Shopping cart software 101

These are examples of complementary products also called order bumps. Another example — if your customer is looking for a vacuum cleaner, you might offer them a few more expensive options in the shopping cart to hopefully make a bigger sale. This would be an upsell. Another important thing to talk about is the difference between a shopping cart solution and ecommerce software. If you are considering buying a shopping cart application, then you are probably also considering buying an ecommerce solution.

Well, which one do you need to buy? Maybe both? Ecommerce software is a solution that allows you to set up an entire online store from scratch, including your product catalog, product descriptions, and shopping cart functionality. With an ecommerce solution, you can also manage your inventory, add or remove products, create the layout for your product pages, and do anything else necessary to build an online store.

Based on the above, here is what you may be wondering about — if ecommerce software can do everything including shopping carts , why would you even want to purchase a shopping cart separately? Well, here are some cases when you would want to opt for a standalone shopping cart solution:. You may have to do a lot of research to determine whether you need a shopping cart solution or ecommerce software. But no matter what, your choice will ultimately come down to what you need right now and what available options allow.

To close off this section, a pro tip — try to use as few pieces of software as you can. If possible, buy only an ecommerce solution or a shopping cart Like Shopify — if you get both, you may have to deal with the headache of software integration.

Ecommerce software typically has some native integrations with third-party shopping carts, so you should come across few to no problems when pairing them. However, incompatibilities are still possible, especially if the software gets updated frequently. Another reason to buy only one solution is that you will have to manage only one database. Unless your software allows you to import your own databases, you will be forced to use whatever database storage solution each software provider uses.

Managing one database is a big challenge enough — managing two is double the headache. Finally, you will just save money with one piece of software. These costs include shipping, taxes, or whatever other costs may be incurred in addition to the price of the product. This is very important because unexpected costs that show up only in the shopping cart are among the top reasons for shopping cart abandonment.

Display all the shipping or tax cost information right on the product page. Many people use shopping carts as a wish list of sorts — they may fill their carts with items and come back to them weeks or months later. Well, once people do come back, they should be reminded that they have items in their shopping carts. Display the order total detailing all costs as well. This will help people quickly review their cart before purchasing. Internet users have a lot of accounts on various websites and platforms these days, and adding one more to that already huge list is a big thing to ask.

Some shopping cart solutions may have such functionality built-in, but you may use third-party plugins as well. Optimize your website as well to make sure that there are no annoying performance hiccups. After payment, offer people to sign up as well again to simplify their future purchasing process.

Strongly consider investing in security badges as well like McAfee Secure or Better Business Bureau Accreditation Seal — these increase trust and make visitors feel safer on your website. Integrate as many secure gateways as you can — this will allow people to avoid having to sign up for new payment services, as well as will ensure that people in other countries have payment options. Repeating our example from earlier, if a visitor has a game console in their cart, then show a compatible videogame, headset, or gamepad.

But if there are many products on your website, you will have to resort to recommendation algorithms. Hopefully, after reading our post, you know exactly which shopping cart solution would be perfect for you!

Remember to check the features of the desired shopping cart application and ideally purchase a solution that provides exactly what you need — no more and no less. I would recommend here Shopify especially if you do dropshipping. Discuss available options with your team too — they might provide you with more useful insight into the challenges and benefits of each available solution.

Please Share If you Like it : 40 Shares. Table of Contents. Best Shopping Cart Software Pros: Unlimited pages, products, and templates for all plans.

Affiliate management functionality starting from the Scale plan. Cons: Pretty pricey. The Launch plan has limited functionality.

Will get pretty expensive once the lifetime access offer expires. No free trials — only a day money-back guarantee. Pricing Shift4shop offers 4 plans:. All in all, Shift4Shop starts very inexpensively, even if you can't use the free plan. The features are largely similar across all plans. A whopping 4 plans to choose from. Cons: No free trials — only a day money-back guarantee.

Free plan available to US merchants only. Pricing Ecwid offers 4 pricing plans:. So Ecwid is a good fit for sellers from these countries as well. Pros: Pretty cheap. The free plan is good for starters. Your own shopping app for visitors in the annual Unlimited plan. Supports a huge number of payment gateways.

Cons: Very limited functionality in the free plan. Unlike many other solutions, imposes limits on the number of products in most plans. Pricing WooCommerce is an open-source shopping cart solution and is completely free. The latter two are perhaps the most interesting. There even is the Affirm add-on that allows you to accept credit-based payments!

Pros: Allows you to design a store from scratch. Excellent for new businesses. Built specifically for WordPress. Completely free and open-source. Hundreds of official extensions for improved functionality. Huge number of payment gateways including region-specific ones.

Cons: If you need to purchase add-ons, you may have to spend a lot of money on setup. Pricing Shopify offers 3 main plans:.

Pros: Ecommerce website or blog creation features. The features from plan to plan are largely similar. Offers integrated POS services for physical stores. Has payment gateways for pretty much any country in the world. Cons: The price gap between the plans is pretty large. Relatively weak reporting functionality in low-tier plans.

Rather hefty transaction fees. Pricing Like WooCommerce, Magento is a fully open-source and free shopping cart software.

Pros: Just like WooCommerce, but for larger businesses. Open-source and free. Thousands of free and paid add-ons. A huge number of payment gateways. Cons : More difficult to set up than hosted solutions. Requires more technical knowledge than WooCommerce. Pricing AbanteCart is open-source and completely free. Very functional even without extensions. Expandable functionality via extensions. Paid extensions are rather cheap.

Cons: Not as polished as other open-source platforms. Limited functionality compared to WooCommerce. More difficult setup than in hosted software. Pricing PrestaShop is yet another piece of open-source, completely free software. All-in-one ecommerce solution. Thousands of extensions available. Cons: Unlike WooCommerce, needs to be self-hosted. Here are the available plans:. In contrast, the Free Edition comes with free core upgrades. Only the Ultimate plan has support included in the price.

As X-Cart claims, this piece of software easily handles k monthly visitors! Pros : All-in-one ecommerce software. PrestaShop is open-source software that can be downloaded for free and used to manage an online store. Modules and add-ons are frequently expensive. While installing PrestaShop is free and the setup fees are as low as they can be, there are certain things to consider, such as site hosting and purchasing and maintaining a domain name.

PrestaShop comes with built-in eCommerce features that allow you to build product listings that contain digital files, establish categories and subcategories for your products, track inventory, establish a one-page checkout, compute taxes, offer coupons and discounts, use SEO tools, and much more.

No way! Although hosting is not included, you can sign up with one of PrestaShop's hosting partners. You won't get much design aid, either, but the open-source community is always prepared to provide a hand. You can also hire a professional designer for a fair fee. PrestaShop has a robust and user-friendly product creation and administration system.

It begins with a module that allows users to rapidly create items, configure features, and set values. To increase sales and manage the business, you might create product groupings. The software also has a section for personalized goods, where customers may upload files for things like t-shirt designs or other similar items. While the core PrestaShop installation does not contain a blog, the Addon Marketplace has a number of add-ons that will add one to your site. You can discover something that will display your posts in your store if you already have a blog for example, if you currently have a WordPress site.

If you don't, you can discover something that will give your site full blogging capabilities. Ecwid makes use of URLs that are optimized for search engines.

Search engines will have no trouble indexing your store's content as a result of this adjustment. Ecwid generates URLs for product pages based on the title of the product.

When you alter a product's title, a new URL is established. The old one will continue to function, but it will not be forwarded to the new one, resulting in duplicate pages.

Ecwid makes it simple to create a multilingual site by allowing you to display translations if desired. Based on the visitor's browser language, it provides localized stores for 53 languages. Ecwid automatically translates shop labels e. Ecwid has three premium plans and one free option. If you only sell a few things, the Free plan is ideal. You have access to all payment channels and delivery firms, and you may add up to goods. You can also enable multilingual sites, send abandoned cart emails and other email marketing campaigns, and contact customer service by phone.

Ecwid's product pages are easy to integrate into practically any website because to their clean and straightforward design. Layout customization is also straightforward because you aren't confronted with a plethora of alternatives. Color Adaptive Mode is an intriguing option that uses your website's styles to automatically try to determine the perfect colors for your store. You also get the benefit of being able to customize the CSS to make your own theme.

Shift4Shop is an easy-to-use e-commerce platform that is free for US-based business owners or moderately cheap for store owners outside the US. The e-commerce themes from Shift4Shop aren't the most flashy, but they might be useful for selling a variety of products.

Shift4Shop is easily one of the top e-commerce platforms of , based on its features and solid foundation. You can meet your clients wherever they buy with a Shift4Shop online store. Whether it's selling on Facebook, using a shopping feed like Shopzilla, dropshipping with AliExpress or Doba, or integrating with Amazon or eBay, Shift4Shop has you covered. Online merchants that join up for the platform's free End-to-End plan will have access to all of the features that made the original 3dcart so popular, plus more.

They won't have to pay any monthly fees for the pleasure of building and managing their stores on the platform. That means they'll be able to add an unlimited number of items and staff accounts, with no bandwidth restrictions or revenue ceilings. There are over free themes available, all of them are built on a framework that provides responsive design, efficient code, and fast website loading.

You'll get one staff account, no transaction fees, and an unlimited number of product listings with this package. It includes five employee accounts. It includes all of the features found in the Basic plan, as well as a few extras. It includes 10 staff accounts. It comes with everything in the Plus plan, plus a few extras. It has all of the features of the Plus plan plus a few additional. So a wise approach to choosing the best possible shopping cart software January for your company is to try out a bunch of free trial plans as specified in the written context.

Experience their working and compatibility and then take the decision. This lets you test the list of important elements of the software before you decide if it fits your company requirements and before you invest any money in it. Let us know in the comment section about your personal reviews and if any queries. Andy Thompson has been a freelance writer for a long while. She is a senior SEO and content marketing analyst at Digiexe , a digital marketing marketing agency specializing in content and data-driven SEO.

She likes sharing her knowledge in a wide range of domains ranging from ecommerce, startups, social media marketing, make money online, affiliate marketing to human capital management, and much more. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Most Popular. Shopify Plus. Visit Site Now. Most Feature-rich Platform. Search Engine Friendly Platform. Check Out Ecwid Now. Can I dropship with Shopify? It recovers abandoned carts automatically, and supplies you with powerful marketing features, easy to use reports, and run your own payment gateway.

Volusion : Adopts the role of a personal eCommerce assistant for solo and freelance entrepreneurs, and helps them build attractive eCommerce websites. The use of shopping cart software is not without issues, mainly around these common problems. However, with proper caution it is easy to resolve the issues, which are easily outweighed by the benefits.

What lies ahead for shopping cart software? We can think of three scenarios in the next few years. With 5 years of experience in digital marketing and retail strategy under his belt, Shaun Baker is the resident eCommerce expert at FinancesOnline. His highly opinionated pieces on the ebbs and flows of eCommerce as an industry remain both a dynamic resource of talking points and entertainment in itself.

Top Shopping Cart Software of FinancesOnline is available for free for all business professionals interested in an efficient way to find top-notch SaaS solutions. We are able to keep our service free of charge thanks to cooperation with some of the vendors, who are willing to pay us for traffic and sales opportunities provided by our website. What Is Shopping Cart Software? Share 18 Tweet 2 Share 2 22 shares. By Shaun Baker With 5 years of experience in digital marketing and retail strategy under his belt, Shaun Baker is the resident eCommerce expert at FinancesOnline.

Another important thing to consider is the type of shopping cart software that would best suit your business needs. Industry experts narrowed down the different types of shopping cart software into two—hosted and licensed shopping carts. Both have their fair share of advantages and disadvantages. In recent years, however, hosted shopping carts are getting way ahead of the competition. The following is a detailed comparison of the two:. This type of shopping cart is usually an open-source platform, allowing you to customize its features with greater flexibility and add third-party applications as necessary.

While it offers rich functionalities, it requires more technical expertise and can be more expensive. Most licensed shopping cart tools usually offer enterprise-level features. A hosted shopping cart software is the choice of most online merchants for several reasons. First, it is usually more affordable and easy to use. BigCommerce allows you to showcase your products in any web design and layout that match your brand. A shopping cart software acts pretty much like a physical grocery cart.

It lets you add as many items to your cart until you decide to proceed to checkout. However, a shopping cart software serves more functions than its physical counterpart. The following is a list of key features you must consider when looking for this type of software. Most shopping cart platforms have store builder tools that allow you to create your own ecommerce website. They provide design and customization tools that you can use to personalize your website. By using interactive and strategic layouts, you can engage with your customers and have higher conversion rates.

The shopping cart icon found in online stores is one of the most important features your customers can use. With it, they can simply select the items they want and add them to their cart. At a later time, they can preview the preselected items, add quantities, select variations, or remove the ones they will not purchase.