that nothing in this world is truly free – read the fine print.

Free ecommerce solutions

One of the best free ecommerce solutions around is Paypal, which integrates basic shopping cart functions with a payment gateway and merchant account – funds are paid to you via check or through direct deposit. Paypal is an excellent way to begin in ecommerce and is very widely accepted around the world.

You only pay a small percentage of each sale and there are no monthly fees or setup costs, plus you receive free fraud protection – no chargeback fees to worry about. Paypal also offers web developers a wide variety of easy to use tools to assist with rapid implementation.

What other features do shopping carts have?

Shopping cart software has come a long way in recent years, and many packages are so advanced that they are in effect entire store fronts. Some integrated elements of benefit to your online business you may wish to consider include:

Suggest sell/cross selling functions

Just as in the physical world, impulse buying via the Internet is quite common. Some shopping carts will suggest another product to complement a customers current selection. If offered at a discount rate, this strategy proves quite successful.

Quantity discounts/coupons

Many shopping carts now allow for the calculation of discount rates based on the number of units a customer wishes to purchase. Coupon functions allow you to issue special offers as part of your marketing campaigns. Usually, prospective clients are given special codes that are matched against a particular item or overall discount rate.

Autoresponders

If you follow up all your clients with regular email offers, you may want to consider shopping cart software that has integrated autoresponder capabilities – this will streamline your operations and can be used for maintaining other contact lists as well. Why buy two pieces of software when you can get them rolled into one?

Affiliate modules

One of the most effective, low cost ways to advertise your product is through an affiliate program. Your outlay is minimal if you only pay on performance; i.e. sales generated. An affiliate module can handle the signup process, provide statistics, streamline communications and keep track of payments to be made to affiliates.

Other features commonly incorporated into carts include inventory tracking, sales tax calculation and stationery creation/management.

There’s a number of questions you’ll want to ask yourself when compiling a shopping cart wish list:

What kind of shopping cart does my hosting service support?

Shopping cart scripts are written in many different coding formats – PERL, PHP, ASP just to name a few. Be sure to check with your host before purchasing a program. If you’re currently in the market for software or services and would like our recommendations, Please check our NextAge Shopping Cart software at http://www.nextagecart.com . They have a Powerful SEO Shopping Cart Script

What is my budget?

It’s easy to blow your budget on a turbo-charged shopping cart only to find that there were a number of other critical items you didn’t factor in – like a payment gateway, or the fact that the cart software may be so complex that you need to hire somebody else to assist in implementation!

What kind of delivery mechanisms will I require?

If you are selling hard goods that need shipping, choice of cart is a little easier as this is a standard function. Many carts also offer customers the ability to calculate different shipping options. If you are trading in soft goods such as software and want to make delivery available online immediately, you’ll need to carefully compare carts.

As an example, some shopping carts that are capable of delivering goods online redirect customers to a static download page after a successful transaction. This isn’t a good idea as the customer (and his/her friends) are able to return to the page to download again and again. A better equipped shopping cart will only provide customers with a temporary URL, that will be unique to that customer and may only be available for a few hours after purchase before it is deleted.

Another strategy employed by some carts for soft goods online delivery is to use a static URL for downloading, but scripting is implemented to ensure the visitor to the page has come via the shopping cart after a successful transaction has occurred.

Yet another soft goods delivery means used by carts is that the software is attached to an email sent to the customer after a successful transaction. This may be suitable for very small files, but I don’t think many ISP’s would appreciate you sending 20 megabyte attachments to a customers inbox – in fact, it would not be possible in many instances.

Where will my business be in 6 months time?

Does the package allow for scalability? While you may not require bells and buzzers now, as your business grows you may find that your needs change. The better shopping carts are in a modular format which allow for scalability with minimum downtime. Be sure to check the prices of modules you may need in the future. It isn’t uncommon for companies is to offer the base model for next to nothing and then to charge like wounded bulls for any upgrades.

Is the cart software compatible with my payment gateway?

There are dozens of different payment gateways which plug into various shopping cart packages – but perhaps not yours! Before purchasing your cart, also review gateway services supported by the software (and also make sure that the payment gateway is compatible with the Internet merchant account you have with your bank). It can be a bit of a challenge getting the cart you want to talk to the gateway service you want and also to your bank! Read our guide to

What kind of payments are supported by the cart?

Credit card transactions are now a normal part of our online world. If your shopping cart software does not support credit card transactions or if you have not enabled credit card processing, you’re in trouble – you may as well just close up shop!

There are still some customers who will refuse to use a credit card over the Internet, so you will need to be able to offer other forms of payment – e.g. money orders, echecks etc.

What about disaster planning?

A good shopping cart application will have excellent support for backing up files and allowing for export into a variety of formats. Flexible exporting functions will also be of value in the future should you need to change carts and wish to import existing data into a new application. If you’re currently in the market for software or services and would like our recommendations, Please check our NextAge Shopping Cart software at http://www.nextagecart.com . They have a Powerful SEO Shopping Cart Script

What level of support will I need and receive?

All shopping cart providers will tell you that their software is simple to install and configure. Few will be actually correct in making that statement. If you don’t have the technical expertise to configure your shopping cart, get quotes from the company or a third party contractor to undertake this work for you.

Test out the support system by sending a query to the sales department – if they don’t respond quickly this is usually a good indicator that after sales support will be even worse!

Also, read the fine print before parting with your hard earned cash – you may find that technical support will be charged out per incident.

Some shopping cart software companies also offer user forums as part of their service. This is an excellent bonus. If you are having problems with setting up your scripts, no doubt someone else has experienced the same issues and may be willing to help you out.

Be sure to review the company’s “bug” policy; i.e. if a error in the software is fixed and an updated version is released, will you be entitled to recieve that upgrade or patch at no cost.

While I am all for supporting the solo programmers, a shopping cart is so crucial that it may not be wise to purchase a product from a one-man operation as customer support may not be efficient. If you’re currently in the market for software or services and would like our recommendations, Please check our NextAge Shopping Cart software at http://www.nextagecart.com . They have a Powerful SEO Shopping Cart Script

Remotely or locally hosted shopping cart?

Some shopping cart programs can be purchased as stand alone programs or as pay per month services hosted on another companies’ server. Remotely hosted options usually allow for extensive customization of pages to fit in with your sites look and feel.

Remote hosting advantages

Fast implementation, secure connection supplied, monitoring of service and usually many other features are offered as part of the service. Because the cart is actually hosted on another server, you can also save on bandwidth charges – especially if your products are soft goods and delivered online.

Some remotely hosted shopping carts are in effect total marketing solutions, containing options to run affiliate programs and the ability to send sequential pre-defined messages to clients and leads. Some of these services are excellent for people ‘testing the water’ as they also include gateway services and even an Internet merchant account!

If you are looking for features without needing to spending thousands of dollars up front, remotely hosted may be the way to go. Plan on spending at least US$60 per month for these kinds of services. Compare prices carefully – I have seen one company charge US$200 a month for the same service provided by another for $US59 per month. Remember, this added recurring expense will need to be taken into account when establishing a price level for your products and services.

Remote hosting disadvantages

What happens if the company goes belly up overnight? Remote hosting also tends to give you less control over how cart pages display. If you are going to use a remotely hosted service, check the company history carefully. Some operators have also been known to ‘harvest’ your client databases for spamming purposes.

Local hosting advantages

Total control over the software, no ongoing fees.

Local hosting disadvantages

Time spent in installation, configuration and maintenance, greater initial outlay, requires SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to be enabled on your site which usually incurs an extra charge per month.

As you can see, there is a lot to consider before purchasing shopping cart software or services. It is very important to remember that the shopping cart is only one part of your ecommerce arsenal. Without an effective payment gateway and Internet merchant account (sometimes these are combined), the cart is useless.

Don’t rush your decision to purchase based on marketing hype – the future of your business is at stake!

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ecommerce-articles/shopping-cart-solutions-263973.html

About the Author

What Makes a Great Shopping Cart? 10 Qualities to Look For in an Online Shopping Cart

By David Beckham

Let’s face it; most businesses today need to have a presence on the Internet. The problem is, that most small business owners are quite honestly scared of the work it will take to get their business online. I can completely relate to this because as a small business owner, I have been there before. My experience with selling on the Internet actually started back in the early ’90′s. Shopping carts were very clunky and complicated. Domain names cost hundreds of dollars compared to just a few dollars now and SEO wasn’t invented yet.

We have come a long way since those days. Now your choices are too many to count. As a small business owner you basically have a couple of choices to make. First, you can just decide to hire someone to build and manager your website and shopping cart. After all, not all small business owners have the expertise to build an online business. Your second choice is to do it yourself. While this sounds impossible, if you have the right ecommerce system or shopping cart, it really isn’t that hard. With a little help and time, you can easily put your business online. So, if you don’t feel comfortable building your own site, then hire a professional, but if you want to try it for yourself, then I have 10 things to look for in a shopping cart that will make it easier for you to set up and manage. So here we go:

1. Ease of use. Ok, I know that this sounds obvious, but let’s be honest, if you have to read a War and Peace manual to get your business online, then it isn’t worth it. You aren’t likely to try and set it up your self and you will just end up frustrated. You want a shopping cart program that is easy to use and set up. It should contain easy to follow, step-by-step instructions on getting your site set up.
2. Web-based control panel. You want to make sure your shopping cart system has an easy to use web-based control panel. It should be secure, but most importantly laid out and easily managed. Your inventory, website design, company information and customer database should all be easily accessed from your control panel.
3. Integrates easily with a wide array of payment processors. For the newbie, a payment processor is the gateway in which you can accept credit cards or other forms of payments. The one most people recognize easily is PayPal. Your shopping cart system should integrate with a variety of payment carts so it does not limit your ability use a processor that you are comfortable with and one that gives you the best deal.
4. Real Time Shipping Rates. Your e-commerce system should easily integrate with the most common shipping programs, UPS, FedEx, and UPS at a minimum because these are your most common shippers. Your shopping cart program should allow you to pull real-time shipping rates so you can ensure you are making your money for shipping and your customers are getting the best shipping rates possible. More shipping systems gives your customers more options on how fast they receive their products and the cost.
5. Safe & secure, reliable web site hosting. You have to rely on your shopping cart host to keep your information safe & secure. You also want to make sure that it stays online 24/7. After all, when your web site is down, you don’t make sales so reliability is a powerful selling point. You should look for a company that has fast servers, hacker deterrent security systems and redundant backups so you never have to worry about your shopping cart and web site being down. Your store should always be ready to accept orders and instill confidence in your customers that their private information is secure.
6. Easy to use, already built templates & designs. In order to get your shopping cart and web site up and running as fast as possible, you want to have a wide variety of store designs and templates you can chose from. With pre-built templates, you can simply add your store information, products, photos and start selling quicker. If your shopping cart has several designs available, then you will have a better chance of finding a design that matches your business colors and products.
7. Ability to change the layout and templates without hiring a programmer. Your shopping cart system should allow you to easily make changes to your layout and design without having to hire a programmer. Shopping carts that use WYSIWYG, which stands for “What You See Is What You Get” allow users to type real time information and see how it will look as you enter it. If your shopping cart allows you to move blocks around so you can arrange how your pages look and feel, it gives you even more creative power.
8. Flexible and easy to update product options. The reason you get a shopping cart program is because you want to sell products online. You want the process for entering products to be as easy as possible. You also want options when entering products. Your shopping cart should have options to show various product views and allow you to put up as many photos as it takes to truly show your products. The ability to zoom in and out also allow customers to get a good look at what they are buying which helps to reduce returns and customer dissatisfaction. Your e-commerce system should also allow you to easily use videos or YouTube to give your customers even more ways to view your products online.
9. Simple, effective marketing & promotional tools. Your shopping cart system should have several options to allow you to market your business successfully. The ability to add coupons or discount codes is the minimum that you need. You should also have integration with Google AdWords, Google Base product support and the ability to share products on Twitter and Facebook. Your customers should be able to set up their RSS feeds to always get your newest products and changes. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. You might be familiar using RSS feeds to stay on top of your favorite blogs or news agencies. The best shopping carts will allow you to interface and set up a web store directly on your Facebook page. Your e-commerce system should offer as many options as possible to market your business and get your products in front of potential clients.
10. Unlimited support and lifetime updates. Finally, your shopping cart system should have unlimited support and updates. There are always going to be times when you just can’t figure something out. If your shopping cart provider has a good FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) then you will likely be able to get the majority of your questions answered without intervention, however when you have a question that you can’t figure out, you wan the ability to call or email tech support to get a quick solution to your dilemma. You should also expect updates to your software for as long as you are using the system. The Internet is an ever-changing platform that requires shopping cart providers to make constant changes to their software so it aligns with the advancing technology. You want a shopping cart system that does this for you so you don’t have to do anything.

That’s my 10 best requirements for a good shopping cart, e-commerce system. Do you research and be sure to check out what others say about the e-commerce system you are reviewing. I recommend that you look for shopping cart programs that offer a free trial. The longer the trial, the better chance you get for analyzing the program and making sure it is a fit for you. My last bit of advice is that your e-commerce system should be scalable which is to say it should be able to grow with you. If you only have ten products right now, you don’t want to pay for a system which hosts one thousand items if you don’t have to. Get a program that can grow with you.

I can’t finish this without my own recommendation. First, I will tell you that I personally use this product to power our web store for THE original basket boutique, Pensacola, FL. I have used several different programs over the past many years, but I honestly have to say that the best program I have found is the BigCommerce, E-commerce system. To learn more, please click here http://www.marketpromba.com. The BigCommerce shopping cart has all of my ten requirements and more. I have yet to find a program that is easier to use than BigCommerce.

David Beckham, B.BA, MBA, is a small business consultant. His background and expertise is in small business marketing, management & development. David and his wife Sheri are the owners of THE original basket boutique franchise and US Headquarters in Gulf Breeze, FL.

For more information about David Beckham, please visit his web sites at http://www.marketpromba.com.
2010 Copy Right by David Beckham, MBA, MarketProMBA Consulting

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Beckham

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Understanding Your Paypal Shopping Cart

Any e-commerce application needs a good shopping cart to handle any purchases and payments for subscriptions.
Of course you want the best shopping cart you can get for your blogs or websites, but there are so many options online, all promising you the world, that it can get confusing.
Still wondering what a shopping cart is on website?
There are several points to consider, but the simplest description that all of us will recognize is the shopping cart in grocery stores. While that one has squeaky wheels and gets pushed up and down the aisle, the shopping cart on your website is a set of scripts that track what your customers buy so they can pay for the entire selection with one click.
The shopping cart will keep tract of any items you have an interest in that you have placed in your cart. Without a shopping cart your customers would have to pay individually for everything they want to buy.
After your customers press the “Buy” button on your site, their transaction is transferred to a payment processor to collect the money owed, send it where it belongs and enables the download if required.
It’s not quite that simple, but it is a quick explanation of what happens behind the “Buy” button. There are several processes that are sending and receiving the request for payment on a mouse click that ends with the download instructions for your customer.
Since there are numerous choices, searching for a shopping cart for your own site can leave you confused at best. A simple search will probably send you several hundred choices, all claiming to be the premier shopping cart for your needs.
An excellent choice would be Paypal’s shopping cart.
For several reasons, using PayPal’s shopping cart will streamline your customer’s payment processes by letting you accept credit and debit cards and direct bank account payments.
Some benefits for your customers include purchasing more than one item at a time and paying for them with a single click of the “Buy” button. It’s good customer service. You don’t want to irritate customers ready to spend money with you.
Other PayPal benefits for your customer include the ability to browse your entire collection of products and check out a list of what they bought before they click on your “Buy” button, which gives them the opportunity to modify the list.
Ease of installation which does not require knowledge of CGI scripting is one big advantage of Paypal’s shopping cart. Opening an account is free of up-front costs and you are charged the same fees charged when you get other PayPal payments.
To find the fee schedule, check out the bottom of any page, even the log in page, for a link to “Pricing” or “Fees.”
Some of the technical benefits of using PayPal’s shopping cart include being able to set shipping rates, if necessary, and tax rates. You can let your customers make donations to charities of their choice.
You can easily convert your “Buy Now” buttons into “Add To Cart” buttons to make multiple purchases seamless to your customer.
Their free 410-page PDF, “Website Payments Standard Integration Guide,” has all the in-depth information you might need about using “Buy Now” buttons included. You can find a comprehensive list of services on PayPal when you click the tab, “Merchant Services.”
If you click on the tab, “Products and Services,” you will find a link to the ebook. For your business records, PayPal will keep detailed transaction records on their website for your use when you need them.
You will also find details needed to integrate PayPal with your site, including how to pre-populate your customer’s sign-up forms. It might be a good idea to download their free PDF User Agreement for your records. You can find a link to the document at the bottom of almost every page on the service. Look for “Legal Agreements” and click that link.
PayPal is easy to use with whatever application you need. It has been time tested for a longtime as eBay’s payment processor.
Besides being highly recognizable as something that a lot of people use already and have a comfort zone with, another undocumented benefit of using PayPal’s shopping cart is your own peace of mind in knowing that your business income is in good hands.

Ecommerce For Beginners – Choosing Shopping Cart Software

By Pam Hogan

When you’re new to the world of ecommerce it can be tempting to want to go with whatever seems the easiest and fastest to get you up and going. This can include picking the first shopping cart that comes along. This might even mean using PayPal rather than setting up your own merchant account. It might also mean using quick website making programs without reading the fine print to make sure you own the site and not the company should you ever want to move it somewhere else. And it most definitely might mean using the free shopping cart that the website hosting companies bundle in their offers.

Have you ever asked yourself why it is that they offer carts for free? Take a close look at the kind of cart you get and you won’t have to wonder ever again.

Take a look at the features listed from GoDaddy, a popular hosting company, and some of the bullet points from their cart description:

* Over 800 design and color combinations, 10 Category page styles and 10 Product Detail page styles

* Personalize with your logo, brand and product images

* Simple catalog set up

* Specify product details, including SKU, description, pricing, options and inventory tracking

* Add and manage product images, including enlargements

* Accept all major credit cards

This is like a restaurant listing as its features: a clean table for you to dine at, water provided at no charge for each of your guests, fresh bread provided at no charge, menus for everyone to browse, 300 menu items to choose from.

Now, anyone who’s ever scanned a menu knows that 300 items is overkill just as 800 design combinations are, but it sounds impressive. In fact, it’s the first feature they list, which tells you that they’re counting on you not knowing what to look for, and to be impressed by this feature.

In truth, everything listed above are the bare-bone basics, which is what free tends to buy you. They, no doubt, count on the fact that this is your first website and you won’t be asking the right questions.

Don’t be lulled to sleep by your need to keep things simple. Simple sounds good when things are overwhelming. Likewise, one-stop-shops sound appealing when you don’t know where to turn. It makes you feel like one place is going to solve all of your needs, build your site, host your site, provide you with a shopping cart, process your orders through their merchant account. Now ask yourself, do you really want your dentist to be your auto mechanic and your dry cleaner, or do you want the best dentist out there, and a recommended list of places to take your car and clothes?

The more important questions to ask of the shopping cart system is can it process digital as well as physical products, can it offer recurring billing, does it offer autoresponders that send email marketing messages automatically for you, can you customize your thank you page and your check out page so that you can use that space wisely, can you use the cart on several websites or is it limited? A robust cart provides all of these features and then some.

No one is saying that in the beginning you won’t have more questions than answers, but now you know the questions you should be asking. Most people stay with their shopping cart for years, it’s not something you want to have to switch out. So, do the research, don’t just go for what seems simple and make an informed choice when you invest in your shopping cart system.

Now if you want to discover how a shopping cart can make you money visit http://www.TheRightCart.com

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What is the Best Shopping Cart Software For Your Ecommerce Website?

By Pat Fortino

Searching for the best shopping cart software for you ecommerce website can be a daunting task. There are literally hundreds of carts and ecommerce solutions available. How do you know which one is right for you?

You should consider the following factors when you are searching for a shopping cart that fits your needs.

• What is a shopping cart?
• How much does it cost?
• Should I buy or lease a cart?
• What Features Should I Look For?
• What Kind and How Much Support Does will I get?
• Which Payment Gateways Work with the Cart?
• What Hosting/Server Platform is Required?
• What if I Need Customization?

What is a Shopping Cart?

First, let me define a shopping cart or ecommerce website. In the most basic terms, a shopping cart is software that allows you to list your products on a web site and then automatically collect fees when a customer buys products from your website.

For example, lets say that you sell vitamins from your home, and now you want to start selling them on your website. First, you need shopping ecommerce software. You will also need to have a business bank account and a payment gateway, a service that allows you to automatically process credit cards on your web site.

Once you have the cart software set up on your website, you can add your vitamin products to the website using a web browser. The software allows you to add product images, descriptions, prices, shipping and tax rates, and so on. Once your cart is populated with all of your products, you can start selling them on the web.

Here’s how it works: A customer comes to your web site and adds products to her shopping cart. When she is ready to buy the products, she enters her shipping and credit card information in a form so you know where to ship the product and whom to charge it to. When the customer clicks the button to submit the order, the shopping cart uses your payment gateway (credit-card-processing service) to validate the credit card and then transfer the money from the customer’s credit card to your bank account. Then it’s up to you to ship the product.

You can also use a shopping cart to sell digital, or downloadable products such as electronic books, music, and software.

How Much Do Shopping Carts Cost?

As you might expect, shopping carts come in a wide range of prices, from free to thousands of dollars. Does that mean that the more you spend, the better cart you get? Not necessarily.

There are several free shopping carts that are very powerful and full of features; for example, OSCommerce and ZenCart. Both of these carts are completely free and offer most of the features you would expect in a modern shopping cart: unlimited products, connections to the major payment gateways, credit card payments, real-time shipping prices, discount customer groups, multi language, and more.

Unfortunately, there is a downside to free: free products lack good documentation and support. For example, there is no official support group that you can call when you need help. And there is no official user’s guide to explain how to use the software. You usually have to search through user forums to find answers to your questions.

Free shopping carts are probably not be the best choice if you are new to ecommerce and are trying to do everything yourself.

Fortunately, there are many commercial carts in the range of $100-500 that offer lots of features. The carts in this range usually have some kind of support system to help you with problems, and they usually have documentation to explain how to use their software. X-Cart and Ecommerce Templates are two carts between $150 – $200, and both are very powerful and relatively easy to use.

Should I Buy or Lease a Shopping Cart?

There are two basic models for online shopping carts:

• Pay a one time fee for the software and install it on your web server: This can be a daunting task unless you are comfortable working with Linux web servers and configuring web-based software. The good thing about this model is that you don’t have to pay monthly fees, and the software is usually much more customizable than leased shopping carts. If you have the skills to install the software on your server, or if you hire a website designer to install and configure your shopping cart, this method is more economical than leasing.
• Pay a monthly or yearly fee to lease the software: This model is easy to implement because you don’t need to install, configure, or maintain any software. If you are going to do it yourself and have little web experience, this is the easiest way to get started. The downside is that leased software is often hard to customize and many ecommerce sites need some customization. Furthermore, it can be very expensive when you add in the cost of leasing over many years.

What Shopping Cart Features Should I Look For?

Most shopping carts come with standard features like unlimited categories and products, web-based administration, easy-to-use product creation screens, and tax and shipping calculation. Unfortunately, not all carts include all the functions YOUR business will need to operate an online store.

The following is a list of features to look for in a shopping cart:

Installation and Design

• Easy-to-use web interface: A web interface allows you to administer your shopping cart from any web browser that is connected to the internet.
• Shopping Cart Reporting: The ability to get detailed reports about your sales, inventory, states, users, categories, products, destination zones, taxes, shipping rates, orders, membership levels, etc.
• Multiple Languages: The ability to display multiple languages in your shopping cart
• Customer Support: Most carts usually provide email or forum-based support, but sometimes they provide live phone support.
• Upgradeable: Find out if you can get free updates as the software is improved. Usually you can get free updates for 6 to 12 months.
• Template-based Design: Tempate-based designs make it easier to customize the look of your website
• WYSIWYG Editor for Products: This feature allows you to enter product text and images using a word-processor-like editor.
• Content Pages: Does your cart allow you to create content pages? For example, can you create an “About Us” page?
• Mini-Cart: A mini cart is a small box that indicates if the user has items in their shopping cart. These are usually located on the top or side of the page. Most carts have this feature.

Customer Features

• Newsletter Function: Do you need to ability to send mass emails to your customers? Many carts come with the ability to send emails to customers.
• Customer Order / Customer Account / Customer Registration: The ability for your customers to view their account and their order history.
• Product Search: A search tool for your products. This function is especially helpful if you have more than 20 or 30 products.
• Googlecheckout: Google Checkout is a new service that makes online shopping faster, safer and more convenient. Many carts have been updated so they work with Google Checkout.
• Wish list: A “Wish List” allows your customers to save products to a wish list. That way they can come back to your online store at a later date and buy the products in the Wish List.
• Send to friend: This feature displays a form that allows customer to enter a name and email address so the can send a link of a product to a friend.
• Memberships and special pricing: This feature allows you to create memberships on your store and then give them special prices or discounts.
• Printable Invoices: The feature allows your customers to print their invoices.
• Multiple Shipping Addresses: The feature allows customers to store multiple shipping addresses. This is a handy feature for customer who often ship gifts to friends and family members.

Store and Products

• Unlimited Number of Products: This feature means you can list as many products as you like. With many leased shopping carts, the total number of products is limited by your plan. The more you pay, the more you products you can list.
• Unlimited number of categories: Products are usually stored in categories; for example, Men’s Clothing, Women’s Clothing, Children’s clothing.
• Products can be assigned to multiple categories: This feature allows you to assign a product to more than one category.
• Featured Products: This feature allows you to list feature products in a box or area on your home page.
• Bestsellers: This feature automatically lists your best-selling products.
• Related products: This feature allows you to relate one product to another product so the customer can see products that are related to the product they are looking at.
• Unlimited product options and option price modifiers: This feature allows you to add options to products, and the options can add or subtract from the product price. For example, T-Shirts come in sizes Small, Medium, and Large and colors Red, Green, and Blue.
• Custom Input Fields for Products: This allows you to add fields to products. For example, if you sell custom greeting cards, you can use a custom field so the customer can enter a custom message to be printed on the card.
• Unlimited number of product images: This feature allows you to add more than one product image for a product.
• Popup Product Images: This feature allows you to add popup images so your customer can see a larger, more detailed product image.
• Manufacturers: This feature allows you to associate manufacturers with products.
• Drop Shippers: This feature allows you to sell products that another company stocks and ships. When your store receives an order for a drop shipper product, the shopping cart sends an email to the drop shipper with the product and shipping information and that company ships the product to your customer.
• Discount coupon codes and gift certificates: This feature allows you to sell gift certificates or to offer coupon discounts.
• Inventory control: This feature allows you to enter the number of products you have in stock and then automatically makes a product “Unavailable” when there are no more products in stock.
• Quantity discounts: This feature allows you to give discounts based on the quantity ordered.
• Retail and wholesale price: This feature allows you to create a wholesale and retail price for any product.
• Limit minimal order amount: The feature allows you to specify and minimum order amount.
• Real-time USPS, FedEx and UPS shipping calculation: This feature allows you to provide realtime shipping calculations for USPS, FedEx, and UPS.
• Shipping Label Generator for USPS and UPS
• Allow your customers to choose delivery methods: This feature allows your customers to select a delivery method; for example, USPS, FedEx, or UPS.
• Add handling fee: This feature allows you to add a handling fee per order.
• Digital Electronic Downloads: This feature allows you to sell digital products such as E-Books, Music, or Software. Once a customer purchases a digital product, the cart sends them an email with a link to download the digital product.
• Product-specific taxes: The feature allows you to charge a unique tax on any product.
• Payment Gateways: This feature is VERY important. Most carts support many different payment gateways; for example, Authorize.net, Paypal, or 2CheckOut. If you already have a payment gateway, make sure the cart you purchase supports your gateway.
• The ability to Optimize all pages for search engines: This important feature allows you to optimize your product and content pages for Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines. This is a VERY important feature; if the search engines can’t find your products, your customers can’t find them either.
• Multiple Administrator Accounts and Account Levels: This feature allows you to have multiple administration accounts. This feature is very handy if more than one person maintains your shopping cart.

What Kind and How Much Support Does the Shopping Cart Provide?

Shopping cart software and ecommerce is pretty complex and there are many opportunities for problems. Whatever shopping cart model you choose, be sure to consider amount and type of support offered by the leasing host or the software seller. Because a smooth operation of your website and shopping cart are necessary for financial success, you’ll want to have appropriate support for emergencies.

Which Payment Gateways Work with the Shopping Cart?

If you are going to use a leased shopping cart, or you are going to buy shopping cart software, find out which payment gateways will work with the shopping cart.

Note: Each shopping cart provider builds their own interfaces for payment gateways.

What Hosting/Server Platform is Required?

Will your website and shopping cart be hosted on a Linux / UNIX server or a Windows server? If you are going to use a hosted shopping cart, you probably don’t need to worry about this unless you already have other web-based software applications installed on your current web host.

If you are going to buy shopping cart software, your choice might be limited by your server choice. Currently there are many more shopping carts made for Linux / UNIX than for windows.

What if I Need Customization?

Every shopping cart I have installed, designed, and configured, has required some customization. In most cases, the client wanted to do something the cart did not do. For example, one client wanted the ability to send a custom email with specific products so he could send special instructions whenever a customer ordered a specific product. A few shopping carts have this ability, but most don’t.

The best solution is to first determine your specific requirements and then find a cart that fits your needs. Unfortunately, it’s hard to find a cart that does EVERYTHING you want it to do. If this is the case, you’ll need to have some custom development done to add a new function to the cart.

Keep in mind that many popular shopping carts have dozens of Modifications and Plugins that you can add to the shopping cart software to make it fulfill your requirements.

Note: If you use a leased shopping cart, you will probably not be able to make modifications to the software.

See our competitvely-price ecommerce package

Pat Fortino is a website designer specializing in small business websites, ecommerce web sites, and Joomla Content Management (CMS) websites. If you are looking for an affordable solution, give us a call at 303-907-6133
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Shopping Carts and SEO

By Ross MacIver

Shopping and the Web. They go together like Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Well, maybe not quite, but Internet shopping is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world.

It’s fairly easy to set up shop and sell almost anything from bananas to banana boats on the Internet. Browse through the shopping section of Google (Froogle) or Yahoo and you can see the amazing variety of products that are available.

Click on a few of those links and take a look at the address bar on your browser. Many online stores use some kind of dynamic system for generating their pages. This means their product information is drawn from a database and dynamically displayed.

Dynamically displayed pages look something like this:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=shopping+cart&btnG=Search

You will notice that there is no extension which would indicate a static page.

Is there a problem with dynamic pages? From SEO perspective there is a real problem. Search engines have trouble indexing dynamic pages, especially with multiple variables.

Here is what Google has to say about dynamic pages:

“If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a “?” character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few”.

Shopping carts that use a lot of parameters will have trouble getting indexed by search engines.

The Solution?

A client recently approached me to provide a shopping cart that would allow his products to be indexed properly. In addition, he had special requirements for the size and the cost of the shopping cart. The cart needed to be as inexpensive and as small as possible.

My client had previously been using PayPal “Buy it Now” buttons but disliked the way the customer was immediately taken to the PayPal site. He felt that would discourage people from making additional purchases before checking out.

I investigated the various free shopping carts like Zen Cart, osCommerce, and AgoraCart. They all offered some sort of SEO modifications, but they were too large to fit in my client’s limited hosting account.

Digging a little further, I came across Commerce.cgi [http://www.commerce-cgi.com] — a compact, fully customizable shopping cart. But free version did not offer the features that my client desired. The pages are dynamically generated, and there is no support for PayPal.

However, for a $50 lifetime membership, he had access to the member’s area which provided extra scripts for PayPal integration. There is also a very interesting script for making dynamic pages appear static.

This script, called Search Engine Advanced, uses the Apache mod_rewrite function to change requested URLs. I checked with my client to see if his Apache server supported mod_rewrite, and that was in luck. All systems go!

Installing the Commerce.cgi script was quite straightforward, and I could easily adapt the templates to match the style of my client’s existing web site. Once the cart was installed and running, I tried adding the Search Engine Advanced hack. There were a few complications, but the support staff at Commerce.cgi helped me sort it all out.

The results are very pleasing indeed. All the dynamic pages appear as static, and Google, Yahoo and MSN have started to index the site.

You can see the site up and running at Tea From Taiwan – specializing in hand processed oolong tea.

I would highly recommend Commerce.cgi for anyone looking for a highly configurable shopping cart. It is suitable for small to medium sites and offers great support through their BBS.

Copyright 2005 by Ross MacIver

This article may be redistributed freely on the Internet or in ezines as long as the resource box and hyperlinks remain intact.

Ross MacIver is the director of Best Online Content. We provide quality content for your web site and offer a full range of design and SEO services.

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How to Get Free Shopping Carts for Ecommerce Sites

There is nothing like the feeling of running your own business. You are in control and you can relate directly to your customers. This is made even simpler with ecommerce websites. Now all you have to do is make sure that the customers are happy and coming back for more.

If you sell a product or a service, you will want to have shopping cart capabilities on your website. This will help customers buy more than one product at a time, and it can also help customers figure out shipping and handling costs before they choose to buy. The more options you give your customers, the better chance that they will stay your customers and coming back for more.

So, if you are selling merchandise on an ecommerce website, you will want to consider using a shopping cart like osCommerce Shopping Cart, CubeCart, Zen Cart or Agora Shopping Cart. Falcoda Internet has these shopping carts available for auto installations with the Ecommerce Hosting Plan.

Next you will need to choose a payment processing service tool such as PayPal or WorldPay. This is a payment processing service that you can set up in order to offer your customers and easier way to buy from your website. The PayPal account is free to set up, and you are only charged a small percentage for every transactions. And since you only have to pay when you make a transaction, there are no monthly fees to handle. This is the most cost effective way to please your customers. The WorldPay option, although has a setup fee and ongoing monthly charge has a number of benefits, mainly that if you already have your own merchant number for credit and debit card payment, WorldPay will allow you to use this along with their service to process payments online.

With this type of merchant account, you can now have ‘But It Now’ buttons anywhere you choose on your website, or you can set up an entire webpage dedicating to the purchasing of your products. Both PayPal and WorldPay offer help and advice of how to add the ‘Buy it Now’ style buttons or carts to your website. It is up to you, and your site design with determine what route you want to go with that.

Make sure that you are giving your customers what they need. Just like people in a real store, they probably want to buy more than they can carry at one time, so give them a shopping cart to make life a little easier.