Wednesday, June 16, 2010

5 Tips for Selecting the Right Shopping Cart

Nazma from eBRIDGE Software has made great post to help people select the right shopping cart platform for their future ecommerce store.

"Choosing the best shopping cart solution for your launch into eCommerce is critical to the success of your online business. The right shopping cart can be a great marketing tool. Here are some features to look for in a shopping cart that can help promote your business.

1) Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a key feature to look for in a shopping cart. While many shopping carts offer the ability to create a great looking site, what is the point if no one can find it? While there are a lot of things you can to do create interesting content, your shopping cart’s technology controls search-engine indexing.

2) RSS Capability
Really Simple Syndication or RSS is a format for distributing web content. RSS feeds can be used by your business to advertise promotions, new products and press releases. RSS feeds attract the interest of the search engines and they reach new audiences, making them a powerful marketing tool. They also allow you to tap into the power of the social media networks. For example, you import your RSS feeds to Twitter or Facebook, allowing you to tap into your target market

3) Automated Cross-selling
When a customer looks at a product page or places a product in the shopping cart, a shopping cart with automated cross selling can recommend related products based on the customers’ own shopping behavior, resulting in higher sales per visit. For example, if a customer if your customer views a digital camera, it will suggest accessories such as a camera bag or memory card.

4) Coupon Code and Discount Support
Everybody loves a great deal. A good shopping cart should support coupons codes with flexible options so you can offer a variety of promotions to your customer, such as volume pricing.

5) Customer Review
Strong customer reviews encourage more sales. Your shopping cart should integrate customer reviews, either supporting a review system itself or easily connecting to a third-party customer review tool.

There are many shopping carts available. Here is a list of some shopping cart options that may meet your business needs:

  • Magento
  • Volusion
  • Nexternal
  • 3dCart
  • ASPDotNetStoreFront
  • Miva Merchant
  • OSCommerce
  • eBay Stores
  • Amazon
  • Interspire / Big Commerce


    Once you have selected a cart that suits your needs, the next step is determining how to integrate your shopping cart with your accounting system. eBridge allows you to seamlessly integrate your front- and back-end business processes, connecting your web store to your accounting software’s order, inventory and fulfillment systems. If you need help integrating your shopping cart to your accounting system, just give us a call at 1-800-755-6921 x270

    Thanks,
    Nazma
    Team Leader, Support Services"

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