Understanding Online Shopping Carts

Business owners every day are either opening or adding to their web sites online e-commerce stores. Some are finding success, others frustration.

It's important to understand the basic differences between your choices -- custom shopping cart, pre-packaged cart, and template system shopping cart.

Custom Designed, Open Source Shopping Cart
A custom designed, open source shopping cart ranges from $3,500 for a robust entry-level cart system to $10,500 for an enterprise-level cart (not including web design). If you're processing 20 to 30 orders a week, bearing the cost of an entry-level custom cart is justified.

Most custom open source carts are built or programmed in .NET/ SQL 2005 or .Php MySQL.

Advantages in having an open source shopping cart are:
~ Easily modified for any custom functionality
~ You own the cart
~ Can be easily moved to another web hosting company
~ Can be highly optimized for search engines
~ Can easily integrate custom tools and third party software applications

Disadvantages in having an open source shopping cart are:
~ Cost may be too much for small business start-ups

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're using an off-the-shelf custom cart. These are pre-developed cart applications that can be purchased from third party developers. This means that the source code, i.e., the under-the-hood components, may or may not be easily customized for your purposes.

Most pre-packaged carts costs range from $299.00 to $2200.00

Advantages in having a pre-packaged shopping cart are:
~ You own the cart
~ Is cost effective for ecommerce start-ups

Disadvantages in having a pre-packaged shopping cart are:
~ Is a third party application. Support is poor or non-existent.
~ Is difficult to expand, scale or customize

Template System Shopping Carts
Many web hosting companies offer an integrated shopping solution. These shopping cart system templates are fine for dipping your toe in e-commerce waters, but they do not permit custom modifications. They are closed proprietary systems built for beginners.

Advantages in having a template system shopping cart are:
~ Inexpensive. Range from $15 to $40 per month
~ Easy to use depending on your computer skill level
~ They provide a testing ground for you to assess your online sales skills
~ Online and live support is usually pretty good for third party carts
~ They are a great place for e-commerce beginners with a limited budget

So they are a great place for ecommerce beginners having a limited budget.

Disadvantages in having a template system shopping cart are:
~ Cannot be modified for any custom functionality
~ You do not own the cart
~ Cannot be easily moved to another web hosting company
~ 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, you'll want to have a powerful web site presence to help drive traffic to your online products or services.

Your E-commerce Plan of Attack

In order for your e-commerce store to be successful, you first have to generate visitor traffic. This is important for any business having a web site whether they have a shopping cart or not.

Here are three simple rules to a great web site:

1. When someone hits your web site, your home page had better instantly communicate your message or brand. Your home page needs to generate enough interest that your visitors want to dig deeper for more information.

2. Your web site MUST be easy to use and navigate.

3. Your web site MUST be visible to search engines and be built to be search engine friendly.

A professional-looking web site optimized for search engines can have its own individual product pages. This increases your web presence over search engines without having to do it in the shopping cart itself. These individual product web pages can be linked to the specific product page in your cart. Many of our clients use the Miva Merchant Ecommerce Shopping solution offered by our web hosting business partner www.hostmysite.com.

Web sites generate about $17 billion in sales each year. Getting a piece of that pie is a lot easier when your on-line shopping cart does its job correctly.

Related Articles;
Ecommerce Planning Sheet

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.