Manage Subscriptions · Subscribe Now · F.A.Q.'s
HOME · Saturday, May 17, 2008
Shopping Carts & Online Payments
How To Choose A Shopping Cart
First, identify your business needs
By: Michael A. Cox
Comments: 4
Good business is about good decisions. Good decisions are ones made after serious research and data gathering. One of the decisions that must be made by ecommerce people is choosing the right shopping cart for their business. The problem is there is a lot to choose from.
Mark Baartse, a man who, among other things, researches and reviews shopping carts, has identified 137 different shopping carts. Baartse tries to identify which are the best for the myriad applications required in the ecommerce industry. Baartse posts his review results at Shopping-cart-reviews.com. Practical eCommerce asked him to offer our readers some insights into shopping cart choices.
PeC: Mark, how important is the shopping cart choice?
Choosing the right shopping cart software is the most important technical decision to be made. Some people take the easy way out and say, “I don’t worry about that, I let my web programmer take care of those decisions.” But you have to ask yourself, does your programmer understand your business? Have they read your marketing plan? They might make the decision, but you’ll pick up the bill if that decision is a bad one.
PeC: What things in a marketing plan help make the shopping cart choice?
Well, does your marketing plan include an affiliates program? That’s where other websites can direct sales to you in return for a commission. If that’s important to you, you need to make sure your shopping cart can support it – your marketing plan should tell you this. If you decide you want this in 12 months and your shopping cart doesn’t support it, you’ll have to change your cart, which is very time consuming.
PeC: But marketing plans evolve. How do you deal with that?
That’s the tricky part. Marketing plans do change over time. For inexperienced startups in particular there is a lot of guess work – the marketing plan often needs to be re-written after 6 months. This can make the decision more complicated. If you are in this position, the best approaches is to talk to someone experienced, and have them help you through the things you might not have thought of.
PeC: How does the customer profile play into making the shopping cart decision?
How well do you want to know your customers? If you can easily target your customers through a niche-marketing channel, then you are in luck. However, maybe your customers would appreciate a newsletter with the latest happenings in the industry, and of course, the latest specials and items in stock. If so, you’ll need a shopping cart that supports a customer registration or newsletter function. You need to really understand your customers and what drives them. Do they respond better to discounts, free gifts or free shipping as an incentive? There’s an element of trial and error to work out these answers sometimes – but only if your shopping cart software supports it.
PeC: Sounds very complicated. Can you distill it all into a step by step plan?
Sure. First I would suggest downloading a template that I prepared to help you keep track of the process. It’s at shopping-cart-reviews.com/requirements.xls that will help you with this process. You can take the steps without it; it’s just easier with it. If you do use the template you’ll probably want to customize it for yourself since every business it a bit different. Here are my steps:
- Write down a list of everything your customers might possibly need. Some ideas: gift certificates, product reviews, ability to look up Fedex shipping prices in real time, being able to send out newsletters to customers, etc. This can be tricky. Are there multiple images in the product description? Do your products come in multiple colors? Does the customer need to seen in? Is there a search box? Do you have a loyalty scheme? Write it all down – and re-read your marketing plan.
- Now, think about everything you need. What sort of reports do you want? Do you want to be automatically notified when an item is running low on stock? Do you have a lot of products listed in another database you want to be able to import rather than re-entering them? What is your budget?
- Now that you have a list, for each item put a priority next to it. 1 for critical, 2 for important, 3 for nice to have, 4 for unimportant. For example, it might be important (but not critical) that you have gift certificates, so rank that as a “2 – Important”. A common mistake is to make every feature top priority. You’ll need to do a bit of soul searching otherwise; you might end up with a list of features, which is unrealistic, or beyond your budget. Every time you write down a 1 – Critical stop for a second and ask yourself if it is really critical.
- If you have a short list of shopping cart software already (perhaps suggested by friends or a programmer), visit their websites and quickly check each of them against each of your requirements. If you don’t have a short list yet, searching on my site shopping-cartreviews. com or google.com will help you get a list of candidates. You can eliminate a lot of carts straight away, as they won’t meet some of your critical requirements.
- Try and get it down to a short list of 2 – 5 carts.
- Study each shopping cart in detail and fill in the columns based on how well each one performs.
- Review your list to compare your priorities against which shopping cart best meets those priorities and you are well on your way to making a decision!
Blinklist | Del.icio.us | Furl | Ma.gnolia | Newsvine | Spurl | Reddit | Technorati
Published on Thursday, September 01, 2005
Comments:
I dumped the Godaddy.com quick shopping cart after I discovered it was inflexible. It would not support download-only products, and I'm in the ebook business. Worse, although my merchant gateway would accept credit cards from all over the world, the GoDaddy quick shopping cart supports U.S. addresses only. I'm now with 2co which is great for startups as you pay per sale rather than fixed fee. Its weakness is that it does not support coupons or gift certificates.
Posted by: zanybooks.com
Sunday, March 25, 2007
I've seen intermittent problems with shopping carts so often in my many years of managing AdWords and other pay per click advertising accounts for hundreds of online businesses that I strongly recommend going with a major shopping cart solution unless your business has requirements they can not meet. Running a profitable online store is challenging enough when your shopping cart works! I would also recommend hosted solutions so maintenance and updates are included. Volusion and Yahoo Stores are the two that have been the most solid for my clients. Do NOT assume that a highly touted company that has major clients will be a good choice for you; switching to one of those resulted in a 70% drop in online sales to an established business.
Posted by: Rose Sylvia
Saturday, October 06, 2007
I bought a few days ago the Godaddy Quick shopping cart but regret it already. How can you do ecommerce without International shipping??? Obviously they don't advertise that flaw, had to go on their blog to discover it.
Posted by: Mickael
Monday, April 21, 2008
Ecommerce Articles
- Browse All Articles
- Browse our complete archive of ecommerce articles.
- Accounting, Management & Legal
- Ecommerce articles related to managing a small business including ecommerce accounting, business strategy and legal considerations.
- Conversion & Usability
- Online business articles about converting web site visitors into customers and how to gauge and improve your business website's usability.
- Development & Programming
- Articles to help designers, developers and programmers create successful, search engine friendly ecommerce websites and improve existing ones.
- Hosting, Infrastructure & Software
- Articles for ecommerce businesses about ecommerce web hosting, business infrastructure, business strategy and helpful ecommerce & small business software.
- Interviews & Profiles
- Interviews with prominent ecommerce business personalities and profiles of successful online businesses.
- Inventory & Shipping
- Ecommerce articles about inventory management, ecommerce order fulfillment and product shipping considerations.
- Marketing & Revenue Growth
- Articles relating to online marketing, email marketing and using the Internet to growing your business.
- Search Engine Optimization
- Search engine optimization articles for ecommerce business owners, strategists, marketers and developers.
- Shopping Carts & Online Payments
- Articles covering ecommerce shopping cart platforms and options for choosing an online payment gateway.
- Training & Education
- Tutorials and articles providing training and education for ecommerce business owners and developers of ecommerce websites.
Search Articles
Ecommerce Community
- Ecommerce Blogs
- Read our blogs about ecommerce topics written by industry professionals.
- Community Forum
- Connect with other ecommerce professionals to trade advice and answers in our community forum.
- Podcasts
- Check out our ecommerce podcasts covering topics ranging from interviews to tutorials.
- RSS Content Feeds
- Subscribe to our RSS feeds and have fresh ecommerce content delivered to you.
Ecommerce Resources
- Free Email Newsletter
- Sign up for Ecommerce Notes, our free email newsletter for ecommerce business owners and developers.
- Ecommerce Directory
- Browse our directory of ecommerce products and services, or submit your own listing in our directory.
- Ecommerce Glossary
- Familiarize yourself with terminology or submit terms to help others with our Ecommerce Glossary.
- Events Calendar
- Find out about upcoming ecommerce events or invite other ecommerce professionals by posting your own event.
- Press Releases
- Browse ecommerce related press releases and post your own press release for distribution.
- Ecommerce Store & Back Issues
- Pick up back issues of Practical eCommerce magazine along with other merchandise from Practical Ecommerce
About Practical eCommerce
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Look at frequently asked questions regarded using our website, subscribing to our magazine and more.
- Advertising Information
- Information about advertising in Practical eCommerce magazine, on our website, or in our email newsletters.
- Editorial Sharing
- Learn about options for sharing our content with your visitors, customers or employees.
- About Us
- Learn more about Practical Ecommerce magazine and meet our staff.
- Contact Us
- Contact Practical Ecommerce at any time for more information. We'd love to hear from you.
Copyright 2007 Confluence Distribution, Inc. and Practical eCommerce.
All Rights Reserved.
I would also suggest:
8. Call the company that offers the cart. Anyone can make a website that looks good - you want to know that the company that provides your whole online store platform is reliable, will answer the phone, will be around in five years, etc. You can get a feel for a lot over the phone.
Posted by: Emma
Friday, March 23, 2007