Web Hosting Reviews & Ratings

June 29, 2011

What to Know About Shopping Cart Software

Online merchants venturing into the world of e-commerce must make an initial decision regarding shopping cart software.  Of course reliability and security are two prerequisites for any shopping cart due to the sensitive information exchanged during online transactions.

The shopping cart software allows customers to drop specific items or services in a virtual "shopping cart."  For e-commerce site shopping carts are more of a necessity rather than optional.  A robust and practical shopping cart provides features that allowing customers to view quantity of items, total costs and applicable sales tax, as well as shipping and handling charges or other fees before prompting customers to finalize the transaction.

A basic shopping cart program begins the online transaction by immediately initializing once items are placed in the cart.  Some programs have additional components for customization features.  The actual software program is typically installed on the host server.  It’s strongly recommended to use secure servers to ensure security measures of protecting customers’ personal information without any potential risks of the data being compromised by hackers with malicious intent.

Storefront vs. Administrative

The basic two components of the shopping cart software are the viewable storefront and administrative areas.  Obviously, the storefront is the area of the site that customers can view.  The greatest advantage of the storefront is that the majority of it can be customized.  The other component, the administrative section, grants online merchants access to administration features that permit users to change product images, place discounts, edit shipping and handling fees as well as an array of other settings.   The administrative section may be conveniently accessed either via a web browser, or a desktop program on the merchant’s computer, and the changes then applied to the storefront.

Typically, shopping cart software is installed as licensed software by the user, or hosted by a service provider.   The greatest advantage of acquiring licensed software is there’s a single payment, and the user can host it on any web server.  Hosting providers doesn't require a download of shopping cart software, and the online merchant isn’t required to maintain updates; however, there’s a specific fee, and often a percentage of sales that is the host’s responsibility.  A drawback of allowing a shopping cart to be hosted by a provider is there are limitations on customization ability.

Pricing

The prices for shopping cart software vary in range from less than $50 to an excess of $1,000.  Set-up fees also vary from free to $100.  Affordable monthly service fees are also available for around $50 and extend to an excess of $200.   For merchants interested in purchasing a one-time license, they can be obtained for less than $200 to an excess of $1,000.  Obviously, the more resources a merchant has readily available to utilize, the more bells and whistles the software provides including customized options.

BigCommerce: Top Shopping Cart Software Pick

While individual shopping cart software has pros and cons, however, BigCommerce is a leading popular shopping cart among online merchants.  The loaded software package is available for an affordable cost of $79.95.  A very worth-while investment as it’s considered to be “the best shopping software package on the market today.”   Even industry critics find very few faults with BigComerce.

BigCommerce provides online merchants many attractive features such as impeccable security features, easy navigation, customizable web pages, social media integration capability, and automated SEO on each web page.  Not only is the shopping cart packed with e-commerce features, but it’s very user-friendly simple and easy to use.  BigCommerce is the ideal shopping cart solution for both entrepreneurs just venturing into e-commerce and seasoned online merchants to successfully maintain a professional e-commerce site.

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