Choosing an eCommerce shopping cart is one of the toughest decisions to make because there are so many carts out there with so many different features–and because businesses change over time. The right cart 
for you today might not be the right cart for your business six months from now, and switching carts midstream can be painful, timeconsuming, costly and difficult. So it is important to choose the right cart software from the beginning, one that will allow your business to grow into it, and be flexible as your needs change over time.
It will be easier to decide if you first know what you want in a cart.
Which shopping cart features are important to you?
There are a lot of things to think about when choosing a shopping cart. Consider whether or not you want these features and what you want them to do for you.
| Shopping Cart Feature | Things to think about |
| Gift certificates | Can be handy for gift sales or during the holidays, but redeeming gift certificates can complicate the checkout process, which can lower your conversion rate |
| Customer reviews | While it can be a little scary allowing your visitors to say whatever they want about your products, online shoppers tend to trust another online shopper’s word and find helpful advice that, in general, tends to increase sales. Customer reviews can also be a good place to find phrases and real-world information for product descriptions, and, because they contain the words people use in real life, they can help with search engine optimization by increasing the search terms for your products. |
| Cross selling | Also called suggestion selling, this is the idea of adding “customers who bought this also bought this” or suggesting peripherals or add-ons that logically go with a product. Cross selling can increase your order totals. If you decide you want this for your eCommerce store, think about what types of cross selling you’d want to do. Do you want a cart that auto-suggests other products based on what has sold to other customers, or do you want to configure it yourself? |
| Specials and featured items | Do you want to offer specials and feature different items on your home and/or category pages? Think about what you want to do in this area and how you want it to work. |
| Loyalty program | Do you have an existing loyalty program or do you want to build one? How does it work? Some shopping carts will support your existing loyalty program; others have pre-built loyalty programs you can use. |
| Shipping options | Do you ship products? How do you handle shipping? Do you want your web site to automatically integrate with the shipping vendors and set up tracking numbers? Do you want to be able to print your shipping labels right from the cart admin screen? Some carts allow that, and will auto-e-mail the tracking number to the customer. |
| Multiple product images | If you offer physical goods, it’s generally a good idea to have more than one product image, but how many to use depends on the product and the options. Does the product come in different colors? You probably want to show each of the colors. If it’s an item of clothing or furniture, you might want to show different views/angles. If visuals of your product are important to help the customer make a purchase decision, then look for a cart that supports multiple product images. |
| US or international addresses | If you want to do business internationally, you need a cart that supports international addresses! Some carts only support US addresses, so if shipping internationally is important to your business, check the carts for international address support. |
| Automated emails | In general, the more touchpoints you have with your customers, the better, so email messages for order confirmation, shipping notification, etc. are usually good. Look for email customization options so you can customize the message and keep the customer experience consistent. |
| Electronic soft goods download | Does your company plan to sell music downloads or software online? If so, you’ll want to for electronic soft goods download features. Pay attention to how they manage the downloads. To prevent un-authorized downloads, it’s usually better if they generate one-time-use URLs that are specific to each customer. |
| Search | Some shoppers are search-oriented, so if you have an online store with many products, you’ll want a site-search to accommodate search-oriented shoppers. Not all search systems are equal, so once you’ve narrowed down the list of carts, try out the search function on a few sites that use each cart to see how well their search function assists you in finding the product. Filters that allow users to search only a certain brand, color or size are also helpful for searching a large e-commerce site. |
| Reporting | What types of reports do you need to monitor the success of your business? Look over the reports offered by the shopping cart. Do they give you actionable, understandable information? |
| Search engine optimization | There are a lot of factors that go into search engine optimization (SEO), but search is so critical for online businesses. Check what the search engines do to help with your online store’s SEO. |
| PCI compliance | Payment Cart Industry (PCI) compliance is not optional–it’s mandatory if you’re accepting credit cards. (If you’re not accepting credit cards, you should seriously consider it! Over 90% of internet shoppers pay by credit card.) Check the cart’s compliance–it better be compliant or you’re putting your merchant account at risk. |
| Web site analytics | If the cart doesn’t offer integrated web analytics, it should at least support Google Analytics so you can tell what people are doing on your web site. Web analytics are critical for determining the effectiveness of your web site. |
| A/B testing | Another tool that can help you optimize your web design is A/B testing, where you can test two (or more) versions of a page and see which performs better in terms of conversions. |
| Payment options | What payment options does the shopping cart offer? Does it support everything your gateway offers? Does it allow recurring payments? |
Is it compatible with your payment gateway–and flexible?
Some carts will force you into using a particular payment processor, others will allow you to choose whoever you want. It’s important to choose a cart that allows you to use the payment processor of your choice, and allows you to switch if for some reason you become unhappy with your processor. (Sometimes you can get this flexibility in your gateway, which simplifies things, as long as the shopping cart you want to use is compatible with your gateway.)
Whichever shopping cart solution you choose, get a reliable gateway payment solution for processing your payments, such as the Intellivative Payments API. Apply now for a free, no-obligation quote!
