Having an online shopping store for your business makes it easier for you to keep track of all your transactions, in addition to making it easy for your customers to buy your products. Shopping carts are created to make it easy for visitors to pick out the items they like while browsing through the pages of your site. Using a shopping cart utility will help you make your business prosper by giving your customers the convenience of buying products in the simplest manner.
Shopping carts (also known as shopping baskets) are programmed differently and are available in various forms.
To give you an overview of what shopping carts can do for your business, here is a review of three simple shopping carts that you can use.
1ShoppingCart
As its name suggests, this utility packs in everything you need for your business – with all the functions essential in making your transactions more appropriate for your customers. 1ShoppingCart does all the work for you – from organizing your products to providing marketing tools to email marketing, you can depend on this utility to boost your sales in no time. What’s more is that its inexpensive and that’s an important factor in the beginning. 1Shoppingcart offers a solid cart along with full set of features of an auto-responder. 1Shopping cart is a hosted service so there is no need to install on your server. It is a very good all in one options to run a smaller to medium sized business. 1Shoppingcart is not as complicated to implement so it’s easier to get things rolling.
Check Out 1ShoppingCart here
Shopify
Shopify lets you customize your online store any way you want: giving you the freedom to put your own touch on your shopping systems. The shopify cart is streamlined which makes it easy to implement and easy for your visitor to use. Shopify provides a dedicated team for your business that ensures the security within your online store so you and your customers’ safety is ensured. Shopify is a hosted system so you do not need to install it on your own server. Setting up an online store has never been this easy; with all the tools that this utility has, you should be up and running very quickly.
Check Out Shopify here
Lemonstand
Even a seven-year-old can build his own lemon stand: and this would give you the idea that using Lemonstand to build your business is one easy way to earn more profits. This utility provides you with everything you need to build your own commercial site, and it is best known for its powerful features in an all-in-one package. Lemonstand provides professional support for all your e-commerce needs, and it is both developer- and customer-friendly. Opting for Lemonstand might be your best shot at making e-commerce easier for you and your clients. Lemonstand is a piece of software that you install on your own server so the purchase is a one time fee.
Shopping carts are reliable tools for your business because it is as if you have your online sales clerks ready to serve your clients 24/7. Now, you can be assured that you have a dependable ally when it comes to attending to your customers’ needs. Managing your business this way eliminates the need for you to go through all the troubles of setting up e-commerce for your site; thereby, making your transactions more secure and efficient in the end.
All three of these tools are awesome solutions for smaller organizations. The differences between all three are basically the level of sophistication- and complexity of set up with the hosted version being the most simple to implement. Lemon stand requires installation and management but it is a one time fee rather than a monthly fee like 1Shopping and Shopify. Carefully review the current fee schedule on the hosted services and compare to the one time fee of Lemonstand. If you are not confident that you can handle an installed cart go for a hosted so you can sleep at night. Good luck!
Check Out Lemonstand here
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Twitter: danalingga
April 20, 2011 at 11:51 am
As users, I kind like the shoping cart. It make me trust the store since it seems professional.
Hey Dana,
That’s right. I think that it is a normal thing for most people. Having a professionally done ecommerce website is an important thing. If you can’t do it yourself, might as well get it done through services offered by these sites.
Shopping carts are indeed really very useful for online stores. These are great reviews of the different shooping carts you have here!
Hey Eliza,
Welcome! There are quite a few out there. But by far, the list here is the most useful and helpful for your e-commerce business.
All though your article is a good one, I feel that you did not really dive into the entire eCommerce of any of these companies. For example, price is a major factor when choosing a eCommerce solution. Your picks are some good ones, but the charges of these companies are a bit high. Noted from their websites…
1SCSTORES. They mention hosting at $3.95 but they fail to mention product limits and transaction fees. They charge 2.50% per sale ($10.00) min. meaning if you don’t make a sale, they still charge you. Further they are not $3.95 as the only viable cart is the standard plan cart which starts at $34.00 per month, holds 500 products and they take 1.50% per sale. In other words a new company is already starting in the red.
SHOPIFY. Again another pretty good pick, however one is back to paying some serious monthly fees. In the basic plan, they charge $29.00 per mo. with a max product of 100 and a 2.0% transaction fee per sale. Leaving a company to start in the red.
LEMONSTAND. I can’t even began to dissect this company. One would need a PHD just to figure the cart out. A task at $299.98 I would not want to spend. After downloading it, does one have to find hosting? Not to mention that they offer no support and no web host will even support an outside product. Just seems like way too much work involved with them.
Some of the key eCommerce folks I feel you forgot or should have been included is of course the main players in eCommerce.
VOLUSION. The backend of Volusion is pretty old and needs some serious updates and IMHO tech support needs some training, but for $29.00 a mo. No setup or transaction fees, not a bad deal.
INMOTION. Not a bad location for a new start-up. It’s an open source cart. So some code work will be needed but they offer tech support.
GODADDY. Economy solution is not bad but it is only a 20 product cart for $10.00 a month. The main cart would be the deluxe plan at $29.99 a month. No transaction fees. Tech support is included.
KADZOOM. Offers a few plans starting at $24.00 for 2500 products. No transaction fees. Shopping cart support is included.
You can see for yourself at
http://www.inmotionhosting.com – http://www.godaddy.com – http://www.volusion.com – http://www.kadzoom.com
I would also add…Just because a web host offers hosting at $1.99 that does not mean you are going to get eCommerce hosting at that price. eComm. Is entire different ball game that any business should be ready to pay for. Going cheap with eComm is not always the best solution.
Just my two cents. Great article and I look forward to reading more from you. Have a nice day.
Kim