Good shopping cart software offers a whole suite of tools to help your business get up and running. Online shopping carts are much more than just payment gateways. They should make the experience of selling your products easy for you and for your customers.
Here are some things to look for in shopping cart software:
Storefront Design – Look for step-by-step wizards and templates to help organize and design your storefront. You should be focused on selling not worrying about web design and coding.
Payment Processing – Many shopping cart programs offer credit card processing as well as check, PayPal or other methods of processing payments. You want your customers to be able to pay you as easily as possible.
Taxes & Shipping – Most shopping carts should offer shipping tools to calculate costs and offer tools to calculate taxes on purchases.
Marketing – Look for options like affiliate programs, social networking integration and tools to create discounts, coupons and other incentives. Many programs will also offer traffic information to help optimize conversions on the page.
Security – Most shopping cart software will offer protection by encrypting information and processing credit cards through reputable processing services. Make sure your potential customers know that their information will be safe and secure if they buy from you.
There are many shopping cart solutions out there and deciding which one is best for your needs can be a daunting task.