What is a Shopping Cart?
Anybody who has visited and purchased something from a vendor on the Internet will have used an online shopping cart. This is the term which is used to describe the software which is used by the site to allow the transaction to occur. The shopping cart is designed to allow visitors to click on a button to add items they wish to purchase to a basket. Then when they have completed clicking on all of the items they wish to purchase there will be another button which will initiate the checkout process. The shopping cart will total the value of all of the goods or services selected, add the appropriate taxes, shipping and administration charges and relay the total cost to the customer. The shopping cart will then take the customer through the process of entering their personal and credit card details.
It may not be obvious to the visitor, but the shopping cart will have two different interfaces – one which is presented to customers and the other which is reserved for administration. This private administration area is the interface which is used by the Web site owner to add or delete products, change pricing and place additional constraints on transactions such as delivery charges.
A shopping cart can be added to a site by three different methods, with the choice depending mainly on the programming expertise of the designer. The easiest method to add a shopping cart is to do so through a merchant service such as 2Checkout. When using this method, the checkout process, and often the basket itself, is actually based on the merchant services’ Web site. This means that when purchases are made by the customer they are redirected to the other site to complete the transaction. This is the simplest method of integration, as once an account has been set up the merchant service will simply generate a piece of HTML code which needs to be placed into the browser for each product. Although this is the simplest method there are a couple of significant drawbacks. The main drawback is the price, which may be up to as much as 10% of the purchase fee, with additional transaction fees and possibly monthly fees as well. Some customers may also be put off by the fact that an external site must be visited to complete the transaction. Orders may also be queried when it is not your own business name which appears on the customer’s credit card statement, but that of the merchant service used.
A different method is to use a hosted service to integrate your shopping cart. This is similar to using a merchant service in that the user will be redirected to an external site to complete their payment transaction. The main difference is however that the page which they are redirected to can usually be edited so that it appears to be part of your own site. You are also able to edit the name which appears on the credit card statement so that it appears as your own business name. This method is also as simple as integrating with a merchant service, usually requiring only HTML code to be placed in the appropriate place in your site code. The fees which are associated with hosting sites are also usually less, as they are based on a monthly charge rather than a percentage of sales. The prices range from around $40 per month up to around $150 per month for larger sites. For many this is still far better than paying 10% of sales.
If you have some programming knowledge then the best option is to use software which is available for running shopping carts. This requires the software to be installed to the server, and this can usually be modified to suit the style of your site. The main benefit of this is that the shopping cart will be placed entirely on your own site and an external site is not required for transactions to occur. Instead payment is processed through your own merchant provider, which would usually charge a set fee per transaction, or a smaller percentage of the sale cost than would be charged by merchant services discussed above. There are some free pieces of software available such as Zen or Agora, although these require a certain level of programming knowledge and do not offer the functionality of some other software. Commercial software such as X-Cart is easier to use, although this will cost between around $200 and $300 depending on the features which you require. If you want to use this option but feel that you don’t have the requisite technical knowledge then you could always hire a Web expert to assist you, with fees for this service ranging from around $1000 upwards.
If you are launching an ecommerce site then there is no way of really avoiding integrating a shopping cart to your site. You should therefore give careful consideration to the three options available to you, and weigh up the cost of each to you, both initially and over the course of your business’ life to be able to choose the best and most cost-effective solution.