Finding a good ’shopping cart’ for your website

The best way to find a good shopping cart for your website is to conduct research to determine available products and services in the market. This will allow you to make an informed decision by making a comparison of product functionality and features. Before purchasing an ecommerce shopping cart there are several aspects to consider. For example, what products and services are you offering to your target market? Will you be offering soft goods (downloadable products) or hard goods (physical products)? Do you want to use a free shopping cart, purchase shopping cart software to install on your own server, or purchase hosted shopping cart software provided by an application service provider (ASP)? If your budget does not include purchasing shopping cart software, there are a number of free online shopping carts available. The best way to find these free shopping carts is to conduct a search for “free shopping carts” on your favorite search engine. On the other hand, if your budget allows you to purchase software or services, you must first determine your needs.

Weather you are scouring the market for a free shopping cart or plan to purchase shopping cart software, the best way to find a shopping cart after you determine your needs is to develop a list of criteria to compare shopping cart features. These features may include the following:

Hosting Server: Is the shopping cart compatible with your website host? What servers support the software? Windows, UNIX or Linux servers?

Pricing: What is the monthly price? Is there a set up fee? Is there an application fee?

Merchant Account / Payment Gateway: What merchant accounts and payment gateways integrate with the shopping cart?

Payment options: What payment options will you accept? What payment options does the shopping cart accept? Does the shopping cart accept different currencies? Does the shopping cart accept multiple forms of payments such as e-checks, credit cards, money orders, etc?

Security: Does the shopping cart support SSL (secure socket layer) with 128-bit encryption?

Database integration: Will you need a shopping cart that integrates with popular commercial databases such as MS Access,MySQL or SQL server to store and retrieve data?

Shipping costs and taxes: What shipping methods will you use? Does the software calculate shipping cost and taxes based on consumer location? Does the shopping cart retrieve shipping methods