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The Usefulness of a Shopping Cart To Commercial Websites

By on April 21, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, article plugin, Blogs, Conversion, Domains, SEO, Traffic, wordpress, Youtube Video

The Usefulness of a Shopping Cart To Commercial Websites If you are a website owner you should understand how useful a shopping cart will be to the success of your website. A shopping cart can be used for easy purchasing of items especially multiple item purchases. A shopping cart can be used for physical products, for services, for subscriptions, and for free trials. Shopping carts can calculate subtotal of the cost of the items selected, the cost of various shipping options, and the cost of tax if that is an option. Shopping carts can handle various currencies, domestic and international shipping options and discount and certificate options. Shopping carts are used in commercial websites worldwide. There are many benefits to the website owner in using a shopping cart. When a shopping cart is installed on a website individuals from all over the world can go online and shop on your website. Shopping carts can be customized to accommodate these international visitors. Multiple currencies can be utilized by shopping cart software and can also be made available to different languages. Your shopping cart should have the best security available to protect your customers and to give them confidence in purchasing from you. There are many benefits to using a Paypal Shopping cart including the fact that it is inexpensive there are no set-up charges, monthly charges, merchant accounts, gateway or shopping cart fees. Paypal does payment processing; there is fraud protection, and merchant tools to accept payments, which are included in the fees, accessed by Paypal, which are very reasonable. The fees are only applied when you accept the payment. If the individual does not pay, then you do not pay a fee. The Paypal shopping cart integrates well with other payment processors and is easy to set up on your Website. You can add product details, and use multiple options such as color, size etc. You can use multiple buttons such as a donation button, a buy now button, and a customizable button option. You can also include your own image or logo or even a background in order to integrate the shopping cart to your website. The Paypal shopping cart is the perfect solution for small business owners when they have 50 or less items to offer on their websites. The benefits of Google Checkout are many and include the fact that it can help to increase your sales and it works with AdWords and reduces your lead-generation expenses. You can reach more customers by using the Google Checkout badge on your AdWords so that you are identified as a participating merchant which will give your customers confidence. Google’s checkout process is a secure process. Google has a policy that for every $1 you spend on AdWords you can process $10 in sales for free. Google has reasonable per transaction fees, which is a low payment processing cost.

 

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How Do You Go About Comparing Shopping Cart Software

By on March 28, 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 Go About Comparing Shopping Cart Software?

Anyone who desires a successful Internet business understands the importance of a good shopping cart. There are so many shopping carts online now that it can be difficult to wade through all your choices to locate the one that will work best for you.

One way of knowing which shopping cart is best for you is to read shopping cart product reviews that you can find online and in IT magazines. Read about what others think of the shopping carts, make note of the features discussed and compare what is offered to what you need.

Another way to find what is the best shopping cart software for your business is to do some comparison-shopping yourself using a list of what you need in a shopping cart and your budget.

When you have pared down the possible candidates to just a few, then it is time to look at live stores that use each of the candidates shopping cart programs. Notice how easy or not it is to navigate, search for products, add to or delete products from the shopping cart and the features available for the customer. Look to see if the shopping cart software companies offer a customer service and give them a try to see how they respond to you.

When you are paring down your list of possible shopping cart candidates do it by comparing price, feature, and by reading the reviews of each shopping cart. Look for the shopping carts that seem to be up to date on the latest technology, are easily integrated with payment processors and your Website. Make sure you discard the shopping carts that are older or have lower quality.

When investigating live stores that use the various shopping carts that you have pared down your candidates to you want to get a feel for how the shopping carts work when in use. Typically the shopping cart companies will provide a list of several online stores that use their shopping cart. Some of the things you will be looking for are how well the shopping cart blends in with the Website and does each store look different from the others? Actually use the shopping carts on these stores to see how the carts perform.

When filtering out the candidates use a list of the top 3 things that you are looking for in a shopping cart and if a candidate does not have one of the top 3 than cross it off your list. Make a list of the features that are important to you and which ones you cannot do without this will help to narrow down your list of candidates.

If you know you will be using electronic certificates that cross off any shopping carts that do not offer this feature.

Make sure you investigate how good each company’s customer service department is by sending them each an email asking some pre-sale questions and make notes about how fast they respond, if they respond with a canned reply or really give you individual attention.

Do the candidate shopping cart companies have technical support? Take a look at the FAQs and index of help topics to see how helpful they are and if they are easy to understand. Download the user guide and review it to see if it is understandable.

Read shopping cart review from respected sources to see what is recommended. See if you can find user reviews on each of the shopping carts that you have decided are the biggest contenders for your money.

Once you have your list narrowed down to just 3 or 5 shopping cart software companies than it is time to look at the total cost of using each shopping cart, and also look at what the strong points are for each of the remaining carts.

Look at price, features and support and make your best decision.

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Shopsite Pro Has A Shopping Cart Solution Worth Investigating

By on January 28, 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

Shopsite Pro Has A Shopping Cart Solution Worth Investigating If you are looking for shopping cart software you should definitely check out Shopsite Pro. Shopsite Pro has many useful features that any Website Owner will be thrilled to have. The navigation is very easy. You more than likely won’t find more complete shopping cart software on the web. You won’t be required to know HTML in order to build your shopping cart as Shopsite Pro gives you the ability to completely customize your site easily, in fact a complete newbie could complete the task and have the shopping cart work. There are so many great features with this shopping cart software including the power edit that allows you to edit many products at once because you first choose what options you wish to edit and can then edit these options in a wide variety of products. You can have real-time credit card authorization, search engine for your Website, sales and traffic statistics, and shipping and tax utilities to help you run your business. You will find a hard time locating an easier to use shopping cart than Shopsite Pro. If you want point and click for your shopping cart, you’ve found it. Shopsite is easy to setup and you won’t need to download or install anything because ShopSite is a server-based software. All you need to set it up is a web browser. If you are a small or medium-sized business, you will get a lot out of using this shopping cart. You will receive lots of tools to help with site creation and management, as well as sales and traffic statistics, and you will be able to offer your customers secure encrypted transactions. You also won’t find a better help platform than the one at ShopSite Pro. You will find screen references that can answer specific questions that pertain to the page you are on, and a section for FAQs, as well as a getting started section, search features, how-to sections, and also an index of help options so that you can find what you need help with fast. You can pay for Shopsite Pro on a monthly basis making it affordable to just about anyone. If you are not looking for all of the features that ShopSite Pro has then you are in luck because they have two other versions that you can choose from – Shopsite Starter and ShopSite Manager. If you are a Website owner and looking to present a professional Website to your customers you really need to have a shopping cart software that will please your customers and give you the features that you need to run your business online the successful way. Any ecommerce site needs to have a shopping cart whether they are selling physical products or soft products like software. If you are in the market for an easy to use shopping cart with loads of useable features check out Shopsite Pro.

 

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Offering Certificates Coupons Discounts and Sales Through Your Shopping Cart

By on December 3, 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

Offering Certificates, Coupons, Discounts and Sales Through Your Shopping Cart

Driving sales to your Website through use of promotions such as sales, discounts, coupons and certificates is what make for a successful online store. Your shopping cart can help you to drive sales if it has the right features.

Some shopping carts that have more of a storefront system contain many of the advanced features that are useful for driving traffic to the store and we all know that traffic equates to sales. Most any basic shopping cart will allow you to change prices when you want to have a sale but you usually have to do it manually, one at a time. Then, after the sale you have to change them all back again. Some shopping cart systems allow owners to set up pre-set timed sales, where the program sets the beginning time of the sale and the ending time automatically.

Another useful promotion feature of some store-front shopping carts is the ability to feature an item or items on the homepage of the store so that it can be prominently seen by customers as the enter your store. Some even have the capability of placing sale products or new products on the front page to drive sales that way.

Shopping cart software that has the capability to email customers can be set up to email customers about coupons offers or discounts. Not all shopping carts can do this and when they can what they can offer may differ such as some being able to offer a percentage or a dollar amount coupon, and others can offer either specific product coupons versus all-store coupons. Some times you can program the shopping cart to kick-in a discount when the dollar amount of the purchase reaches a certain dollar amount.

Another useful feature is when the software has the capability to offer free shipping when orders reach over $50.00. This type of offer really helps to boost sales.

Customer pricing is another type of discount that kicks in when the customer logs into the Website. The private login password identifies the customer and the customer’s assigned percentage of discount that appears on the order form at checkout.

Just as offline brick and mortar stores offer sales, discounts, certificates and coupons to entice customers into the store. The ability of shopping carts to send out emails enticing customers to visit an online store is crucial for driving sales. An online store is dead without a constant flow of interested buyers. Sales, discounts, certificates and coupons are promotional tactics that a shopping cart can be programmed to handle saving a storeowner time and money. When making a shopping cart decision don’t ignore the power of advanced features to generate greater sales, features such as the ones discussed in this article.

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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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