SAMsSites Blog

Having a shopping cart doesn’t guarantee that someone will come to your site and make a purchase. For all of the Internet’s success stories, there are far more stories of failure. After building a shopping cart and determining that it is functional, user friendly and compatible with your company’s needs, it is time to make sales.

If a website’s primary purpose is to sell products, getting free hits is very difficult. However, if the website is filled with information that supports the products, this strategy can start to increase ranking in the search engines, especially if a good keyword strategy is being used. (Click here to continue.)

All website owners want their websites to accept money easily and effortlessly. Even non-profits want their online donations to be processed smoothly. In the Presidential campaign, Obama’s online contributions created a formidable fund. His site made donating small amounts easy and safe. But, online purchasing and donating can be risky, and as more and more companies sell online, the consumer needs to exercise caution when submitting credit card information.
Personally, I resent it when a company insists on holding onto my credit card number. Recently, an online company let me choose whether or not I wanted to register on their site and leave my information in their records. I appreciated the opportunity to choice and did not register. While checking out, I noticed I was eligible for free shipping; however, my order first had to be paid for and confirmed before I would receive the free shipping instructions. Reluctantly, I chose free shipping and then received the confirmation email. Guess what? In order to be eligible for cost-free shipping, I had to register and store my credit card in their database. I refused the shipping offer and paid for the expensive shipping cost.
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When considering a shopping cart for your website, remember that not all shopping carts are equal. Do not let your need for one force you to choose a shopping cart that doesn’t work well for you. A shopping cart needs to have features that work best for you and your products. With the correct, carefully considered features, a shopping cart will work more effectively for you and provide a user-friendly experience to your customers.
Before choosing a shopping cart, consider the following items:
• Shipping: Make your shipping costs an easy add on. You could charge one flat price for the entire purchase or charge one price for each item. Or, you can also charge a percentage of the whole purchase. For overseas shipping, you can add an additional charge or decide not to ship overseas.
• Sales tax: You need to add a sales tax for your state of residency and other states requiring it.
• Pricing: Do you want to manage your products and pricing, or do you want your web master to do it?
• Do you want a long description of the product? (Click here to continue.)

There are some great packages on the web for shopping carts such as VirtueMart, osCommerce and Squirrelcart. You can also get a shopping cart through Paypal, Google or Yahoo.com. Some of these shopping carts may fit your needs well. But, we have found that all of these shopping carts are built around the idea that ‘one size fits all.’ In addition, once you get all your products into the cart, its processes may not fit your needs. It may not be user friendly by not allowing a customer to choose certain options you want to offer.
Basically, there are three types of carts:
1. Template shopping cart – These carts stays forever on the parent site of Google, Yahoo and Paypal, all large companies. Although they are likely to work, they may not function the way you want them to. If you think you can get changes made, good luck getting hold of customer support. And, if you do, good luck getting your change made. (Click here to continue.)