Primer
to Online Shopping Carts
If you are planning to open an online ecommerce
store it is important to understanding the differences in
‘CUSTOM ecommerce shopping carts’, ‘PRE-PACKAGED
ecommerce shopping carts’ and ‘TEMPLATE system
ecommerce shopping carts’.
Custom Designed Open Source Shopping
Cart
A custom designed ecommerce open source shopping cart cost
ranges from $3500.00 for a robust *entry level cart system
to $10,500.00 enterprise level cart - not including website
design.
Most custom open source carts are built
or programmed in .NET/ SQL 2005-2008 on a Windows hosting
platform or .Php My SQL on a Linux hosting platform.
THE PROS
Advantages in having an open source ecommerce shopping cart
• Easily customized for any custom functionality you
require
• You own the cart!
• Can be easily moved to another web hosting company
• Can be highly optimized for search engines. (Search engine
optimization)
• Can easily integrate custom tools and 3rd party software
applications
• Your online store has a stronger chance of becoming a success
• Can be modified to keep up with new web browsers and operating
systems.
• Allows for the integration of interactive customer tools
to help insure online success; Newsletters, Forums, Customer
Comments, Coupons, Custom Product Views, Custom Data Feeds
to other websites and much more.
THE CONS
Disadvantages in having an open source ecommerce shopping
cart
• The cost is prohibited for small business startups
* If you were processing 20 or 30 orders
a week bearing the cost an entry level custom cart is justified.
Pre-packaged Shopping Carts
When a web designer or web design company quotes you a cost
for a custom cart be sure to ask if they are using an off-the-shelf
custom cart. These are pre-developed cart applications that
can be purchased from 3rd party developer websites such as
Hot Scripts or Aspin. ‘Off-the-shelf’ means that
the ‘source code’ or ‘under-the-hood programming
components may not be easily customized for your purposes.
Case in point.
Let’s say you ask your web designer(s)
to implement any new functionality or change; Add a function,
Style a page, Change a color or Display a custom message.
If they say; ‘sorry your ecommerce
shopping cart cannot be modified to do that’, then chances
are they used an off-the-shelf cart and have no idea how or
if the programming code can be modified.
Most pre-packaged carts costs range from
$299.00 to $2200.00
THE PROS
Advantages in having a pre-packaged shopping cart
• You own the cart
• Is cost effective for ecommerce start-ups with little financial
resources
THE CONS
Disadvantages in having a pre-packaged shopping cart
• Is a 3rd party application. Support is poor or non-existent
• Is difficult to expand, scale or customize
• May or may not display correctly across different
browsers over MACs and PCs.
• Usually not search engine friendly.
Template System Shopping Carts
Many web hosting companies offer so type of integrated ecommerce
shopping solution, a.k.a. ( One size fits all)
They are closed proprietary ecommerce shopping
cart systems built for beginners and allow only limited modifications
such as adding your logo and choosing an over all color.
These shopping cart system templates are
fine for dipping you toe in the shallow end of the ecommerce
pool.
THE PROS
Advantages in having a template system shopping cart
• Inexpensive Costs range from 15.00 to 40.00 per month as
an additional cost to your hosting package.
• Easy to use depending on your computer skill level
• They provide a ‘testing ground’ for you to test
your online sales skills.
• Online and live support is usually pretty good for 3rd party
carts.
• A great place for ecommerce beginners having a limited budget.
THE CONS
Disadvantages in having an open source shopping cart
• Cannot be customized for any custom functionality
• You do not own the cart.
• Cannot be easily moved to another web hosting company and
in most cases these carts cannot be moved at all.
• Some template base carts can be optimized for search engines,
but this requires an intermediate knowledge of HTML.
If you decide to test the online waters
with a ‘template shopping cart solution’ you will
want to build a powerful supplemental website presence to
help drive traffic to your online products or services.
An Ecommerce Website Priority List
a. COMMUNICATION
When someone hits your home page, your site had better instantly
communicate your message or brand. Your homepage needs to
generate enough interest that your visitors want to dig deeper
for more information.
b. USABILITY/ NAVIGATION
Your website MUST be easy to use and navigate. Display all
the most important information above the fold. Don’t
mix your bread-n-butter links with your administrative links.
For example separate administrative links for ‘Home’,
‘About Us’, and ‘Our Mission ’away
from ‘Shop Online’, ‘View Products’
and ‘Shipping Information’
c. SEARCH ENGINE PRESENCE
Your website MUST be visible to search engines and be built
to be ‘search engine friendly’. A custom ecommerce
web site optimized for search engines has optimized product
pages to increase your web presence over search engines.
So there you have it.
Go forth and build-it and they will buy.
About the Author
Rick Vidallon is President of Visionefx, a Web
design company based in Virginia Beach, Va. They provide
services to national companies as well as small to medium
businesses throughout the United States.
Rick can be reached at (757) 619-6456 or rick@visionefx.net. |
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