Step By Step Guide To Selling Online for Small Businesses
Guide to selecting an ecommerce shopping cart software for ecommerce websites
Factors to consider when selecting a shopping cart software for your website
As discuss before there are many different types of shopping cart software. The final choice will depends on the following points;
Your Budget.
Work out the max amount that can be spent on the overall ecommerce project. Include with this;
- cost of web site design,
- secure server (SSL)
- secure server certificate(SSC) from reputable companies such as VeriSign and Thawte
- merchant account costs. Your bank should set this up for you. There is normally a setup plus a on-going monthly charge
- payment gateway costs. Check initial setup charges, annual charges, and per transaction charges
- database and web hosting as well the shopping cart software itself
Your own skill levels
Depending on your own web programming skills and time availability your choices will be narrowed down to either a remotely hosted solution or a out of the box solution. For web designers from a non web programming background a remotely hosted ecommerce solution can be the most appropriate solution.
Ease of Use
This is crucial. At BazaarBuilder we have made this the key point of our shopping cart software. We believe that the software should be able to be integrated into any web site with very basic web design skills. This approach should not limit the more advanced users but at the same time allow novices to add an ecommerce facility to their web site.
Seamless Integration of shopping cart with Web site.
From the point where the customer add an item to his cart to the final check out page the design of each of these pages should be consistent with the design of your own web site. For this to happen the software must give you complete control over the design of shopping cart pages.
Availability of Required Features
Each shopping cart system will have its own set of features. Check that the features that are important to your web site are actually available from the site. Important ones to watch out for are shipping cost methods, sales tax (VAT) handling including ability to handle European Union sales tax regulations. Software vendors can often add the additional feature at your request. At the same time don't get too excited by long feature lists. Focus on what you actually need and will use for your own web site.
Availability of Payment Gateways
Different shopping cart software support different Payment Gateways and it is worth checking that the one you intend to use is actually support by the shopping cart that is being selected
On Going Support
Most software goes wrong some time or the other. If your online business goes out of action is there someone you can turn to for help? How much will this cost? On going support issues can addup considerably to the initial cost so do check who will provide this and at what cost.
Page 1: Shopping Cart Types
