With more than a hundred e-commerce shopping carts to choose from, selecting one is really a matter of preference with careful product evaluation. But what makes one provider stand out from the rest? See the answer below.

Features

Different shopping cart providers offer similar and unique features that are useful to the consumers and beneficial for you as a merchant. While choosing which features to have may depend on the size of your business, a good shopping cart provider offer a wide range of feature options for different business needs.

Integrated Online Marketing and Promotional Tools

With a right shopping cart, you can increase traffic and increase sales virtually over night. How? Shopping carts affect the costumer’s response to your website. The more useful tools it has, the more it can attract new costumers and persuade existing costumers to buy your products. Through integrated marketing and promotional tools like catalog and product comparison, your costumers are able to make easy and wise decision on which products to buy.

Promos, sale, discounts, free shipping and coupons are powerful marketing strategies that can attract more costumers. Shopping carts offer these features.

Product review is another powerful feature that can increase sales. In a study conducted by CompUSA and iPerceptions, 63% of costumers are more likely to buy for the sites with product ratings and reviews.

User-friendly Interface/Ease of Use

Costumers are very impatient when it comes to purchasing products and services online. The last thing your costumers want to you is figure out how to navigate your shopping cart. A user-friendly website is important to keep potential costumers browsing. A user-friendly shopping cart is crucial if you want to keep your costumers stay and complete the transactions.

Payment Options

Different online costumers prefer to use certain types of payment. While most would like credit cards, many are still hesitant to enter personal information online and choose other alternative modes of payment like Paypal, checks and money orders. A good shopping cart service should cover all these.

Hacker-Safe Ordering Page

Earning your costumers’ confidence is important in any business. That is why you have to make sure that your costumers are properly protected when they enter their credit card information to your website. Wise costumers often look for SSL certificate seal on a merchant’s website. This seal is a guarantee that the site is hacker safe. Make sure that you have one.

Full Order Management System

A good shopping cart guides costumers throughout the process of purchasing, checking out, payment and shipping. These services can be provided fully by a hosting company or are linked from different services. Payments can be through major credit cards, PayPal, money orders and checks. Shipping can be linked to major shipping carriers like UPS, DHL and FedEx.

Costumer Service/Support

One of the best ways to gauge if a particular e-commerce shopping cart provider has a good costumer service is by sending questions though their email address. How fast did they reply? Did you get a template reply? In business, time is money; and personal touch is a plus. Costumer service should reply a personalize message as soon as possible. Another way to test how good the costumer service is is through its technical support. In running an effective e-commerce store, the availability of good documentation is important.

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Setting up an online shop is easy. Marketing the products you sell, while it requires a bit of online skills, can be done. But your job is not finished once you have accomplished these two. You cannot just waiting for traffic and hope that they become potential costumers. You need the right tool that converts traffic in to sales. You need an e-commerce shopping cart. But getting a shopping cart is one thing; maximizing its benefits is another.

While many choose to go online to purchase merchandise, it doesn’t mean that you can get complacent because if they happen to stumble upon your website, they will buy anyway. This is a wrong way of looking at your traffic. You have to please your costumers and please them well. You need to know what they want – not necessarily the things they need to have but the right tools to guide them through the entire online purchasing process. And with tougher competition now, you need to raise the bar and stand out among the rest.

Thus, your online store needs not only to look good, but also to have efficient shopping cart system. Here’s how to maximize your website and shopping cart and convert traffic into buyers:

Use all the tricks in the business. Use large headings and sub-headings to let your costumers know where they are; and breadcrumb navigation to help your costumers know how deep they are on your website.

Use search functions to let costumers find what they are looking for fast and easy, especially if you are holding a large inventory and multi-page site. Place the search function above the fold where costumers can see it.

Give the power to your costumers to narrow down their search options by using search category refinement. Costumers should be able to refine according to size, shape, color etc. Make sure that they can clear this refinement anytime. Utilize sort option that allows your costumer see your product by category.

Let your costumers remove or change items from their cart easily. Help them find product that are related to the items they have chosen. Cross sell!

Place your contact information where costumers can easily see it.

Never allow your costumers to go on a lengthy process of shopping, only to find out that the products they have chosen are out of stock. Show only the products that are on stock or place “out of stock” mark on those what are not in your inventory. Most shopping carts have this feature.

Cart abandonment rates are high simply because many shopping cart services do not allow shopping before registration. What you should do is to let your costumers to add items in their cart before they register for an account. Some vendors have this feature.

Show them every detail of the product they wish to buy including the price, discounts (if there’s any), applicable taxes and added fees. Do not hide any information that the costumers should know.

The key to any online store is usability. Many online shoppers get irritated even on the tiniest hitch on your site. This is the main reason why many abandon their cart even on the last step in purchasing product. Keep your costumers fully satisfied by making everything easy. Use your e-commerce shopping cart properly. Extra efforts may require time but the pay offs are all worth the trouble.

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As more and more people cling toward online shopping, they create demands for better and more efficient e-commerce shopping cart. And since they are the reason why you are doing business, giving them what they want should be your top priority. The following is a list of features that costumers may look for:

Payment options

Credit cards are often a preferred payment methods by most costumers. But those who are hesitant to give their personal information online choose alternative payments like checks, money orders, PayPal and Google Checkout. As an online merchant, always make sure to answer different types of costumers by carrying different types of payment systems.

Product Reviews

According to a CompUSA and iPerceptions study, 63% of costumers are more likely to buy from sites with product ratings and reviews. So no matter how well you promote your products online, if your site has no product review and rating, you cannot maximize your sale potential. That said; choose a shopping cart vendor that provides product rating.

Real-Time Inventory

Nothing is more annoying to costumers than going through a lengthy process of placing orders only to find out that the products they want to buy are out of stock. Real-time inventory assures the costumer that the products they see on their screen are available. Also, real-time inventory feature helps you as a merchant to monitor your stock and replenish if necessary.

Website Security

SSL or Secure Socket Layer data encryption assures costumers that their personal data are kept confidential. SSL certificate seal can be seen on the home page of your website.

Special Offers

Many merchants, especially those who have just stared their businesses online do not know that with a right shopping cart feature (coupon codes, order discounts, gift cards and free shipping), they can actually sell their products well.

Merchant who are looking for new costumers or trying to dispose old stocks can benefit from this feature.

Express Checkout

When costumers are ready to buy, make sure that you handle them as fast and as simple as possible. The lengthy process of purchasing items online can be frustrating and can drive customers away if you keep hold of them during checkout. Eliminate the risk of losing sure sales by using shopping cart express checkout option.

Order Tracking

Your responsibility to your costumers does not end when they checked-out and paid you for the products they have purchased. A good indication that you are a good merchant is the personal touch you provide to every costumer. Order tracking automatically sends order confirmation and shipping information via email. Costumers should be able to monitor where their purchased items are by logging into an account created during registration. Order tracking helps your business and your brand build reputation and costumer confidence.

Search and Browse

Costumers do not stay too long on a website if they cannot find the products they are looking for. Your main goal, therefore, is to give them the right tool that will let them search and browse from your list of products fast.

Costumer satisfaction is always the primary goal in any business. Online shopping is no different. Make sure that your costumers are always pleased by the service you provide through the help of these e-commerce shopping cart features.

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It is always safe to presume that you have heard about the so-called e-commerce, right? The main question is, do you really know what it means and what it covers? Simply put, electronic commerce or plainly e-commerce is the purchasing and selling of goods through the World Wide Web. In these modern times, the traditional way of shopping has evolved into a more convenient and easier method and that is with the help of the Internet. Along with this newfound trend come the very important instruments which are known as the e-commerce shopping carts.

The Role of the Virtual Shopping Carts

From the typical physical stores, many entrepreneurs have shifted into a more modern way of selling their goods. It is none other than venturing into an online business. The virtual shopping carts allow the online merchants to display their products so that the potential customers can take a look, choose, put into the cart, and then send in the cash as a form of payment. Through all of this, there must be an obvious reason as to why vendors have chosen to establish their own online portals. Let us uncover the advantages posed by e-commerce that make up for the reason of the unstoppable transition of the conventional businessmen into online marketers.

Uncovering the Advantages of E-commerce

Nowadays is the best chance to grab as the whole world has gone crazy over online shopping. If you know what to do and in which business to focus on, you will definitely have a taste of success in the end. You don’t have to wait for the time when the customers will find you because with e-commerce and the shopping carts, your goods will always have a better marketing package. The following are the main advantages of doing online trading.

As you know, the World Wide Web is such a vast portal. As a merchant, you will have an immense opportunity to market your products to the public. Compared to owning a physical store which restricts your chances of reaching out to the potential buyers, containing your business in an online setting heightens the probability of the customers finding you.

Another cool reason as to why e-commerce is turning out to be advantageous is that of freeing you from the financial burden of having to pay for the utilities and lease, labor, and shipping. Although you will have to ship the purchased goods but you have more chances to reduce the cost. Take for example the eBooks, manuals, and other informational produce. They require no shipping so that eventually give you more savings! Much more, there is no need to pool laborers and pay them with their wages.

One more important factor is the ease and convenience that online shopping provides for the people. Even when the potential customers are at home or anywhere in the world, they can shop anytime they want.

Other Points to Ponder on

There you have the advantages of e-commerce. With the right amount of effort and skill in maneuvering an online business, your venture will surely end up as a huge success. When it comes to the e-commerce shopping carts to utilize, you can either make use of the already available software or create your own. The latter will however require some technical skills on your part.

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When choosing an e-commerce shopping cart, you need to think both ways: as a merchant and as a costumer. Ask yourself these questions: What are the features you need? How large is your business? Do you have several products and require a closely monitored inventory? Do you sell few products? Do you need simple hosted carts? As a costumer, what kind of cart is good? How do I want to pay for the products I buy? Do I need order tracking? The answers to all these questions matter a lot, so let us discuss them one by one.

Types of shopping carts. Features. Business size.

Let us tackle all these simultaneously since they are interrelated to one another. The types of shopping carts depend on the number of features they offer; the number of features carts offer depends on what type of business they cater; and the type of business these carts cater categorizes the types of shopping carts.

The simplest form of “shopping carts” is not actually a cart but a merchant-generated webpages that contain product description and prices with “Buy now” button. The “Buy now” button transfers the customers to a third party payment provider like PayPal. This type is best for merchants with simple needs and few products but is not suitable for large businesses with several products that require constant monitoring.

If your sell several products that have to be closely monitored, what you need is a shopping cart that is either hosted by a cart provider or hosted by the same server as your website. Most carts work by keeping track of what the costumers select and take them to the checkout page, which is linked to the third party credit card payment provider. This type is often preferred choice by most small- and medium-size merchants as the price is comparatively reasonable with the features it provides.

Fully hosted shopping carts provide everything that the merchant needs: from shopping carts, checkout counter, payment system and even shipping. This product can be integrated with your website and can be customized to adapt at your website’s appearance. If you are handling a wide array of products with complex business rules, this is an ideal choice.

Budget

Since sophistication determines the price of the shopping cart, make sure that you only get the features you really need. Decide on the features that are right for your business. I advice that you make a list of the things you need for a shopping cart and rank it in order of priority. Then, find different shopping cart vendors that offer the features you need. If the price is higher than what you can afford, remove features that are least important.

Costumer Appeal and Ease of Use

A website that looks good may not always matter in terms of sales. But the behavior of the traffic towards a certain feature in your website – in this case a shopping cart – can make or break a sale. You can use the trial and error method but unless you are given a free trial on every shopping cart provider, it may be very costly. The best thing you can do is to review different cart vendors and focus your attention to the ease of use. If you are satisfied, then you can add it to your list of possible items. Do not forget to consider if the vendors are offering popular payment methods such as PayPal and other major credit cards.

Selecting an e-commerce shopping cart is a serious matter; evaluate the products based on the things that are discussed above.

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There always has to be a backbone for every commercial website. That is, the e-commerce shopping carts. What task does it fulfill? Why is it regarded with an utmost importance?

Technically, this kind of shopping cart is utilized throughout the course of online shopping. This virtual cart functions like the ordinary basket or push cart that is used in the supermarket. As it goes, the shopper can take some time surveying the contents of the stalls. After which, he can pick those which he deems are necessary for his provisions. Later on, he proceeds to the counter to pay for the goods. The same thing occurs with the online shopping cart. The customer can click on the products and place them in the cart which they can later on check and finalize. As soon as everything is thought to be needed, he will hand in the payment. For the payment scheme, it is necessary that the customer’s details are gathered in accordance to the format that has to be completed.

The Types of Shopping Cart Software

If you want to venture into an online business, you must recognize the significance of shopping carts. Many of the online merchants opt to use the software since it has already been programmed and is generally adopted by most existing Internet shopping portals. In line with this, it is proper for you to be familiar with the two kinds of shopping cart software.

The first type is one which has something to do with the administrative functions. In this kind of software, the web administrator has all his hands in adding, editing, or deleting any service or product from the list. Meaning, if you entail this type of software, you have the control over your site.

The second type is the one which is generally meant to serve the customers. It is designed to help them with their purchases.

The catch is that the e-commerce websites are endowed with a personal shopping cart which bears a license. Meanwhile, as the owner of an online shopping website, you can utilize the software by settling the stipulated payment as derived from the sales.

A Point of Emphasis

Did you get the whole picture? Again, it is necessary for you to know that the software plays a vital role in running your online shopping website. As you set your budget, you have to include the payment that has to be incurred by purchasing or leasing the license of the software.

Another thing that you have to keep in mind is to do your level best so that you will be able to spot the finest quotes for every single component that you have to integrate into your e-commerce project. If only you will do your homework, you will soon find a trustworthy and affordable software provider.

The Software Packaging

Typically, the shopping cart software for e-commerce websites is provided through a package. Such package also comprises the hosting service. Therefore, if there is this kind of agreement, the license for its use has to be paid on a monthly basis. The cart is henceforth reworked every time another user takes over. Going for this scheme is a better alternative since it rids you of all the expenses as compared to purchasing the license itself.

In the long run, the e-commerce shopping carts have lots of worthy elements to offer. If you are yet in the quest of finding the efficient software, you may opt for the free trial services as allowed by the providers.

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If you want to be a successful web entrepreneur, you must learn to attract customers to your website on a regular basis. Design your website in such a way that it compels users to re-visit your site, and keep refreshing it weekly to ensure that each visit by your customers is meaningful and valuable. Outdated and irrelevant content can upset users and give them a reason not to return.

When creating and updating content on your website, remember to keep it simple. Do not overload your web pages with high bandwidth-consuming audio, video and animation features as that can considerably increase the time your web pages take to load. Delay irritates customers and discourages usage of your website. Here are a few effective methods for content creation and update.

Polls and surveys

Internet users look for instant gratification and interaction when they visit a web site. Polls and surveys is an excellent way to fulfill that desire and allow your customers to express their views and opinions. Ask them questions about the latest topics related to your website. For example, a fashion web design can ask customers to rate celebrity outfits on red carpets. To encourage greater participation in surveys, you can offer visitors small rewards like discounts and vouchers.

To include a poll or survey on your website ask your web-hosting provider for easy to use tools. Alternatively, look for a free website service that can generate the HTML code for you. For advanced surveys, hire a survey provider who will take care of setup and reporting at an affordable price. Keep your polls and surveys short for the greatest impact.

Blogs

Use blogs to connect with your customers on a more personal level, to highlight your expertise and enhance your visibility and credibility. A combination of interactivity, collaboration and community makes them excellent virtual marketing tools. A blog with its many links can be very useful in directing traffic to your website.

RSS (Simple Syndication) Feeds

RSS feeds allow you to instantly receive and publish pieces of text, making them great tools for innovative marketing and content building. Add RSS feed from blogs and news articles to regularly attract customers to your website. You can also use RSS feeds to notify subscribers about updates to the website content. To test RSS feeds download and install an RSS reader or look for an orange button on your favorite sites. Most browsers also have built-in tools for viewing and using RSS feeds.

Customer driven content

Another excellent way of creating and refreshing content is to ask your customers to write it. The excitement of seeing their names on a website will greatly encourage them to contribute content to your site. This also saves money that you would have spent on hiring professional writers.

Daily or Weekly tips

Providing a tip, daily or weekly, is an easy way of refreshing content, attracting customer attention and facilitating repeat visits to your website.

Relevant and fresh content is crucial for the success of your website. Use these website design tools to develop effective content and give your customers a compelling reason to visit your website repeatedly.

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Canadian eCommerce growth was recently flat but still has an attractive upside…

Recent studies found that Canadian retail e-commerce growth was flat year over year (2003-2004). After further examination however, approximately 60% of the 100 largest non-travel sites succeeded in growing their sales over 20%.

Also interesting is the trending of Canadians from buying at non-Canadian sites to domestic sites (63% domestic, 37% foreign). This “domestic shift” clearly benefits the launching of a new eCommerce business in Canada.

The sales opportunity lies with the “early adopters”, individuals primarily the 18-34 year old age range. This segment is more technologically savvy and more likely to purchase online. In a 2003 to 2004 sampling comparison, this segment’s overall e-commerce spending increased 44%. The 35 to 54 age group increased only 5% and 55+ increased 18% (includes online travel).

Overall Internet Adoption rates still trail the U.S. and come in at approximately 52%. However, with the development of new Internet infrastructures and the maturation of Canadian ISP’s, this number will likely rise in the next 3-5 years. The following quote from the Canadian government re-enforces this theme.

“To reach our new national goal (relating to e-commerce) Canadians will need to develop strategies that build an intelligent infrastructure to serve as the backbone of the e-economy- by encouraging investment, strengthening research, enhancing commercialization and ensuring that all Canadians have access to this infrastructure and know how to use it.” (September, 2004)

Shifting demographics & lack of online competition equal a substantial opportunity…

Forrester Research reports that 48% of Canadian web shoppers are now female compared to 39% in 2003. 74% of web buyers are married and likely are home shoppers, compared to 68% in 2003.

With the gender gap closing, online home retailers have a great opportunity to target their core customer segment: the 30-40yr old female who owns or maintains a residence.

Within this sector, it is rare for U.S. based retailers to have online Canadian stores. Many brands will ship to Canada, for very high costs (customs duty & shipping) but this likely leads to an unpleasant experience for the Canadian consumer. These high costs, compiled with a lack of domestic Canadian retailers providing an e-commerce offering, are driving the stagnant growth of the online sales channel.

By being a “first-mover” in establishing a presence in the online marketplace within Canada, online retailers will facilitate sales from consumers that want to get products shipped from their native homeland after being paid for in Canadian currency.

Similar to the U.S., consumers are exhibiting multi-channel tendencies and embracing the emergence of broadband connectivity…

Canada is the only country in the world in which broadband overtook dial-up access in 2003. Currently 48% of all Canadian consumers have broadband access and they are 67% more likely to have high speed web-access than American consumers.

This impressive penetration may prove to be a strong driver for online circulars and new online merchandising tactics, as product differentiation are established outside of price.

Canadian shoppers are also parallel to U.S. consumers in their multi-channel behavior. 58% of Canadian shoppers have researched a product online and purchased offline, spending an average of $440. An online Canadian strategy must focus on integrating the online and physical store with store locator functionality and other tools to promote cross-channel behavior.

In conclusion, multi-national retailers should closely examine the Canadian eCommerce opportunity. Attractive consumer demographics, an established broadband infrastructure, and a shift in overall shopping tendencies make the Canada a high-growth and un-saturated area for multi-channel retail.

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It’s not difficult to explain how e commerce works. E commerce is simply the exchange of goods and/or services electronically. When you buy something from eBay, Amazon.com or any online store, you’ve participated in e commerce. If you’ve ever downloaded music from a site like Napster or iTunes, that’s e commerce, too. First, lets discuss the different types of e commerce to help you understand it better.

B2B: B2B or business-to-business e commerce is the oldest form of e commerce. Back in the 1960s, banks and other businesses began sharing and transferring files and information electronically. It was still limited, because there was not one standard way of conducting this business, so not all businesses could successfully transfer with each other. Once a reliable standard was set up in the 80s, B2B e commerce really took off, because they all used the same method, and could exchange files much more easily.

C2C: Consumer-to-consumer, or C2C e commerce is popular today. If you’ve ever purchased something online from another person, rather than a business, either through an ad posting on a electronic bulletin board or an online auction, you’ve participated in consumer-to-consumer e commerce. By far, the most popular from of consumer-to-consumer e commerce is in the form of online auctions, through the mammoth eBay auction site, where anyone can put goods online for sale to the highest bidder.

P2P: P2P or peer-to-peer e commerce started with Napster, where users shared files for free. Now there are several similar websites and file-sharing programs and systems online.

B2C: We can’t explain how e commerce works without mentioning the huge amount of e commerce that takes places from business-to-consumer. When anyone purchases anything, whether it’s a download of something electronic or any item that must be shipped to the buyer, at an online store or website, that’s e commerce.

So to explain how e commerce works, it’s necessary to keep these things in mind. E commerce involves one or more of the following:

the exchange of information online
the exchange of money online
the exchange of goods or services online

To explain how e commerce works in your favor, the concepts are just as simple. If you want to purchase a book, for instance, you can find several online bookstores and compare the prices of that book to find the lowest one. You can check the cost of shipping the book, and their shipping times, and determine which store can get it to you the quickest, for the lowest price. All without having to stand in line, fight crowds, or spend any money for transportation or gas. So when you consider that you can comparison shop this way for small items and large alike, it’s easy to see the advantages e commerce offers you.

Though we can explain how e commerce works in your favor, once you’ve purchased an item this way, it’s easy to see the advantages yourself.

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If you have a product oriented business, the Internet offers a unique ability to reach a broad audience. With new technology, it is easy to build your own e-commerce store.

E-commerce Store

Today’s world is an E-commerce (electronic commerce or e-com) world. E-commerce, clearly termed as web commerce, basically means selling of merchandise or services over the Internet with electronic transactions and also through a secure network. E-com is not merely buying and selling or providing services but it is also a method of advertising and marketing through an electronic system as well. E-com also means facilitating the progress of commercial transactions electronically. Right now e-com is a well-established technology in all major countries. In most cases Internet marketing requires you to have your own E-commerce store for maximum return.

Requirements of an E-commerce Store

Building an e-commerce store is not an easy job. Software is required that can manage customers as well as their needs. E-commerce software should be able to handle inventory, shipping and handling costs, taxes, dispatching and payment processing of client’s orders. You may encounter many options when setting out to build an e commerce store. Before choosing any of them it is important to have a clear view of your requirements. Technical requirements might include coupons, tracking systems, customer login options or any number of other things. Other requirements include what type of impression you want to provide to your valuable clients.

Study the Sales and Marketing Cycle to Determine Your Needs

Before you opt for any of solutions for building e commerce store, study the basic model of e commerce that represents the entire sales and marketing cycle. The first building block of this cycle is audience in which you define what type of customers you will target. Second are commodities, in which you characterize the types of products you will put on the market. Third is customer support where you will answer the questions and offer solutions to clients’ or potential clients’ problems. Next is advertising, marketing and endorsement where a business promotes the products or services. Then there is transaction processing, the most important technical phase of the cycle, which will handle orders, taxes, payment processing and order delivery.

Transactions may be automatic or manual. In manual processing you have to enter credit card information manually through an offline terminal. In the case of automatic processing a client’s order form will be setup with a program that processes and charges the credit card for you. After that there are post-deal services regarding how you provide solutions and services after the sale. Last but not least is brand name with which you will create a distinctive business image to correspond with customers. Nobody is going to pay attention to your online store unless something catches their eye.

Research your Options

Once you have defined your needs, you can then begin researching your options. There are two basic paths you may follow when building an e-commerce store – either buy ready made software or build a custom system with components and parts according to your requirements and budgets.

Flexibility

Some business firms offer gifts and well placed impulse products for better marketing approaches. This requires an e-com solution to be flexible enough to allow various give-aways, coupons and promotions. Also, if your product comes in a variety of models or styles, with different options and different prices then you must communicate these factors and portray them distinctively in your online store. A true businessperson will certainly follow the patterns of his or her usual clients as well as those who directly visit the site. Web statistic tracking tools can be a great help to this end.

Ease of Use

Some e commerce stores are very easy to use and require only a few minutes to learn while others are more complex with so many features that they can be overwhelming. Being able to see a demonstration of software before buying it is a great help to determining ease of use.

Scalability

Being able to grow with your company is very important. If you choose a very simple solution now, then require a more robust solution down the road, you will lose time converting your store. If the URL structure of your store is not consistent, you can also lose search engine rankings by changing e commerce solutions. Therefore, it is important to choose an e commerce solution that can grow with you. For example, some stores owners may not want coupons in the beginning but then down the road decide it is a good idea. Some stores may also have limits on number of products, inventory control and tracking that down the road will be very important.

Security

Of utmost importance to online stores is transaction security. The priority for any business firm should be secure transactions. Thanks to Netscape for introducing SSL (secure socket layer), data can be protected by online store owners. SSL is an encryption technology that encrypts a message and the receiver decrypts it by using RSA security. To enable SSL on your web server you need a digital ID (a form of identification that will recognize you). Many web hosts provide SSL installation for anywhere from a few bucks to a few hundred bucks per year.

Overall, in building your own e commerce store, four things are essential – flexibility, ease of use, security and scalability. Research your options before you make a final choice, and whenever possible, get a free trial of your solution before you buy.

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