Every online business needs a good shopping cart to facilitate all of their e-commerce transactions. Most of the time the products or services you sell will not be the deciding factor in regards to the success of your business. Rather the methods in which you market and distribute those products and services is what will ultimately determine the productivity of your business. A good shopping cart will enhance your customer’s overall experience and will prompt them to return for more convenient e-shopping at a later date. A poor shopping cart solution will only give the customer frustration and dis-satisfaction, prompting them to seek the very same products and services you offer elsewhere. When considering an e-commerce hosting service, it is best to look for the following qualities in an online shopping cart.

Up-Selling Capabilities

If you have worked in the restaurant or sales industry in the past, then you are probably familiar with the concept of up-selling. Up-selling is the practice of offering additional products or services to a customer based on their original search criteria or purchases. For example, if an individual is about to purchase an MP3 player, then an appropriate up-sell would be to recommend a set of headphones to go with the MP3 player. Many shopping carts offer this kind of feature in a n automated fashion, allowing the webmaster to create groups of related products that can be sold together. These groups of products are then used to create recommendations for the customer at checkout time. This kind of feature will not only enhance the convenience of your customer’s shopping experience, but it will also increase your sales revenue as well!

User Reviews

Most customer’s are more inclined to buy a product or service when they see that previous customer’s have been satisfied with it in the past. Customer confidence is a crucial aspect in encouraging the sales of your products, and there is no better way to establish trust than through genuine user reviews. A good shopping cart will allow your customer’s to view reviews of the product they are purchasing, thereby prompting them to complete the sale. It is also optimal to have a shopping cart that encourages new customers to leave their own reviews.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is a crucial aspect in the promotion of any online business. Quality content and keyword density is the most common method of  search engine rankings, however the importance of a good shopping cart should not be overlooked. A good shopping cart will automatically create keyword rich URL’s for you products or services, thereby enhancing your site’s search engine optimization.

Coupons

Most people who shop online are looking for the best prices available. There are many sites online that are solely devoted to offering coupons for products and services. If you are selling one of these products and services then it is crucial that your site have a shopping cart with coupon capabilities. There is no telling how much business you may lose by bot allowing your customer’s to use coupons.

Open-source software has really made a name for itself in recent times, now prevalent in the form of multimedia players, operating systems and web applications.  In fact, companies around the world are leveraging this type of software to maintain their day to day business operations.  Open-source programs can suite a variety of needs across a broad range of industries and market segments.  One area this software has truly settled into is e-commerce, in particularly, the shopping cart.

Open-source shopping cart software offers a cost effective alternative to traditional commercial solutions.  Perhaps the biggest draw to these programs is that they provide the online merchant with the ability to customize the software to satisfy the unique requirements of their business.  This is all made possible active communities that make templates, modules and various other components widely available in addition to their continuous efforts to enhance the project.

What to Look for

When shopping for any software, open-source or proprietary, it is important for merchants to thoroughly research and evaluate the product before sending it into deployment.  Because there is no single solution that works for every store, it is crucial to select a cart based on individual needs.   With that said, here some critical features you want to look for in an open-source product:

Product Capacity - An online store owner must be able to determine limitations for their product capacity.  For instance, if you have a catalog compromised of more than 500 products but the shopping cart only supports 200, you should know right then and there that the software cannot suit your requirements.  The good thing is that most open-source shopping carts offer support for an unlimited number of products.

System Performance – A lagging, sluggish online store is one of the fastest ways to send your customers surfing to the competition.  For this reason, you need to perform due diligence to make sure your shopping cart delivers an optimal performance.  A lot of this depends on server configuration, but the software itself should definitely be evaluated for performance before you make the final decision.

Community Support – An open-source shopping cart usually comes with no official form of technical support or customer service, which essentially means that there is no hotline to call up whenever you experience problems.  Therefore, you need to find a piece of software that is backed by a strong community of developers and users who solidly back the project.  While the quality of support can never be guaranteed, it is still a good idea to check online in the appropriate forums to access the atmosphere and measure how long it takes for users to generate a response.

Payment Gateway Compatibility – If you want to be able to accept and process credit and debit card payments, then you will need an open-source solution that supports third-party payment gateways.  Although this needs to be considered in your research, it should be comforting to know that many open-source shopping carts are compatible with the major payment gateway service providers.

A quick Google search online for e-commerce solutions will garner a huge number of software solutions available for free or commercial use.  Among the free solutions available, and slowly losing its initial popularity, is osCommerce.  osCommerce is an extensive and quite possibly one of the most thorough out-of-the-box pieces of software you can find.  However, as all-encompassing as it may be, it is in severe need of a major overhaul to place it at the same level as its peers.

How it all began

osCommerce got its start in March of 2000.  Created by Harald Ponce de Leon and originally called “The Exchange Project”, osCommerce quickly began to grow in both initial popularity and capabilities.  The software is created with PHP and uses MySQL for its database core.  It can be installed on any server that utilizes these two pieces of programming.  For the past nine years, the program has been in the development stage.  Officially, as of March 2009, osCommerce released its production ready alpha product.  This release, Merchant V 3.0, includes a template system, an object-oriented backend and the ability to define the administration user name and password upon installation.  To date, the osCommerce site claims over 12,000 online stores currently using their product.

The current problems

While it is a very good and all-encompassing shopping cart program, osCommerce is not without its issues.  Installation of the program by a novice may prove to be a daunting task as a basic knowledge of MySQL as well as other web server technologies should be at the ready.  The default SSL option is initially and automatically set to “no” which is practically an open door to nefarious entities trying to gather secure information on customers.  Adding new shopping cart products is no simple task either – there are several options and features that need to be dealt with before adding in a new product, quite possibly the quickest way to creating a lot of confusion.  When you do have the program installed and your cart up and running with all of its products, adding any additional modules or templating takes quite a bit of work and may end up breaking the core of the program.  Not to mention the creators of the software do explicitly state that additions to the core are not always endorsed.

One of the best ways to avoid a lot of this hassle is to either have a seasoned osCommerce professional install the program for you or, if your web host has this option, have it installed by your hosting company.

Conclusion

If you are in need of a shopping cart program that is capable of being search engine optimized, fully featured and very robust, osCommerce is a good choice.  However, it still needs quite a bit of work in as far as installation and add-on capabilities before it can be considered a simple ecommerce program of choice.  OsCommerce is ideal for the knowledgeable and seasoned web developer, not for the novice nor the faint of heart.

There is a big difference between designing a website for visitors merely seeking news or general content and one geared towards selling items online.  In the end, it is the design of the site that determines the conversion rate entailing how many visitors are converted into customers.  When customers and money are involved, you need to give additional consideration to the design of your website.  Constructing it in the same manner as the typical informational site simply will not do.

What’s in a Good Site Design?

An e-commerce site with a good design and strong marketing capabilities is established through a variety of complimenting elements.  It consists of a quality shopping cart, comprehensive payment options, and a level of security that makes the customers feel safe.  If the consumer does not feel comfortable when visiting your site, the chances of getting them to buy something are slim to none.  The only way an e-commerce site can be successful is by having a structure in place that turns casual browsers into paying customers.  Therefore, you should focus your design on an environment that comforts potential customers and provides them with enjoyable shopping experience.  This cannot be stressed enough because no customer, not even you, wants to deal with unnecessary hassles when trying to shop online.  A site that offers great security, convenient payment options, a simple navigation and easy accessibility has a much better chance of succeeding than one lacking these elements.

When creating an e-commerce site, you or your web designer should put a special focus on the following areas:

Effective Branding Message

To make it as an online business owner, it is critical that you gain the trust of potential customers and provide them with a sense of security and credibility when browsing your site.  Accomplishing this is much easier when your site has been designed with branding in mind.  A well branded site is one that has good logos, mottos, slogans and a solid foundation that exudes professionalism.

Comprehensive and Functional Shopping Cart

The shopping cart is an e-commerce feature you must have in order to sell products and services online.  The system you want is designed with the best invoicing and inventory management practices, multiple shipping and payment options, as well as the ability to securely implement reliable payment gateway solutions.  If you really want to enhance the customer experience, obtain a shopping cart that offers user-friendliness and ease of use.

Convincing Security and Safety

The speed, simplicity and mere convenience has made e-commerce a very prosperous industry.  Any consumer can purchase virtually anything their heart desires online by using a credit or debit card.  What you need to focus on is making sure these transactions are handled securely.  To ensure the safety of customers and the integrity of your business, make it a priority to invest in a security solution that protects sensitive information when it is traveling over the internet or residing on a server.  Fraud and identity theft are scary realities that could send your business plummeting should the security of your site be compromised.

Choosing a shopping cart for your e-commerce website is no easy task by any means.  This is mainly because there are so many carts available on the market and so much to consider outside of the obvious.  Because there are not as many editorial reviews as one would like, you have to work a little harder in order to find a program that comfortably suits the needs of your business.  It can be a long and frustrating road, but one made much easier when following these simple steps:

1.) Narrow Down Your Options

There are enough shopping cart applications out there to make your head spin.  The truth is, there is no way you can evaluate hundreds of carts so why even waste your time?   Therefore, your best option would be to find a few programs that fit into your price range, offers the features your online store requires, and compare them to determine which is best for your needs.  This approach will help you save time and eliminate unqualified options in the process.  With so many open-source solutions on the market, you may even decide to limit your choices to free shopping carts.

2.) Determine What is Important

Understanding exactly what your online store needs to be successful is an important factor in finding a quality shopping cart.  This is another great way to narrow down your options because if certain software does not meet your requirements, you can instantly rule out those choices and move on to the next.  Once you determine what it is your business requires, you might want to contact the software provider to find out more about how their product can aid in your e-commerce efforts.  There are a number vendors that offer demo versions of their software so you can learn exactly how they work and how they can benefit your business site.  This is something you may want to consider as it can make your search for a solution much easier.

3.) Access the Support

Support is another important aspect goes into choosing a shopping cart, but so many users overlook it.  Before purchasing the software, you can test the support by sending the vendor an email to gauge their response.  When performing this test, play close attention to how fast your questions are answered and the method that was used to give the response.  For instance, did you get a response from a real person or an automated response that directed you to some other resource?   Support is very critical but if you choose a free open-source application, it just might be hard to come by.  In this scenario, you will likely be forced to rely on community support, which can be very frustrating and insufficient for your business needs.

4.) Seek out Customer Reviews

While editorial reviews are limited, customer reviews are more abundant and actually make a better way to evaluate a shopping cart program.  Past and existing users often provide golden insight by letting you know the advantages and disadvantages of a particular product.  Should you run across a cart that has a lot of negative reviews, you may decide to scratch that one off your list and take a closer at the more reliable options.  While you do not want to put all of your faith in customer feedback, it can point you in the right direction of the best shopping cart for your business.