Shopping Cart

Getting the right product descriptions on your pages for your target audience is only one of the things that you will need to get right to create a successful online store. When customers visit a store they expect a number of minimum standards to be met before they will consider buying from them as well as for those expectations to be exceeded. Content pages are therefore an important part in providing that level of information to a potential customer so that there's the best possible chance of turning them into a sale. There are quite a number of shopping cart ecommerce solutions floating around in cyberspace. Only 30 or so, paid carts and free carts, are worth mentioning

Finding Top Ecommerce Solutions

There are a number of really good carts out there with loads of useful shopping cart features that make running an online store a wind even if you are doing it alone. The trick is to identify and narrow down a few good ones before you make a final decision. There are lots of comparison sites out there with top 10 lists of popular carts. This could be a good start if your are not familiar with shopping carts. These sites also provide basic information about shopping cart features for each cart. Some of these sites also have a rating system to give you a better idea of the perceived value of particular shopping carts. Another way to find good carts is by Googling them via keywords like 'ecommerce solution' or 'ecommerce shopping cart software'. Make note of the first 10 to 20 results. Have a look at what each solution has to offer and see if they match your needs.

A merchant running a new online store with 100 products would not have the same requirements as an established store selling thousands of products. It is not important to just look at the price but the solution as a whole like. Consider features such as number of products, free live chat software, free templates, bandwidth, disk space, security, customer support, ease of use and the availability of a free trial period.

Testing

The proof is in the pudding so testing shopping cart features is a must before you can some to a decision. Most carts have a free trial period available. Pick the ones that have a 30 day free trial period 7 days is just too short to try out most shopping cart features. Setting up a basic store might only take 15 to twenty minutes for the experienced but testing features take more time. For new bies, this is also a learning process. Use this opportunity to try out the customer support service see if they live up to expectations.

The Final Decision

If you have done your business planning correctly, you should have enough secrete to run your business for at least a year. It usually takes online stores about a year to break even on average. That said, you would probably want to keep to a tight budget. I would suggest going for secure ecommerce solutions that cost around $50 or less per month so you would not have to spend more than $600 a year on it.