Saturday, May 9, 2009

ShoppingCart Design and Development Guide

ShoppingCart Design and Development Guide

Tags:  ecommerce  website development  website design  ecommerce shopping cart 

By vimal lad, May 08, 2009Share | Send | Print | Comments (0)

Reference | from narolainfotech.com | in Ecommerce Hosting Guides

Looking for shopping cart design and development ... Choose the best shopping cart design and development solution for your online business. Ecommerce is critical to the success of your online business. If you would like to learn more about this sometimes shopping cart world, this will explain the points you should consider before apply shopping cart to your business. Do you already know what you need from a shopping cart ? Which shopping cart application should you buy ?
What is a shopping cart?


Shopping cart basic definition, A shopping cart is a piece of software that acts as an online store's catalog and ordering process. 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 from shopping cart. A popular misreading 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 to a payment gateway. The payment gateway service then channels the requests and transfers throughout relevant financial networks, including the Internet merchant account with your bank. It then sends back confirmation or denial back to the shopping cart software. For further information on the "Payment gateway" of ecommerce read http://www.narolainfotech.com/payment-gateway-integration.html. The good thing is that there is hundreds of shopping cart packages available on net. The bad news is as well as the good. Sometimes, many choices makes difficult to make a decision. After having worked with or examined over a hundred different shopping cart applications over the years, I hope this article may make your life just a little bit easier for choosing develop shopping cart.
Free or premium shopping carts


It is very important before you begin shopping cart reviewing software and services what you actually looking for. It may be that you really don't require all the offered by high end packages - if this is the case, then a good package will cost around the $US200 - $250 ; with some excellent, and in my opinion, crucial features included at the high end. Some companies offer free shopping carts, but bear in mind that nothing is free in this world - read the terms and conditions print.
Free Shopping cart integration solutions


One of the best free shopping cart solutions around is O2 shopping cart. Which integrate basic shopping cart functions with payment gateway and merchant account integrations? O2 shopping cart provide basic payment gateway finicality. You only pay only $US 1 (US Dollar 1) for each transactions, no monthly fees or setup costs, plus you receive free fraud protection - no chargeback fees to worry about. O2 shopping cart also offers web developers a wide variety of easy to use tools to assist with rapid implementation.


Features shopping carts


Shopping cart has come a long way in recent years, and many packages are so advanced that they are in effect entire store fronts and can actually be your entire web. Some integrated elements of benefit to your online ecommerce business you may wish to consider Newsletters and Auto responder If you follow up all your clients with regular email offers, you may want to consider shopping cart software that has integrated auto responder and newsletter capabilities can be used for maintaining other contact lists.


Affiliate modules

Just Pay for performance. One of the most effective, low cost ways to advertise your product is through an affiliate program. Other features incorporated into shopping carts include inventory tracking, sales tax calculation, stationery creation / management, reviews and wish lists.Hosting services support Shopping carts. Shopping cart scripts are written in many different languages - PERL, PHP, ASP just to name a few. Be sure to check with your host before purchasing a program.


Budget for shopping cart

It's easy to blow your budget on a turbo-charged shopping cart only to find that there were a number of other critical items you didn't factor in - like a payment gateway, or the fact that the cart software may be so complex that you need to hire somebody else to assist in implementation.


Delivery mechanisms

If you are selling hard goods that need shipping, choice of cart is a little easier as this is a standard function. Many carts also offer customers the ability to calculate different shipping options and to get live quotes back from shipping companies. Feature of business be in next 6 months The better shopping carts are in a modular format which allow for scalability with minimum downtime. Be sure to check the prices of modules you may need in the future.


Shopping cart compatible with payment gateway

There are many of different payment gateways which plug into various shopping cart - but perhaps not yours. Before purchasing your cart, also review gateway services supported by the software. What kinds of payments are supported? Credit card transactions are now a normal part of our online world. Also, read the fine print before parting with your hard earned cash - you may find that technical support will be charged out per incident.


Your shopping cart Requirement :

Read our reviews of some the best shopping cart software around Remote hosting advantages Fast execution, secure connection supplied, monitoring of service and usually many other features are offered as part of the service. Because the cart is actually hosted on another server, you can also save on bandwidth charges - especially if your products are soft goods and delivered online. Some remotely hosted shopping carts are in effect total marketing solutions, containing options to run affiliate programs and the ability to send sequential pre-defined messages to clients and leads. Some of these services are excellent for people 'testing the water' as they also include gateway services and even an Internet merchant account. View some reviews of remotely hosted shopping carts. Time spent in installation, configuration and maintenance, greater initial outlay, requires SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to be enabled on your site which usually incurs an extra charge per month. If you would like to view some of our ecommerce / shopping cart solutions recommendations based on many hours of research, check out our shopping cart software and services review. 

Further learning resources http://www.narolainfotech.com

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