Shopping Carts Comparison
Making a choice on your ecommerce software solution to power your ecommerce store can be pretty difficult. There are literally thousands of providers, each seemingly claiming the same features and benefits, your carts shopping discovery can get frustrating and time-wasting.
So, does it mean you should just take any old shopping cart software and call it a day?
If you want to fail, then yes!
Your entire ecommerce business will be powered by your chosen shopping carts software, selecting an inappropriate solution can cause you further headaches in the future. Saying that, you just need to watch out for a few important things when evaluating your next shopping cart.
1) Usability
You definitely don’t want to waste too much time figuring out how to make things work, make sure you choose one that is easy to use. Almost all shopping carts have point and click interfaces and what may seem easy to someone else may not be simple to you. So, this is very much a personal choice. Test the top rated shopping cart providers and choose one that makes the most sense and easiest to use for you.
2) Hosting Speed, Reliability & Scalability
When shopping online, people move at internet speed. So, it’s critical that your store responds quickly and is up and running properly all the time. Make sure you choose a company that gives you at least 99.9% uptime guarantee. That translates to a maximum of 43 minutes total downtime per month. Make sure you ask your chosen provider how sustain your store’s growth when it becomes even more successful and busy. Do they have a dedicated server upgrade plan? What about if your store is too busy even for one dedicated server? How can they help you?
3) Creates Search Engine Friendly Pages
Everyone wants free targeted visitors from the search engines. So, you absolutely have to make sure the shopping cart you choose creates search engine friendly pages that use static URLs. Don’t use ecommerce solutions that generate dynamic URLs with confusing question marks (?) in the URL of important pages. The top shopping carts software providers normally include tools to help your store pages rank well for the keywords you’re targeting. So, choose those that do include it.
4) Promotion Tools
Although you can probably getting a cheaper ecommerce software and getting the marketing-related stuff separately, the best shopping carts bundle marketing tools to help you get started marketing your store. Since marketing your store is your most critical task after you’ve completed it, any bundled tools will get you started quickly and save you from any large initial investments.
I hope I’ve made your carts shopping experience both easier and clearer with these 4 crucial things to look out for. When all is said and done, choosing your shopping carts software is just the first step to getting your online store started. So, don’t be intimidated and let the different choices confuse you.