Picking A Shopping Cart Solution
- Date: 2007-07-13 - Word Count: 415
Share This!
If you're looking to sell your own products/services from your website, you're going to need a shopping-cart.
The shopping cart market is flooded with hundreds of different shopping carts you can choose from. But before you start on your journey, looking at product demos and interviewing vendors, it is important that you understand the two categories of shopping cart solutions:
1) An off-the-shelf shopping cart solution. Offers little customization but can be integrated with any website very quickly. Examples include: PayPal, MonsterCommerce, Yahoo Stores, InstantEStore and 1ShoppingCart to name a few.
These solutions are cheap, battle-tested and very scalable. Disadvantages are - very little customization options, limited support and you don't control the shopping experience.
2) Customized shopping cart based on a proven platform like XCart or OSCommerce. While typically more expensive to implement due to the time it takes to customize each platform, a customized shopping cart delivers full control to you as the merchant. You control the look and feel, shopping experience and any third-party plugins you wish to integrate.
Many large enterprises started with an off-the-shelf shopping cart and later switched to a customized shopping cart for a greater degree of control.
Disadvantages of going with a customized shopping cart are - Cost & time to implement (far more expensive), cost of maintenance, bugs introduced by your new code (it's not going to be as battle tested) and limited support.
Since the platform people (XCart, OSCommerce etc) are in the business of developing their platform and not selling shopping carts, you typically get a third-party vendor to handle the customization.
--
Recommendations for picking a quality shopping cart:
1. Ask for references in the form of live websites using the shopping cart. Go to these websites and try to buy something as if you were a customer. Write down notes about your experience. Likes and dislikes.
2. Check the page.
3. Find out who are some of the biggest merchants using the shopping cart and what is their volume. Make sure the shopping cart can scale to meet your needs.
4. Customer Support - Your shopping cart will become integral to your business. Send an email to the company's general support@ box and leave a vmail at the technical support box. Measure how long it takes to get a detailed (non canned) response.
5. Open architecture - If your needs change you might decide to switch to a different shopping cart in the future. Make sure the cart you're picking now offers full export of the entire database of customers, orders, products etc. to make a possible future switch pain free.
The shopping cart market is flooded with hundreds of different shopping carts you can choose from. But before you start on your journey, looking at product demos and interviewing vendors, it is important that you understand the two categories of shopping cart solutions:
1) An off-the-shelf shopping cart solution. Offers little customization but can be integrated with any website very quickly. Examples include: PayPal, MonsterCommerce, Yahoo Stores, InstantEStore and 1ShoppingCart to name a few.
These solutions are cheap, battle-tested and very scalable. Disadvantages are - very little customization options, limited support and you don't control the shopping experience.
2) Customized shopping cart based on a proven platform like XCart or OSCommerce. While typically more expensive to implement due to the time it takes to customize each platform, a customized shopping cart delivers full control to you as the merchant. You control the look and feel, shopping experience and any third-party plugins you wish to integrate.
Many large enterprises started with an off-the-shelf shopping cart and later switched to a customized shopping cart for a greater degree of control.
Disadvantages of going with a customized shopping cart are - Cost & time to implement (far more expensive), cost of maintenance, bugs introduced by your new code (it's not going to be as battle tested) and limited support.
Since the platform people (XCart, OSCommerce etc) are in the business of developing their platform and not selling shopping carts, you typically get a third-party vendor to handle the customization.
--
Recommendations for picking a quality shopping cart:
1. Ask for references in the form of live websites using the shopping cart. Go to these websites and try to buy something as if you were a customer. Write down notes about your experience. Likes and dislikes.
2. Check the page.
3. Find out who are some of the biggest merchants using the shopping cart and what is their volume. Make sure the shopping cart can scale to meet your needs.
4. Customer Support - Your shopping cart will become integral to your business. Send an email to the company's general support@ box and leave a vmail at the technical support box. Measure how long it takes to get a detailed (non canned) response.
5. Open architecture - If your needs change you might decide to switch to a different shopping cart in the future. Make sure the cart you're picking now offers full export of the entire database of customers, orders, products etc. to make a possible future switch pain free.
Related Tags: internet marketing, ecommerce, online shopping, shopping cart
Adrian Singer is an Internet Consultant with www.softwareprojects.com Your Article Search Directory : Find in Articles
Recent articles in this category:
- Planning A Childs Party
Birthdays are an exciting time for children, each year they want bigger and better parties so it is - Online Diwali Gifts Shopping Experience
India is a country of festivals. India is truly secular country and enjoys each and every festival e - E-commerce To Engine Wealth!
It is a fabulous experience to have technology at your side to leverage its advantage to boost the b - Diwali Is Celebrated Wholeheartedly Over Five Days
The Five days of Diwali is celebrated over five days in most of North India. All the days except Diw - Create Online Store With Ebay Integration - Get It Ready In A Minute
There are ecommerce websites operational with their 'Create Online Store' feature to help users get - Methods To Make Extra Income Working Online
With the current economic situation and problems many people are looking for ways to earn extra mone - Earn Extra Money Online Anytime, Anywhere!
Has the economy got you down to the point of no return? You have looked everywhere for a part-time j - New Credit Card Validation Service - Issuer Identification Number (iin) Database Lookup
Issuer identification number (IIN) - The first six digits of the credit card number are known as the - 5 Tips To A User Friendly Ecommerce Web Design
Design of a website plays an important role to attract more number of visitors to it. An eye catchin - Find Out On When To Offer Your Gadget And Get Your Money's Worthy Of
Let's face it , all gadgets can become outmoded within just a year or 2. A brand new version will be
Most viewed articles in this category:
- 3rd Party Merchant Accounts: Tips To Avoid Costly Chargebacks For Merchants And Buyers
Accepting credit cards online can be the most important decisions you can make to make money from - Gateway to India - a New Way
Internet craze seems to be catching on in India . From a low internet user base of about 1.4million - Accepting Credit Cards - Is It Necessary For Your Small Business?
This almost seems as if it is a rhetorical question nowadays. Customers all seem to use their credit - Important Internet Marketing Tips
There are 10 tips that are helping you to lead your site high: 1: Insulate yourself against t - What Makes Adsense Work
What does make Adsense work - there are as many ideas as there are theories. Some maintain i - I'm Going to Use Oscommerce - Now What?
When you decide to go with osCommerce for your e-commerce site, you can simply take their stock layo - Some Tips On International Business Marketing
Are you planning of economically expanding outside the borders of your native land? Are you thrilled - Why You Need An Ecommerce Merchant Account
You must obtain an ecommerce merchant account in order for your web site to be able to take payment - Monetize Blog - Learn the 4 Methods to Make Money From your Blog
There are many ways to make money on the internet, one of that is to monetize blog. Your blog is wha - Modeling Success
I am on a lot of mailing lists, and like to keep track of what's happening in the Internet M