Anyone who wants to sell products online needs to have a shopping cart. Even the simplest version is the mechanism whereby your customer is able to choose an item and pay for it. There are plenty of options out there, from the simple version described above to the bells and whistles type that you'll need for a large company. What's right for you?
The easiest Shopping cart
integration is to integrate an outside payment processors into your web site. Examples of these types of payment modules are Paypal express and Google Checkout. With these, you do not need to have a merchant account, which can be costly. But while you'll save some money, it won't look so professional - when the customer goes to pay, she will be taken away from your site to the payment processor's site in order to pay, and will then afterwards be redirected back.
To make this option more palatable for your online business, you can choose from a myriad of free shopping carts to add to your store and make the transaction look smoother. Many are customizable so you can have a graphics person integrate them into your site seamlessly. Most are also upgradeable so you can easily get a merchant account if you deem it necessary.
When choosing such a shopping cart, consider all of the features that each one offers:
1. Does it integrate well with paypal and other well-known payment processors? 2. Is it easily and fully customizable to fit in with your web site? 3. How many checkout steps does it have? 4. Does it have an email marketing option?5. Is there a product image gallery?6. What is the system for maintaining and monitoring your inventory?7. Does it allow for product reviews?
These are just some of the things you should be thinking about before you make a decision. Most of the free ones won't offer so much, but check out what the upgrades offer. Once you choose one, it will be easier to simply upgrade when your business can afford it rather than switch to something new.
Very large companies will have programmers on staff who develop their shopping carts from scratch. This option won't be available for the small business.
Finally, many companies will offer you complete packages where they design, develop, host and provide you with payment processing and shopping cart all rolled into one. This can be very convenient for many businesses and can be less expensive than doing everything separately. If you run a dropship business, your wholesale dropship supplier may offer you all of these services as well, so your entire business can be controlled through a single vendor, making your life very easy. If you choose this option, make sure to bring up all the features you want with your dropship wholesaler.
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