What Makes An E Commerce Shopping Cart Provider Stand Out

With more than a hundred e-commerce shopping carts to choose from, selecting one is really a matter of preference with careful product evaluation. But what makes one provider stand out from the rest? Get some insight below.

Features

Different shopping cart providers offer similar and unique features that are useful to the consumers and beneficial for you as a merchant. While choosing which features to have may depend on the size of your business, a good shopping cart service offers a wide range of feature options for different business needs.

Integrated Online Marketing and Promotional Tools

Shopping carts, can increase your traffic and sales virtually over night. How? Shopping carts affect the customer’s response to your website. The more useful tools it has, the more it can attract new customers and persuade existing customers to buy your products. Through integrated marketing and promotional tools like catalog and product comparison, your customers are able to make easy and wise decision on which products they want to buy.

Promos, sale, discounts, free shipping and coupons are powerful marketing strategies that can attract more customers. Shopping carts can provide you many, if not all of these features.

Product review is another powerful feature that can increase sales. In a study conducted by CompUSA and iPerceptions, 63% of customers are more likely to buy for the sites with product ratings and reviews.

User-friendly Interface/Ease of Use

Customers can be very impatient when it comes to purchasing products and services online. The last thing your customers want to you is figure out how to navigate your shopping cart. A user-friendly website is important to keep potential customers browsing and a user-friendly shopping cart is crucial if you want visitors to complete the transactions.

Payment Options

Different online customers prefer to use certain types of payment. While most would like credit cards, many are still hesitant to enter personal information online and choose other alternative modes of payment like Paypal, checks and money orders. A good shopping cart service should cover all these.

Hacker-Safe Ordering Page

Earning your customers’ confidence is important in any business. That is why you have to make sure that your customers are properly protected when they enter their credit card information to your website. Wise customers often look for SSL certificate seal on a merchant’s website. This seal is a guarantee that the site is hacker safe. Make sure that you have one.



Full Order Management System

A good shopping cart guides customers throughout the process of purchasing, checking out, payment and shipping. These services can be provided fully by a hosting company or are linked from different services. Payments can be through major credit cards, PayPal, money orders and checks. Shipping can be linked to major shipping carriers like UPS, DHL and FedEx.

customer Service/Support

One of the best ways to gauge if a particular e-commerce shopping cart provider has a good customer service is by sending questions though their email address. How fast did they reply? Did you get a template reply? In business, time is money; and personal touch is a plus. customer service should reply a personalize message as soon as possible. Another way to test how good the customer service is is through its technical support. In running an effective e-commerce store, the availability of good documentation and support is important.