Platforms & Apps

Cart of the Week: GoECart

Practical eCommerce counts over 300 different shopping cart systems. In this ongoing “Cart of the Week” feature, we profile a specific cart, asking the cart’s owners and users about its strengths and weaknesses.

Here we profile GoECart, a hosted solution with two tiers of pricing, one at $249.95 a month and the other at $499.95 a month. The company is based in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and we asked founder and CEO Manish Chowdhary to explain the benefits of his company’s cart. We then asked Ray Miller, owner of My Wedding Reception Ideas, for his evaluation of the cart. My Wedding Reception Ideas is a GoECart customer.

PeC: Please provide some general background on the cart.

Manish Chowdhary
Chowdhary: “The company was founded in 2000. We work with merchants and retailers of all sizes, and we have a partner program with leading ecommerce solution providers.”

PeC: What are the cart’s biggest strengths?

Chowdhary: “A highly configurable content management system with catalog management, site search with guided navigation, merchandising, intelligent search engine optimization, one-page checkout and our partner program.”

PeC: What are some of its weaknesses?

Chowdhary: “The cart is proprietary software and is only offered as a hosted solution. So, no source code is available. ”

PeC: What plans to you have for future cart development?

Chowdhary: “Personalization and customer loyalty building features and integrated A/B and multivariate testing tools like Google Website Optimizer.”

PeC: How specifically would using GoECart improve a merchant’s business?

Chowdhary: “Our SEO features help merchants achieve higher organic rankings on the search engines, and the intuitive shopping experience converts more traffic into paid customers and orders.”

PeC: Any other thoughts for our readers?

Chowdhary: “Ecommerce has matured. It’s now about relevance, personalization and customer loyalty. GoECart helps merchants sell more by providing a delightful shopping experience to end consumers.”

A Customer’s View

Ray Miller of My Wedding Reception Ideas, a GoECart site, offers his thoughts on the cart.

PeC: What are GoECart’s biggest strengths?

Ray Miller
Miller: “My Wedding Reception Ideas has been using GoECart since October 2003. We chose GoECart because we were looking for a flexible ecommerce solution that gave us the ability to control the look and functionality of our store. GoECart’s biggest strengths are flexibility, a user-friendly platform, a search engine friendly URL file name feature and excellent site development. Other strengths include 99.9 percent website up-time and 24/7 technical support. GoECart also provides custom development for an additional cost when requested.”

PeC: What are some of its weaknesses?

Miller: “I believe we can all do better when it comes to customer service.”

PeC: How specifically would using GoECart improve a merchant’s business?

Miller: “With search-engine-friendly URL file names, dynamic web pages for immediate website changes, including adding products, additional content and customer order management. We use GoECart’s built-in statistical tools to monitor our daily traffic and sales. This gives us a picture of what is happening on our website, what areas or categories within our website are successful and what areas need more work.”

PeC: Do you plan to continue using GoECart? Why or why not?

Miller: “Yes, we have been using GoECart for five and a half years. During this time I periodically compare GoECart’s services and functionality to other popular ecommerce carts. Time and time again, I have found that GoECart gives us the greatest flexibility and support for our money. We continue to use GoECart because they are dependable.”

PeC: Any other thoughts on shopping carts for our readers?

Miller: “Do your homework when it comes to choosing a shopping cart solution. Don’t get locked into a rigid ecommerce cart that will cost you traffic and customers in the long run. Compare different shopping carts and ask these questions: Do they offer a proven solution? Are they willing to work with you and make changes based upon your needs? Do they guarantee 24/7 technical support? What is their website outage history and guarantee? Will you have the flexibility to make your site look unique or just like everyone else’s?”

Other GoECart Sites

Brendan Gibbons
Brendan Gibbons
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