Sunday, April 6, 2014

Tips When Choosing Online Shopping Cart Software

The most essential thing to consider when you are deciding on your shopping cart software for your ecommerce business is if the cart software can meet your business objectives. It is also vital for it to be customizable in order to meet your marketing needs, fit well in your business, be flexible for scaling as your business grows and secure enough to the industry standards. These are ten things to take into account when selecting a shopping cart.

1. Search engine support

It is vital for your shopping cart to give you controls over your meta descriptions, title tags and keywords so that optimizing individual products will be easy for different search engines. If you will not have this feature, you risk not having your products and services visible online. You are going to spend more money on online advertisements in order to draw awareness and make more sales.

2. Assimilation with well known and secure payment gateways

It is vital that you choose a shopping cart which assimilates with a solution provider that compiles to Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards. It should also be known as a player in the industry. Being compliant is a sign that they have the highest level and firm security procedure for dealing with sensitive client information. The credibility of a payment service provider can be determined by simply looking at a customers profile and how long they have been in the business.



3. Feature of product review


Reviews of products are vital in terms of product marketing and credibility. Research proves that bad reviews help in selling products in comparison to not having any review at all. It is therefore essential for your shopping cart to a built in product review or a way for implementing third party reviews.

4. Site search

A lot of people do not take this feature with the seriousness that it deserves. There are some e commerce platforms that do not support search site. Due to the fact that most customers expect to get what they are looking for by a few clicks, incorporating a site search is the difference between selling products or services and losing a client.

5. Customizable feature for navigation

With the expansion of your product range, it is crucial that you consider the impact this is going to have with your site navigation. The shopping cart must support categories, subcategories and product filters that you are going to list.

6. Image zoom and product thumbnails

Your online shop should be equated to the window of your shop. When your products look good and with details that customers can see, the more enticing it will be. To ensure that your products are well represented, make sure to choose a shopping cart which supports large thumbnails.

7.Flexible pricing management

In order to include numerous retail peaks that need price change, your shopping cart should have flexible pricing features that will make it easy for you to set up different pricing options. This should include processing of coupon codes and discounts.

8. Reporting feature

Good shopping carts are those that have a built in sales reporting and analytics capabilities. This is going to help you in tracking product sales.

9. Display of availability of stock

Although you can disable cart button for products that are out of stock, a lot of customers are still going to save things in their cart and then return later. You need to assure your customers that the item is still available and they will be notified when the items are not available.

10. Easy and fast check out

It is essential for the process of checking out to be fast and not complicated. It is ideal for all the fields to be contained in a single page. Your chosen shopping cart should support this.