Shopping Cart Information For Website Owners
Do you own a Website and are considering a shopping cart? Would you like to know all there is to know about shopping carts? Keep reading to find out some very useful information that will help you decide if you need a shopping cart and what shopping cart features would fit your Website. A shopping cart that is used on a Website is actually a series of scripts that keep track of the items your cyber customer is interested in purchasing until they are ready to checkout.
The shopping cart itself does not handle any of the financial transaction, but really just holds the items that the customer has selected for purchase until they are ready to actually make the purchase. The information about the items they have selected is then passed on to a secure connection or payment gateway, which is a separate service from the shopping cart. The payment gateway service then takes over by handling the requested purchases thought the financial networks whether you have a merchant account to handle credit card transactions or you use PayPal or some other software payment management system.
When deciding on what shopping cart is right for your business (Website) you will run into a lot of shopping cart applications. Two of the basic types of choices you will run into when it comes to shopping cart applications is the free shopping cart versus the premium shopping cart.
Before you start looking at shopping cart applications you should make a list of what you want your shopping cart to do. You should also know what your budget is for your shopping cart. When deciding about shopping cart features you should consider your current needs and your future needs. You should have room to grow in your choice of shopping carts. If your shopping cart won’t grow with your business then you will find yourself making a change in shopping carts down the road and that change will cost you time; time that is precious to your business. Free shopping cart options:
You can find some really good deals when it comes to free ecommerce solutions such as the basic shopping cart that PayPal offers. The basic PayPal shopping cart can integrate with many of the payment gateways and merchant accounts and PayPal are accepted all around the world. There are no monthly fees with PayPal and you receive free fraud protection and you will not have to worry about charge back fees.
PayPal offers Website owner’s easy to use tools that make implementing the PayPal shopping cart a snap. Other free shopping cart software includes Zen Cart™, 1FreeCart, and AgoraCart. There are many different premium shopping cart software out there including but not limited to Shop-Script, Mercantec Softcart, 1ShoppingCart Pro, and X Cart Pro. Choosing a premium shopping cart software can help your business because many of the premium shopping cart programs allow you to accept checks, COD, and other methods of possessing payments; which gives your customers payment options. Some premium shopping cart programs will include wizards that help you to build your web page even if you don’t know HTML. They may even come with templates and other tools that will help you to set up your online store.
Really good shopping cart software will even help you to keep track of your inventory and generate reports for you. A good shopping cart will also include a shipping tool that will calculate shipping costs based on parameters that you set and may even link to common shipping methods such as FedEx. Another valuable tool that shopping carts have is that they can calculate tax. Some premium carts will even let customers view previous purchases, which comes in handy for those repeat orders. A premium cart can even help with affiliate programs, coupons, gift certificates and other incentives that help to generate sales. Many premium shopping cart programs offer protection by encrypting information, and by processing credit cards through reputable processing services or by allowing customers to use the program without having to download cookies.