Which shopping cart is best for me?
Which cart will bring Money?
There is a huge variety of shopping cart programs to choose from for your website. If you type e-commerce shopping cart into your search engine of choice a daunting array of options will appear. This makes choosing the right cart a very difficult task. However, there are a few basic rules you can use to pick the right one. The first understands the distinction between a hosted shopping cart and an integrated shopping cart.
A hosted shopping cart will redirect your customers to another site. It manages the process of keeping track of items actually in the cart and then initiates the checkout process. Two examples of this type of shopping cart are Google Checkout and Paypal. The problem with hosted shopping carts is that it is really a one size fits all solution. Sometimes there are difficulties with them as well. However, there are advantages associated with them as well. You do not have to go through with the hassle of installing the shopping cart on your own server. If you do a small amount of business online a hosted cart may be more cost effective as well.
Integrated shopping carts on the other hand allow you to actually manage your online store. This is done by keeping a database of products, discounts, and customers. If you do a lot of business online, this type of cart will be much more cost effective as well as being more manageable.
In general, the decision is largely a function of how much business you do online. However, there are more features to think about before your decision. It is important to get a shopping cart from a reputable provider. If your shopping cart provider goes out of business you may be left without technical support. Even worse, you may lose whatever sales you had processing at the time. Another key feature is how search engine friendly a shopping cart is. If your products can be found by major search engines, you have a huge advantage over competition. A useful tool for making this decision is making a spreadsheet of features found commonly in different shopping carts. Find several carts you are interested in and rank how well they perform in all of your categories.
DK can help you select the optimal shopping cart for your business. Please contact the DK team and please read our other posts on similar topics.
E-Commerce page