Choosing a Shopping Cart
Support Options
I can not emphasize enough how critical it is that a new store owner consider support of their cart. Even a one-time event can hurt your profits or disable your store if support or knowledge is lacking, so it is important to be informed about the support options beforehand.
In most cases, the degree of support you can get (even paid support) is dictated by the type of cart you choose. There are those hosts or application providers that will only offer a paid support system, sometimes at a premium cost, and on the other extreme, there are those that offer a free support system but without enough knowledge of the cart to be of real help. The least supported are those cart providers that only offer a forum to search or ask for help, which can be intimidating for the less technically inclined. However, somewhere in the middle lie those that offer the support as part of their service and the have the knowledge to handle any issue you may have…this is the optimum situation.
So first off, you need to find out exactly what support is offered to you with your cart, the price of that support, and the extent of the support. If the support offered does not meet your needs or your budget, you need to shop for prices from outside sources, such as a web maintenance or web design company that offers cart support/updates or choose another cart.
Checkout & Fulfillment
The checkout experience for your visitors/customers can make the difference between sales and cart abandonment. Your customers are going to want to see your site, its credibility, and its professionalism through to the confirmation. Therefore, you need to see how and where a cart takes your customers as they travel through the checkout process. Most hosts or application providers will have a demo, so that you can try it out for yourself.
You also need to know what types of payment processors the cart offers for you…some offer multiple options while others only offer the basic PayPal® or Google® checkout options that jump from your site to the PayPal® or Google® site and bounces them back to your site after checkout, which can be unnerving to a customer and definitely unprofessional of you and your business.
In addition, you’ll want to know what kind of order management and communication options there are. Customers will want to know that you are on the job, what they have ordered, and where it is.
Always remember: It doesn’t matter how pretty your store is if your customers are uncomfortable going through your checkout or if they have confusion about the checkout process or their order. You need to make sure ordering from you is a smooth and comfortable experience for your customers.
Designs or Modifications
Some carts will not allow you to change the look at all, except in some cases to change colors. Most generally, these are cookie-cutter sites with no access to the html code. All stores will look like yours or like one of the other handful of designs offered. On the other hand, most owned, licensed, and open source carts allow you to modify the look to your liking, including access to the code and additional functionality can be purchased to expand your store. With these carts, your store can be as diverse as you or your product. Most comparisons of carts do not go into detail of how much you can or cannot do, so emailing the cart provider to get specifics is important.
Product/Server Limitations
In some cases, particularly with shopping carts or e-stores offered with some hosting accounts, there can be limitations that can affect whether it will be feasible for future growth. Some require that you maintain only a set amount of products or less. Any addition of products beyond that set amount will increases the monthly cost of your cart with the increase of products. As a general rule, the least amount of products is usually 25 to 50, so a cart such as that could be a great starter cart for a new business, but you must consider future growth and how moving later or upgrading your account will impact your bottom line, time, and stress level.
On the other hand, owned, some licensed (host provides the cart), and most of the open source carts don’t have limitations on number of products. However, larger numbers of products do require that you have the server space and bandwidth to run the application with hundreds or thousands of products, plus the issue of support is still critical to factor in. Therefore, for a product-intensive store, it is important that your hosting environment provide the power to run your store and offer the opportunity to increase as you need.
There can be other limitations, other than the number of products or server space. Cart makers and hosts should provide listings of what the cart offers and what it does not. Careful side-by-side reviews of these listings should be done to avoid surprises that may make it impossible for the cart to provide the functionality you desire.
Customer Protections
No store should ever be allowed to operate without a Secure Socket Layer (SSL), which protects a customer’s sensitive data, such as credit card information. If these are included, they are only included in the hosting account and most generally not with the cart unless it is a packaged e-store, so a brief overview is warranted. However, encryption and/or storage of your customers’ sensitive data within the cart is different with each cart and also different than what the SSL provides, so knowing how the cart application deals with stored data is important. In some cases, general maintenance can alleviate some concerns; however, when customer accounts that provide storage of credit card information are continually in the application, encryption capabilities become even more important.
As for the SSL, some e-stores will provide a free SSL; however, these are in the name of the host and not in your business name, which can trigger errors in certain browsers notifying your customers that you are not the owner of the SSL making your site look less credible, so it is important to know whether the host has the correct configuration so this will not happen. The last thing you want is for your customers to think you are pulling a fast one on them. Still other hosts are resellers of SSLs, so they purchase the SSLs at a discounted price and sell them to you at a small markup, which is fine and makes things a little easier on you and them. The pitfall with this option is if you want to move to a new host, the SSL might not move with you, so you'll want to ask about this before committing. Finally, you can purchase your own SSL and have your host’s support department install it. That installation should always be free, and the SSL is yours to take wherever you want.
One thing I do advise, though, is that your cart/site be totally wrapped by that SSL, meaning all images as well, so it is important to find out whether your host will wrap everything, so that errors are not presented because of site elements residing outside of the SSL’s protection. And, if you must use a free SSL, remember to question that host beforehand, so that you can make sure that no errors will be triggered because of the name differences.
Extras & Perks
Dependent on the cart, there can be various little extras or perks that separate the different carts. Some offer affiliate or newsletter programs, coupon or gift certificates, product reviews, and more. The key is to detail what your customers might need and even what you might like, such as upload/download for products/customers/etc to and from a database, customer tracking, or inventory capabilities, and use that list in comparing the different carts.
In Conclusion
Not all cart applications will provide everything all store owners might need, so weighing the alternatives can help you make the right choice the first time. If you find that choosing a shopping cart is too overwhelming, any good web designer with experience in different types of carts can help you choose the right cart for you and help you avoid future pitfalls that can severely cut into your profits or add stress to your online store ownership. If you do go this route, though, make sure that the designer you choose offers services for many different carts and not just one or two; otherwise, you may not get an objective review for other carts that would suit you and your business better. Feel free to question them, and make sure you are comfortable with the options in carts they provide.
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