SolveYourProblem
Article Series:
Niche Marketing Opportunities
Choosing
a Free Shopping Cart
by Jeff Cohen
Choosing
the best shopping cart is very important to the success
of your online e-commerce venture. Many businesses
are now using shopping carts combined with automated payment
acceptance gateways, giving both them and their customers more
ease of use and flexibility.
So
what is a shopping cart? A shopping cart
is a tool used by internet marketers to help buyers select
various products
from different pages of their website, before proceeding to
a virtual 'checkout'. The term "shopping cart" is
a metaphor webmasters use to describe their sales process that
customers can relate to, especially if they have been shopping
in any supermarkets. A good shopping cart will incorporate
the following:
1. An unlimited number of products which can be grouped by categories
or displayed in one long list. You should also be
able to set the maximum number of items listed per web page.
2. Shipping costs are displayed per unit or bulk. When goods
are sent individually, the shipping costs are more expensive,
so your shopping cart should automatically use the correct
shipping cost based on the number of items ordered.
3. Additional shipping options should be available to the customer
based on whether they want standard, 2 day or overnight
shipping.
4. For international customers, the shopping cart should be
able to store and display international shipping costs.
5. Many countries require sales tax to be charged on any sales
made in that country so the shopping cart must be able to calculates
local sales tax.
6. There's little point to installing a shopping cart if it
does not support most of the credit card processing gateways
which must be able to accept credit cards, checks and PayPal
7. Once a customer has paid, the shopping cart must send an
automatic order confirmation email to customer.
Behind the scenes, the shopping cart doesn't handle the actual
transaction, but acts as a front-end to gather data on customer
selections. It then passes on its information to a payment
gateway via a secure web page. The customer's credit card is
verified, and the payment directed to your account. Once the
payment is made, the transaction details are relayed back to
the shopping cart, which then tells the buyers how their order
will be fulfilled if their payment was accepted.
One
of the 'free' payment solutions available is the one offered
PayPal, which integrates basic shopping cart functions (the
PayPal shopping cart is very basic and does not offer feature
like shipping options) without the need for a separate merchant
account or payment gateway. There are no setup fees, monthly
fees, or gateway fees but you will pay a low fee on each sale
you make. This fee will vary according to the volume of sales
you make through your PayPal shopping cart.
When it comes to paying for their products, your customers
have the choice of paying by major credit card, debit card,
instant bank transfer, eCheck or through their own PayPal account
balance. They don't have to own a PayPal account to make a
payment as they would have in the past.
From
a security point of view, PayPal offers free fraud protection
services and there are no chargeback fees. They also offer
web developers a wide variety of easy-to-use tools to help
things run more smoothly.
One
of the biggest drawbacks to using PayPal is that link
highjackers can easily divert the funds from your sale into
their own account. Your customers won't know this has happened
because the funds leave their account and they get their goods,
as far as they are concerned the transaction was successful.
Another
good free shopping cart is the one offered by AgoraCart.com,
and most website hosting companies offer this as part of their
service. If you have a merchant account, you can link Agoracart
to any major payment gateway. Agoracart can also be linked
to third party credit card processors such as 2CheckOut.
A
third free shopping cart available online is the "Light" version
offered by eMartCart.com which is free as long as you have
less than 45 orders per month and less than 25 products, thereafter
you have to upgrade. It is however a full featured shopping
cart and well worth investigating.
Before choosing a shopping cart do some investigation, find
out exactly which features are available with each shopping
cart and only choose the one that best suits your business
needs. # # # # # SolveYourProblem.com : 2007
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