Online Ecommerce Shopping Cart Software and its features

In a traditional form of shopping, people visit a nearby store, put the products of their choices into the basket and go to the payment counter to complete the payment process. On the other hand, in an online shopping, it is required to be familiar of using the Internet to find out the ecommerce website of having a shopping cart system, which is designed like a basket, usually positioned in the top right corner of a shopping store. So, I refer shopping cart like a heart of an online store.

ABOUT SHOPPING CART SOFTWARE:
The term, Ecommerce Shopping Carts Software refers to a software, system or an application that has been developed to process, calculate and record all the transactions related to particular product that people put into the cart (basket). American normally called 'Shopping Cart' and in the UK, it is generally known as a "Shopping basket".
The shopping cart system enables online shoppers to gather a list of items for purchase, represented allegorically as "placing items in the shopping cart". Upon checkout, this shopping cart typically counts a total for the order, containing shipping and handling (i.e. postage and packing) costs and the corresponding taxes, as applicable.

TWO MAIN CATEGORIES OF SHOPPING CART SOFTWARE:

Shopping cart software can be usually classified into two main categories.

Licensed Shopping Cart Software:
If you already own a web server, and you want shopping cart software, then you can download, and installed it on your web server but you need to pay a one-time fee to purchase its license. There are many free shopping cart software also available. The benefit of purchasing the license copy is to get more security and enables your shopping cart to be accessed and customized according to our server requirements.

Hosted Shopping Cart Software:
The second category of obtaining shopping cart software is the hosted services. This software cannot be downloaded. The hosting service provider is offering it by charging fees on monthly or annual basis. Some hosting service providers charge fees on a percentage of sales you made in a month or year. This service includes the customizing of shopping carts using the predefined templates it offers to enhance its look and feel.

SHOPPING CART FEATURES:

Following are the main Shopping Cart Features:

Floating Shopping Cart:

• As the word, floating itself suggest that it helps to display the contents of cart in all pages of your ecommerce website
• It provides the option to click and view all the contents of the shopping carts
• It helps previewing the shipping costs and offers multiple versions

Simple Mini Cart:

• Simple Mini Cart is the full-featured shopping cart and an e-commerce solution.
• It confirms performance and versatility you need.
• It is a small version of the full shopping cart.
• It covered on the bottom of left section of the site on all pages under the category list.
• It shows all products attached to cart, their favored options, their quantities and total amount.
• It also has direct links to check out page.
• It shows full status of the shopping cart.

Update Quantity & Check Inventory
Keep Shopping Options
Empty Shopping Cart
Wish List to cart Shipping Integration
Advanced Mini Cart
Cross Sell Products on Shopping Cart
Estimated Shipping
Save Your Shopping Cart

Hope, this post can helpful you to find the best resources on Ecommerce Shopping Carts software. You can follow this link from Wikipedia for more details on Comparison of shopping cart software.

Checklist for Developing Ecommerce Shopping Cart Software

According to Wikipedia,

“A shopping cart (trolley, carriage, buggy) is a cart supplied by a shop, especially supermarkets, for use by customers inside the shop for transport of merchandise to the check-out counter during shopping. Customers can then also use the cart to transport their purchased goods to their cars.”

“Shopping cart software is software used in e-commerce to assist people making purchases online, analogous to the American English term 'shopping cart'. In British English, it is generally known as a shopping basket, almost exclusively shortened on websites to 'basket'.

The software allows online shopping customers to accumulate a list of items for purchase, described metaphorically as "placing items in the shopping cart". Upon checkout, the software typically calculates a total for the order, including shipping and handling (i.e. postage and packing) charges and the associated taxes, as applicable.”

There is a surfeit of ecommerce shopping cart alternatives from free; open source to ace that requires a huge amount to be paid. All these possibilities can be staggering for someone valuing what is optimum for their on-line ecommerce store. First, you have to settle your needs and distribute them in three different groups; features that must require, features that should be, and features that are advanced. To help get you commenced developing shopping cart system; here are some communal features and a checklist to consider.

CHECKLIST FOR DEVELOPING ECOMMERCE SHOPPING CART SOFTWARE:

Scalability:
Once you decided to build an online store, then you need to determine the number of products that the shopping cart can handle. You can just have estimation of the number of products that you are currently planning to handle and the products that you will have in next three to five years. Accordingly, you can hire a shopping cart developer to develop such software that has a capacity to handle the products you are expecting; otherwise, you may have to redesign it in, which may cost a lot.

Integration:
Shopping cart software provides a platform to manage all the inventory, stock and order related info at one place. Have you ever thought about the other software or application that requires integration with this shopping cart? If you do not know, then just think about. I know one, and it is Quick Books. It is the accounting software, which is highly recommended and most popular so that pick up such shopping that offers this kind of integration.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization:
Just imagine that your site is not showing in major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, etc., and you want its presence in search engines, then you need to make sure and optimized your site by implementing the Title, Meta description and keywords and other SEO factors immediately.

Analytics:
What if someone asked, how many people visit your shopping cart, how many of them just bounced, what pages they mostly visit, sources, they find your site and place where they left your site, etc., and the answer is Google Analytics code. You can put this code and track all the activities of your store and measure the traffic, conversion and for making it better.

Design Control:
Another influential characteristic of your online store will be how much customization control you have over the appearance & feel. Some are fully customizable enabling you modifies everything while others allow you to use pre-designed templates to modify most stuff but preserve their general layout. The checkout pages are some of the most prominent in able to reorganize basics of the page to view what is desirable for the most gross revenue.

Customer Data:
Establishing a consumer support, is a keystone of any best-selling business, whether it is an online store or a retail brick and mortar location. The best way to raise your sales is to keep in touch with previous customers via email or direct mail promotions. You will have to be too easily store and approach customer information to make this happen. Furthermore, you want to be able to all release for a particular customer, in case there are any support issues from returns to special offers.

Let's see Which Shopping Cart Works Best?