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Shopping
Cart Solutions
Searching
and evaluating for the best shopping cart solutions for a site's
specific needs can be a daunting task. Things to look for include
current website hosting platform compatibility, whether you are
selling tangible or digital products and whether to host the cart
on your site or remotely hosted.
Do
you have certain programming knowledge in ASP, PHP, PERL or ColdFusion,
or just looking for an "Out-Of-Box" shopping cart solution that
can be plugged-in to your existing site. "Out-Of-Box" shopping
carts are complete software and normally cost more than "server
extension" shopping cart software. The latter might require some
database or coding knowledge to integrate into existing site but
does provide better customization flexibility.
Its
best that you fully investigate all options, carefully study all
the benefits and drawbacks and the vital features (less the bells
and buzzers that may not be needed at this point and only add
to higher cost) of each cart provider before deciding on the most
suitable one that meets your requirements.
Things
to look for in a shopping cart application:-
Setup
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Easily
integrate with a merchant existing websites or offer ecommerce
hosting with easy website/store builder.
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Ease
of upload of products and provide import from existing database
capability or bulk upload.
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Ability
to provide full customization or certain level of customization
to suit individual site appearances and needs. Usage/Operation.
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Ease
of usage/management of the cart/software for merchants to make
changes to their product offerings or store appearances.
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Ease
of usage for end users/customers to have enjoyable shopping
experience at the merchant's store.
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Ability
to provide sales or promotional offers such as volume purchase
discount offer, item specific seasonal discount offer, member
purchase, coupon etc.
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Ability
to provide up-selling or cross-selling.
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Provide
products inventory management facility.
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Ability
to calculate tax and shipping charges automatically during check-out.
These features are very important since customers would want
to know the exact amount they'll be paying for any purchase.
However, up until now, the tax calculation features, generally
are rather limited to specific countries such as the US, Canada,
the UK etc. This is mainly due to the fact that every country
has its own import duty, sales tax and tariff structures. It
will be virtually impossible to offer tax calculation rates
for all international customers worldwide as these rates will
constantly change over period of time as each country has its
own commitment in taking the necessary steps to comply with
the World Trade Organization Tax and Tariff Guidelines for international
trade. Provide flexible shipping options including free shipping
option and international shipping.
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Provide
multiple options for customers to place an order including offline
methods.
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Provide
multiple options for customers to pay for a product purchase
including offline methods.
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Provide
automated recurring billing system such as for membership auto
billing or monthly payment.
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Provide
support and can easily integrate with the most popular currently
available payment gateways and payment processors or merchant
accounts.
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Provide
multiple email order notifications such as order received email
to merchant, order acknowledgement e-mail with unique reference
number and goods shipped notification email to the customers.
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Provide
detail reports or tracking of sales and customers' browsing
and/or shopping behaviors and buying patterns. These detail
analyses are critical for merchants to review the effectiveness
of their product offerings and store designs and to make possible
changes for further improvement. The sales report should include
item details by date and time and customers' details. The traffic
or visitors' browsing behavior report should include the number
of visitors, the heaviest traffic periods in a day, the click-through
paths and the exit points. Help and Customer Support
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Provide
simple, organized, easy to learn but complete tutorials, guides
and/or manuals.
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The
shopping cart company should provide quality and reasonable
level of customer support to the merchants. For recurring billing
services, free support on basic needs or stated product feature
related problems should be expected. For a one time purchased
of shopping cart software, a reasonable support fee might incur
but prompt service is expected from the cart company.
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Provide
Digital Delivery such as secure download of software or e-book.
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Provide
automatic download link expiration based on a pre-set period
of time.
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Provide
Autoresponder or Multiple Automatic Email follow-up system.
This feature is very important to effectively market a wide
range of targeted products to specific customers.
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Provide
Affiliate Management System including flexible commission rates
calculations.
Here, we list
the best shopping cart software available currently. Evaluate
the one that best suit your needs.
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