Ecommerce
Website Shopping carts
Using a shopping cart is the single most important aspect of automating your Web store. This allows the customer to pick and choose what they want to buy and then purchase everything at once. It provides the customer with a 'virtual shopping cart.' When they want to buy something, they place it in their virtual shopping cart. Later they can remove the product from their virtual shopping cart if they change their minds. When they are done shopping, they can purchase the contents of their shopping cart.
Shopping carts provide your customers with an interactivity that is necessary for the purchasing process. Customers need to be able to examine products closely and obtain in-depth information. Needless to say, shopping carts must be easy and intuitive. If not, customers will become frustrated – and will not buy from your Web store.
There are many different implementations of shopping carts and automated sales mechanisms available. They range from simple Perl scripts to full-blown, easy-to-use products. Some automated sales mechanisms provide Web-hosting services. You will need to decide what level of service you require. Realize that some Internet sales automation companies and products require you to host your Web site on their servers, and would require you to destroy a stabile and trusting relationship with your existing Internet Service Provider.
An important aspect of shopping carts is their ability to calculate shipping & handling and tax. When the customer is buying products, it is important to let them know how much they will be spending in shipping & handling and tax. So it is important that the shopping cart has the ability to calculate this automatically.
Another feature to look for in a shopping cart is the ability to get authorization to charge a credit card during the purchase process. If the customer does not enter a valid credit card, then you do not want to accept the order. Your shopping cart should be able to interface with your merchant bank to obtain this real-time authorization. Shopping carts may directly contact your merchant bank, or use a third-party service such as CyberCash to interface with your merchant bank. Using this feature, you can obtain authorization real-time, and then actually collect funds from the credit card when you ship products. Or if you are selling information, you can collect the funds automatically when you obtain the authorization. |
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