Ecommerce
Shopping Carts
by: Glenn Roy Ormond
Shopping carts are more commonly used as a way to display
physical products, products like televisions, groceries,
electronic equipment, clothes, and memorabilia, etc, not
digital products. Shopping carts make it easy to cross-sell
and up-sell your customers once they arrive at your store.
Shopping carts typically handle the shipping and handling
calculation, taxes and credit card processing. A good
shopping cart handles all of these efficiently and securely.
Dynamic Operation
A good shopping cart program also creates dynamic order
forms on the fly as the order takes place. The shopping cart
should be totally dynamic; meaning it only executes code and
retrieves products, images, and product descriptions from
your database when your customers request it. During the
checkout process it should also calculate shipping/handling
and taxes for you.
Real-Time Credit Card Processing
Powerful CGI, PHP, CFM, ASP, etc, scripting, processes
commands for you on secure servers when your customers place
their orders. Don't get this confused with credit card
processing. That’s mean passing of your customers' order
information from a secure form, to your merchant or payment
processor, using one of the scripting languages above. Your
payment processor or merchant, like PayPal, 2CheckOut, or
Authorize.Net will then process the credit card. If you
don't currently have a merchant or payment processor, and
you are going to be selling online, then you need one.
Usability
You can choose what options you want your customer to see.
For instance, you can choose to display a search form on
your shopping cart. A search form allows your customers to
search your store for items by keyword or product name, etc.
You can choose to display options like color, size and
quantity, and even adjust the price based on the customer's
selection. These are called options. Your shopping cart
should also allow you to upload images of your products as
well.
Stand-Alone –Vs.- Hosted Shopping Carts
You can purchase standalone shopping cart software or
services. The stand alone software, of course, requires
skill and expertise to install it on your web host or on
your own server. Some of the shopping cart services,
although it may not seem like it at first, limit you as to
what you can and cannot do. These services are most commonly
offered by web hosts as a way to entice you to host your
site with them. When using these types of services,
remember, you're locked into using that web host when you
opt to use their shopping cart service. Your business is not
portable and becomes a part of that web host. Make sure
there is a simple export process that allows you to easily
download your website and shopping cart if you no longer
wish to use their services. The best option is to use a
shopping cart that runs from your own website, independent
of your web host. Both Prowebware and stand-alone shopping
cart applications run from your website, giving you both
control and flexib!
ility.
Choosing a shopping cart boils down to 4 things:
1 Your Budget
2 Your Skill-level - Do you have the expertise to edit &
install scripts on your server?
3 Desired Functionality - Want a professional results
oriented system or a display case?
4 Time - Have time to take away from your business to shape
and mold a new program?
Whatever you decide, your cart should also permit you to
follow-up with your customers automatically and even
instantly auto-subscribe them to your mailing list.
To implement most out-of-the-box applications, you will need
to know how to edit PHP, HTML, or ASP code and how to set up
a MySQL database on your server for dynamic operation. Then,
with some, all you need to know is how to copy/paste some
simple code to your existing web pages or the template
you're using. The system should also include some type of
easy help or instructions, like an HTML file or contextual
help menus that walk you through setting up your new cart.
|
