If you have opted to use a shopping cart, you will find that there are several hundred to choose from. Which cart you ultimately choose will depend on the size of your business, your sales and marketing methods, and the degree of programming and design expertise possessed by you or your staff.
Before examining your choices, let's discuss exactly what a shopping cart is and what one does.
What Is A Shopping Cart?
A shopping cart normally consists of three major components:
The first component is a catalog area where visitors may view your products. The catalog is often divided into categories.
The second component is a check-out area, where visitors provide you with payment and shipping information for the products they wish to purchase.
The third area is an Administrator area where you manage the shopping cart.
When a visitor wishes to purchase a product from your catalog, they add that product to their "cart" by clicking on a button or link next to that product.
This adds the product to a "cart" - which is actually just a running list of products the visitor wants to purchase.
The "cart" concept exists to help the visitor visualize a shopping experience they would be familiar with in the real world.
Once the visitor has selected all of the products they wish to purchase - by adding them to the cart - they click on a "Check Out" button or link, and are taken to the checkout area.
In the checkout area, the visitor selects his shipping method, and provides a shipping address and payment information.
Once the visitor has entered all of the required information, and finishes the checkout process, an order is generated.
Some carts will email the order to the cart administrator, others make them available for viewing in the Administrators Area.
Hosted Shopping Carts vs. Installable Shopping Carts
There are, literally, hundreds of shopping carts to choose from.
All carts, however, fall into two basic categories:
Hosted shopping carts and installable shopping carts.
Hosted shopping carts (or turnkey carts) are already installed on a server. You pay a monthly fee and are provided with a username and password to log into the administrators area.
Inside of the admin area, you may configure the look and feel of the cart, add products to your catalog, specify shipping options and configure your payment options.
The advantages of a hosted shopping cart are ease of setup, and the time savings in setting up your cart. Hosted shopping carts will, often, allow you to use pre-designed templates - which they provide - for your storefront.
An installable shopping cart is a piece of software which must be installed on your own website. You must already have a website hosted by a webhosting company in order to use an installable shopping cart.
Some installable carts are very easy to install, while others are quite treacherous. If you lack programming experience, it's best to hire an experienced web developer for this task.
Free Shopping Carts vs. Licensed Shopping Carts
If you are using an installable cart, you have yet another choice to make. Will you purchase a licensed cart or use a free (open source) shopping cart?
A licensed cart usually has the advantage of having technical support provided by the software vendor. Quality of the support may vary from vendor to vendor, so do your homework!
On the other hand - an open source cart may have a large community of developers who may assist you, as well as a wider variety of add-on components available.
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