| For many online businesses, the shopping cart is the | | | | your products to better advantage, it will be well |
| heart of the online business, enabling site visitors to | | | | worth it. |
| browse your product offerings, check prices, shipping | | | | - Inventory and Statistics. Many merchants prefer to |
| options and finally place their order. | | | | keep their inventory software separate from their |
| As the heart of the online business, having a | | | | online shopping cart, while others prefer an integrated |
| shopping cart that is tailored to your business cannot | | | | solution. Integrating your inventory control programs |
| be over emphasized. | | | | for online and offline sales may be more than it is |
| If you are looking for a shopping cart, here are some | | | | worth, especially at the outset, nevertheless it is |
| questions to start off the process. Ask yourself | | | | worth considering and asking your web development |
| these questions before talking to a web | | | | company for details. |
| development company. | | | | - Accounting Integration. Many shopping carts offer a |
| - Tax options for your jurisdiction | | | | feature where the sales information collected in the |
| - Shipping options for your products. If you are selling | | | | Shopping cart can be exported to popular accounting |
| a virtual product then you will need support for | | | | software such as Quickbooks. |
| downloads. If your product is large and heavy, | | | | - Content. Is your website going to be simply an |
| shipping to countries outside North America may be | | | | online store, or are you going to have other areas |
| expensive. Do you customers want your product in a | | | | such as articles, free information, resources, or |
| hurry, or is a slower shipping method acceptable? | | | | information about your company? This is very |
| - Search Engine Friendly? Regardless of the type of | | | | important to decide at the beginning! Generally, the |
| business you have, you are going to want the search | | | | search engines prefer sites with content and |
| engine crawlers to access the pages that make up | | | | information over simply an online store. |
| your shopping cart. Crawability is only one Search | | | | - Options. What do your customers want to, or have |
| Engine issue. Other issues include, duplicate content | | | | to know about your products before they purchase? |
| and Session IDs. | | | | If you are selling jewellery such as rings, the ring size |
| - Abandoned Carts. Just as in brick and mortal stores, | | | | is important information. Do your products come in |
| customers do not always complete their purchase for | | | | different colors? Different sizes? How many options |
| one reason or another. The problem of abandoned | | | | does the Cart allow per product? |
| carts online is a multi-million dollar headache for online | | | | - Search. Browsers are going to want to search your |
| merchants. Some shopping carts, notably | | | | products, so a basic search is absolutely necessary. |
| OsCommerce come with plug-in modules for emailing | | | | After the basic search, you may want to incorporate |
| customers who do not complete their purchases. This | | | | other more specialized searches. Visitors may want |
| is a fairly simple functionality to program into an | | | | to search for all products under $25, or for all |
| existing application and will pay for itself many times | | | | products in a particular size or color for example. |
| over. | | | | Most of these are functionalities may already be |
| - Product Display. Does the Shopping Cart software | | | | included in the Shopping Cart your web development |
| display your products to best advantage? Depending | | | | company suggests, and if not, they are easily added |
| on your product, you may want 3 or 4 pictures, | | | | either through custom programming, or through |
| showing different views of each product. This is a | | | | plug-in modules. |
| very easy functionality to program, and if it displays | | | | |