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How Do You Choose A Shopping Cart For Your Business

By on March 12, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, article directory, article plugin, article themes, Blog Business, Blog Platform, Blog Posting, blogging, Blogs, Conversion, Domains, Free Reports, Google Adsense, Membership sites, Mobil Blogging, New Blogging, SEO, Themes, Traffic, Web Design, Websites, widgets, wordpress, World Internet Summit, Wp Headers, Wp Themes, Youtube Video

How Do You Choose A Shopping Cart For Your Business?

When deciding on what type of shopping cart and what features you need to have with your shopping cart you need to take a good look at the needs of your customers and at the needs of your business. Your shopping cart can show your customer that you are a professional that they can trust in order to make a buying decision. The shopping cart is a very important part of your commerce website.

Your shopping cart should fit the size of your business including how many products you have and what features you will be using such as multiple items, discounts, shipping and payment options, the ability to collect contact information, the ability to process credit cards and echecks. Your shopping cart needs to have the ability to save information, to calculate discounts, and sales tax and multiple purchases. Your shopping cart needs to look like your website and to look professional.

You need to have a shopping cart that fits your program skill level, and ability to make changes to it with html. You need to be able to see in real time what your sales figures are, who your buyers are and how many sales you have. The shopping cart should be able to give you accurate inventory totals based on sales generated.

Your shopping cart needs to be easy to navigate for your customers, blend well with your website, and be easy for you to make changes to. Your shopping cart should give your customer all the information needed when making a purchase including what items are in the cart, the quantity of each item, any options such as size, color etc., and any discounts or certificates available. Your customer should be able to choose payment and shipping options right from the cart and should be able to see a total for their purchase prior to getting to the credit card information page. The shopping cart needs to be able to give information that is accurate and responsive to what the customer does including changes made in any of the shopping cart fields.

You choose a shopping cart for your online business that meets the needs of your customers, and meets the skills and abilities of the person in charge of administering the shopping cart. The shopping cart should be able to grow with your business; meeting your future needs as well as filling the shopping needs you have today.

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What is Involved in Shopping Cart Software

By on November 29, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, article directory, article plugin, article themes, Blog Business, Blog Platform, Blog Posting, blogging, Blogs, Conversion, Domains, Free Reports, Google Adsense, Membership sites, Mobil Blogging, New Blogging, SEO, Themes, Traffic, Web Design, Websites, widgets, wordpress, World Internet Summit, Wp Headers, Wp Themes, Youtube Video

What is Involved in Shopping Cart Software

There are many things that go on within a shopping cart. There are many different features and management systems, so many that it can be mind-boggling. When deciding on which shopping cart program to purchase you should know what the basic parts of a shopping cart system entails so that you can make a smart buying decision.

All shopping carts have some kind of ordering system whether it is a simple online ordering system that includes buttons that have HTML attached to them such as is done with the Paypal shopping cart or a store-front ordering system where everything is done on site.

All shopping carts also have the ability for customers to add items to the cart, delete items from the cart, and input quantity desired. All shopping carts collect data such as the customer’s name, address and phone number. All shopping carts have to include shipping modules unless the products are all digital in nature in that case there would be a download manager.

Advanced shopping carts would allow customers to have several options per item such as color, size, weight, shape, height or width. Some carts even have choices between bulk or single item orders.

Shopping carts normally have shipping options with common ones being USPS, UPS and FedEx, DHL, CanadaPost, and also AustraliaPost. Not only do you have the different carriers but you also have other shipping options such as delivery time: next day, second day, ground, and air.

Tax calculation are also a part of what shopping carts need to offer when the customer has a physical address that is in the same state or city as the merchant. Tax calculations are done by zip code. Merchants who have stores in multiple rates would have a hair-pulling experience if not for advanced software plug-ins such as TaxWare’s Sales/Use Tax System or CertiTax which can calculate for the customer in real time the exact taxes.

Buyers insist on secure transactions before they hand over their credit cards so it is important for the shopping cart to integrate a payment gateway that is secure, protection for credit card numbers that are stored on the Website, an SSL secure connection certificate between the customer and the Website to discourage hackers from stealing sensitive financial information from the customers. It is also important to have a secure Sockets Layer (SSL) between the customer and the Website. If your Website server is not secure customer won’t buy. It is also important to have secure order retrieval.

Not all payment gateways are compatible with all shopping carts so you need to verify that the payment gateway is compatible before making your purchase. The most common U.S. based shopping cart compatible payment gateways are Authorize.net, LinkPoint, veriSign PayFlow Pro, and WorldPay. PayPal is another alternative payment system for most shopping carts but PayPal’s proprietary Instant Payment Notification (IPN) is not always available so you have to check before deciding to use PayPal.

Most shopping carts nowadays provide email confirmation of order placement and a few provide email confirmation of shipment.

Cookies, temporary IP number assignment and randomly generated cart numbers are all ways that shopping carts have to help keep customer orders straight. Because some shoppers turn off cookies it is important that shopping carts be set up with other methods alongside cookies just in case.

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What Are The Most Frequently Asked Questions About Shopping Carts

By on July 8, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, article directory, article plugin, article themes, Blog Business, Blog Platform, Blog Posting, blogging, Blogs, Conversion, Domains, Free Reports, Google Adsense, Membership sites, Mobil Blogging, New Blogging, SEO, Themes, Traffic, Web Design, Websites, widgets, wordpress, World Internet Summit, Wp Headers, Wp Themes, Youtube Video

What Are The Most Frequently Asked Questions About Shopping Carts? There are questions about shopping carts that are asked by customers and there are questions that Website owners have about shopping carts when they are looking to add a shopping cart to their Website. Some of the questions are the same, but most of the questions are different. What are the questions that customers and Website owners ask about shopping carts? Customers often ask questions about a shopping cart’s navigation such as how do I add products to the cart, and how do I delete items if I chance my mind? Customers want to know if they will be able to use their preferred payment method. They also want options when it comes to shipping so they can choose the quickest way, or the cheapest way or the preferred carrier. Customers are very concerned about security when it comes to using credit cards online. They also want to know which credit cards are acceptable to use? Customers also want to know how to make choices such as color or size when ordering. While browsing for multiple items customers also want to know if they can see what is in their cart and also if they can see a tally of the total dollar amount of the items in the cart? Customers want to know if there is any sales tax charged and if the store ships to where they live? Customers want to know not only what the shipping options are but they want to be able to compare the costs of shipping. There may be some customers who need to know if you ship to APO or FPO addresses or internationally? Website owners often ask a lot of questions when they are looking for a shopping cart solution for their business. They want to know how well the shopping cart will blend in with their Website. They have questions about how much HTML knowledge they will need to know in order to install or configure the shopping cart? They are naturally going to want to know about technical support if they encounter problems while installing or configuring the shopping cart. They are also going to want to know how responsive customer support is and how helpful they are. They are going to want to know if there is a user’s manual or a help topic or FAQs section that they can find answers when customer service is closed. When in the buying phase they will have lots of questions about features, administration, installation, maintenance, and upgrades. They will also want to know about pricing and payment plans so that they can know if the shopping cart is within their budget or not. It is up to the shopping cart software company to answer the questions of the Website Owner and it is up to the Website owner to answer the questions asked by the customer about the shopping cart. The shopping cart is a very important part of the success of any Website that sells products or services so answering questions about the shopping cart are vital too.

 

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