eCommerce Shopping Cart Comparison Chart

There is no better time to start online shop than now, whether you are thinking of starting an online shop from scratch,adding shopping cart facility to an existing website or just researching available ecommerce solutions.
The economic climate is quite gloomy for high street retailers but online traders large and small continue to see significant rise in sale, its time to take a serious look at ecommerce if you have not already done so.
The table below brings you brief information on some of the well know shopping basket software on the market today.

	Virtuemart	CubeCart	osCommerce	Zen Cart
Details	Free open-source shopping cart. It works as a stand alone but its at it own when combined with Joomla.	Free and paid options, robust and tested.	One of the most popular if not the most popular free shopping cart	A fork of osCommerce project.It has some features it parent does not like downloadable goods.
Advantages	Quite simple to install, may need to install Joomla to get the full benefit of some functions	Cube Cart is easy to install, support is said to be efficient.	- Easy to install, some hosting company bundle it with their control panel software.	Support is easy to access, quite nifty.
Disadvantages	* May have to trawl the web to find support. Prone to Joomla’s shortcomings.	Product review module still in development.	Does not support downloadable good, support can be difficult to access.	Can be made to be more user friendly. Said to be resource intensive.
Use it for:	A basic online shop.	Small shop, supports unlimited products.	Robust and reliable, has been around for some time.	Small online store.

There are many other shopping cart software apart from the above, perhaps in due course reviews of other shopping cart will be posted. One particular shopping cart to be mentioned at this juncture is Boss Cart, it is one of the fastest growing ecommerce shopping cart software , it support unlinited products for merchants that sell products. For online traders who sell items such as MP3, PDF files and other digital gooes, there is a module that caters for this too.

What You Should Know before Choosing Your Ecommerce Shopping Cart

As people begin to do more of their shopping online, hundreds of new ecommerce sites are popping up every day.  For this reason, a well organized and visually appealing website is vital to the success of your ecommerce business.  If you are only selling a handful of items, then accomplishing this task is fairly simple.  However, when you launch a full blown ecommerce site with hundreds or even thousands of items, a premium shopping cart service is essential to your business’ success.

Frankly, considering adding shopping cart functionality to your site when you are only offering just a handful of items might be worth consideration.   You always want to plan your business so that it is easily scalable.  In this way, you are planning for your business’ growth and expansion and will experience none of the headaches of a shortsighted business plan.

When you are searching for just the right shopping cart solution, it is easy to become confused or get sidetracked.  It may be difficult to figure out exactly what features you need.  Whatever shopping cart solution you ultimately choose, you need to be certain that you select software that is customizable to your website and that offers your customers a seamless shopping experience.

With most ecommerce business owners, one of the first considerations when deciding upon a shopping cart solution is price.  While price certainly is important, your end decision should not be based solely upon this single selling point.  It is important to find that healthy balance between affordability and the robust cart features you require.

One of the top ecommerce shopping cart solutions on the market today that may be worth considering is the Boss Cart Premium shopping cart software.  It definitely maintains that all important balance between being affordable and also offering the features you need to ensure that your ecommerce site runs smoothly.

One of the best features about this particular software is it makes it extremely simple even for those with little to no site design experience to set up the software and have it running in no time with its built in catalogue manager.  With the BossCart premium software, you can easily add and manage well over 10,000 products.

With any ecommerce shopping cart software you choose, you want to also make sure that you will have the support and guidance you need to get it properly set up and running.  Many companies will tell you that they provide support, but be careful to select a company that offers comprehensive support for their shopping cart product.

Being able to speak with someone by phone is ideal, but at the least, they should offer extensive email support.  In the event that you cannot get the software set up on your own, the company should be willing to help you install it on your server.  BossCart Premium shopping cart software extends all of these features at no extra charge to its customers.

Also, to help ensure that you are making the right decision, check out online reviews of the ecommerce shopping cart solution you are considering.  Look for positive comments about reliability and customer support.

Another thing that you should check out before making your final decision is whether the company offers any type of guarantee for their shopping cart software.  There is nothing worse than spending a hefty sum only to realize that your satisfaction is not guaranteed.  If the shopping cart software you purchase does not meet your expectations, a guarantee allows you to take comfort in knowing that you have not lost your initial investment.

Though there will be many more considerations when choosing your ecommerce shopping cart, these are some of the most important.  Before selecting any shopping cart product, make sure that you have done an appropriate amount of research beforehand.  In this way, you can be certain that the ecommerce shopping cart you ultimately choose will be the right one for your business.

Online Shopping Spend in decline

The amount of money spent online in the US is down, just like high street retailers are felling the pinch of the credit crunch according to US Internet statistics firm, ComScore. Spending online has grow steadily over the last eight years since ComScore began measuring online sales, November 2008, shoppers spent £5.3 Billion, that is 4% less than what shoppers spent online same time last year. ComScore forecasted for the rest of the Christmas sale period is not encouraging either, it sees a flat or even negative growth. Last year, US online retailers enjoyed a 19% rise in sales.

ComScore forecast does not necessarily mean the same fate for UK and European retailers. Manager of Online golf equipment retailer Planet Golf UK, Stuart Tree said sales are up by about 11% in November when compared with November 2007, BBC quoted Bruce Fair, managing director of Kelkoo “We dispute the notion that online shopping in a downturn, in the UK and Europe at least, as there is much evidence that shows its is replacing the high street as a primary shopping location,” .

A few months ago, the forecast that UK ecommerce will grow by at least 15%.

More information about eCommerce and online trading

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Ten essential features in a shopping cart software

As an online retailer you need to have a great software shopping environment for your customers to use. Shopping cart software packages come in all shapes and sizes and it is important that you find out which features are essential for your business before you make a purchase. You may not need all of the features that are out there, but how do you decide what bits and pieces are essential for you. This can be hard sometimes, here is a listing of some of the 10 most essential features of a good shopping cart software solution, things that no online merchant should be without.

1. A good shopping cart application should provide a fantastic user experience. Shoppers at your site should be able to show without the need to register as a site user first, this requirement has been know to make potential shoppers abandon shopping at ecommerce sites.

2. You need a package that can calculate the applicable shipping and tax charges for a location and make them known to the buyer as soon as possible in the transaction process.

3. You also need a customisable and flexible relationship between your cart and the rest of your web site. A lot of online shoppers get fed up with shopping carts that do not interact properly with a merchant’s main browsing pages. A ‘return to’ shopping cart that continually updates itself is essential for a streamlined business.

4. An automatic email confirmation feature is the third essential that I will list, as this gives a buyer a sense of confidence and automates the receipt sending procedure.

5. The fourth essential is that the software must use a respected anti fraud solution to help reduce fraudulent transactions.

6. Use third party validators such as ScanAlert or Verisign to keep your safety in check and increase your credibility amongst your customer base.

7. The sixth essential feature in a shopping cart application is the ability for a customer to control and modify the shipping information of their purchase. Studies have shown that a great many transactions are abandoned because a customer is unable to find or modify the delivery information.

8. The seventh feature I will mention is to have software with the ability to use discount codes and voucher codes in the checkout process. These are an increasing promotional tool for online business and even if you are not using them now, you may be in the future.

9. The eighth feature I am listing is to have a cart which a customer can print out or email in order to keep a copy of the transaction. The last two features I will mention may seem obvious but many free and open source shopping carts do not have them included.

10. A shopping cart must include credit card processing, preferably in real time, and also its own integrated payment gateway. Many cheap and free solutions do not offer this and instead use services like Paypal and Google for their gateway, this makes you reliant on other organisations and is much less flexible for you in the long run.

You can find out more about shopping cart and ecommerce at Boss Cart ecommerce software. You can discuss ecommerce related issues at Boss Cart Forums.

eBay transforming to online mall?

Online auction giant, eBay, yesterday announce measures that seem to complete its creeping transformation from a purely auction website to a shopping mall. The new changes will encourage more fixed-price sellers,This new changes is aimed at new customers who are not keen about auctions, just prefer to buy goods at fixed-prices. The move will also encourage larger organisations to have a store on ebay.
At present, ebay said 43% of its global sale revenue  are at fixed prices and growing, revenue from fixed-price item is expected to catch up with revenue from auction eventually.

While openly courting new businesses, especially larger retailer to have and outlet on eBay where goods can be sold at fixed-prices, ebay is also try to keep its army of 170,000 or so sellers happy by cutting list prices of goods but increasing commission on sale, this reverses the recent increases in listing prices which provoked a revolt among many of its sellers.

To assure buyers that eBay is not a den of dodgy Del boy style traders, ebay is increasing its seller protection for people using PayPal from £500 – £30,000.  eBay is undoubtedly the most popular shopping destination for UK Internet bargain hunters, it is claimed that 2 out of 3 online British shopper visits ebay once a month, helping to contribute significantly to ebay £30 billion a year worldwide turnover. It remains to be seen whether its new changes will answer its wall street critics claim that ebay has little room for growth.

You can discuss ebay and other ecommerce related issues at Boss Cart eCommerce forum

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