Shopping carts and ecommerce software solutions guide

                                                                                         

Choosing the best shopping cart solutions for your launch into ecommerce is critical to the success of your online business. If you're wanting to learn more about this sometimes confusing world, this guide will explain the points you should consider before purchasing a cart.

What is a shopping cart?
In a basic definition, it's a series of scripts that keep track of items a visitor picks to buy from your site until they proceed to the "checkout". A popular misconception is that shopping carts handle the whole financial transaction, but they only really act as a front end which passes information via a secure connection (another service) to a payment gateway - a separate service altogether.

Free or premium shopping carts?
It's very important before you begin reviewing software and services to be to be very specific in what you actually want the cart to be able to do. It may be that you really don't require all the bells and buzzers offered by high end packages - if this is the case, then a good package will cost around the $US150 mark. Some companies offer free shopping carts, but bear in mind that nothing in this world is truly free - read the fine print.

Free ecommerce solutions
One of the best free ecommerce solutions around is Paypal, which integrates basic shopping cart functions with a payment gateway and merchant account - funds are paid to you via check or through direct deposit. Paypal is an excellent way to begin in ecommerce and is very widely accepted around the world.
You only pay a small percentage of each sale and there are no monthly fees or setup costs, plus you receive free fraud protection - no chargeback fees to worry about. Paypal also offers web developers a wide variety of easy to use tools to assist with rapid implementation.

Autoresponders
If you follow up all your clients with regular email offers, you may want to consider shopping cart software that has integrated autoresponder capabilities - this will streamline your operations and can be used for maintaining other contact lists as well. Why buy two pieces of software when you can get them rolled into one?

Affiliate modules
One of the most effective, low cost ways to advertise your product is through an affiliate program. Your outlay is minimal if you only pay on performance; i.e. sales generated. An affiliate module can handle the signup process, provide statistics, streamline communications and keep track of payments to be made to affiliates.

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