subject: The Quest For The Perfect Shopping Cart [print this page] The Quest For The Perfect Shopping Cart The Quest For The Perfect Shopping Cart
There are quite a number of awesome shopping carts available. Many of them offering a variety of features at prices so affordable that just about anyone with a pc and $50 to spare a month can afford run an web store.
However, in order to find out if there is such a thing as a perfect shopping cart, we need to conduct a little investigation beforehand.
Shopping Cart Fees
As stated earlier, quite a number ecommerce solutions come with really affordable subscription charges. Although many ecommerce software cost around $50 per month, there are a couple which cost as low as a mere $10 a month. At that price, you can be sure even kids can afford to run a web store. However, do not expect a shopping cart of that price range to come with a full load of cannot-do-without features.
Carts in this price range usually come with certain limitations but that is to be expected. It would be ridiculous to expect too much for ecommerce software that costs $10.
Shopping Cart Software Features
Features are the soul of a shopping cart. Ecommerce solution providers used to charge for all the new features that they introduce. However, due to rising competition, most of the latest features are now offered for free. These features would include content sliders, product zoom tool, auto responders and live chat software.
Cool Ecommerce Templates
Everyone wants free yet attractive store templates. Ecommerce software companies have been offering merchants free ecommerce templates for some time now. However, the earlier designs were nothing to shout about.
Fortunately, the new free templates are not only attractive but come with advanced drag and drop features which makes page elements very easy to move around. Merchants need not need to know any software to rearrange page elements as these elements now come in the form of widgets which can be easily removed and added.
Easy To Use
A shopping cart software which is easy to use makes running a web business a piece of cake. Paid carts are generally easier to use than free carts because no programming knowledge is needed and support is always a phone call away.
An easy to use cart also saves time and that is important to many merchants who have day jobs and kids attempting to bring the house down.
In A Nutshell
Sad to say, the perfect shopping cart is still eludes us. The cheaper carts lack so many must-have features which can be found in carts in the $50 to $200 range. Some of the more costlier carts have so many features that they even confuse new merchants. Not all shopping carts offer free templates with the drag and drop feature, making customization a little bit of a hassle.
So before you subscribe, sign up for a free trial and give the shopping software a spin first.
