eCommerce businesses can be easily differentiated into three types - successful, moderately successful, and failed businesses. Do you know what differentiates these businesses from each other? The answer is the ability to make the right decision at the right time. And when it comes to eCommerce industry, among various things, the most critical and serious decision is to choose the shopping cart software.

Today, there are several shopping cart software applications to choose from. They may range from cart modules to smart and fully integrated eCommerce platforms. With so many options available, you are likely to get confused with the right choice. This post aims to ease the selection by offering in-depth insights into these shopping cart software applications including their types and factors of selection.

Get Introduced to Shopping Cart Software:

A shopping cart software is basically a platform or a program that enables you to monitor and control the operations of your eCommerce store. It allows you to easily add, manage, and remove inventory, calculate the prices, taxes, and manage all functions of the website easily.

Types of shopping cart software :

There are several types of shopping cart software depending on their hosting, availability, and license. The following are a few popular types among them.

1) Hosted shopping carts:

These are basically software-as-a-service solutions, which are hosted by third parties and allow you to take advantage of the shopping cart software. Shopify, Shift4shop, and BigCommerce are a few popular hosted shopping carts. These shopping carts enable you to concentrate on your business while taking advantage of all its core eCommerce features along with the bandwidth, security, and upgrades. These solutions offer flexibility and is a hassle-free way of starting your eCommerce store with minimal efforts.

2) Self-hosted shopping carts:

These shopping carts come with open licenses, which mean developers can download them, and edit source code to build their own platforms. Unlike hosted shopping carts, these self-hosted shopping carts need merchants to host on their own. These carts offer basic features and do not support easy integration with other systems. OpenCart, PrestaShop, and WooCommerce are a few examples of self-hosted shopping carts.

3) Licensed shopping carts:

These shopping carts are usually licensed to individual businesses. These shopping carts are much similar to hosted shopping cart, because all development of the software is performed by the company that has created it. These shopping carts are available on an annual or monthly fee. Some shopping cart licenses need you to pay for software updates or technical support.

Things to Consider When Investing in a Shopping Cart Software:

It doesn’t matter whether you choose hosted shopping carts, self-hosted carts, or licensed shopping carts, there are certain factors that you need to address while choosing the shopping cart software. The following pointers will guide you through the same.

1) Analyze your eCommerce Goals:

There are several eCommerce stores operating online. They are selling products, which you plan to sell, and are already successful. Thus, to avoid failure, it is important to evaluate your eCommerce goals and take decisions accordingly. The following pointers will be helpful while evaluating your goals.

• Do you plan to use the eCommerce store to supplement your brick-and-mortar store?
• Do you plan to use the eCommerce store as a main avenue to sell your products?
• Are you targeting local, national, or international consumers?
• How do you plan to measure your goals?
• What are the products that you plan to sell through your stores?
• How many categories of products do you wish to promote?
• Do you wish to offer any discounts for a limited period?
• Are there products, which are seasonal or have a limited shelf life?

2) Features You May Want on Your Website:

There are several websites selling the same products, but not all may succeed. There may be several reasons for success and failure, and the features of the website are one of them. You can check the features of different successful websites to decide on the features on your website. Reviews, Q&A, saved carts, customer wish lists, gift certificates, and discount cards are a few popular features offered by successful websites.

3) The Administration Panel:

It offers features for order processing and store management. This panel can be either web-based or desktop-based. If it is web-based, then you can access it online and for desktop-based applications, you have to download the software on your computer. Category and product management is one of the common features of these websites. These features will enable you to add products, add product images, edit product descriptions, recent orders, shipped products, and so on. Customization is the key feature that you must take note of. The chosen software must enable you to customize the features the way you want.

4) User-friendly Checkout:

Checkout is the most critical aspect of any eCommerce store. Friction that people experience during checkout is one of the key reasons for cart abandonment. To avoid this, ensure the cart enables you to provide a few user-friendly features such as guest checkout, shipping options, edit product options at the checkout, and so on. In addition to this, ensure that the cart software also offers an option for mobile-friendly checkout because nowadays almost 88% of buyers purchase things online. The shopping cart chosen must simplify the mobile checkout process. Keeping fewer fields, adding big buttons, and integrating mobile-friendly payment methods may work in your favor.

5) Customer Support:

At times, you may need technical support to manage your website. Where would you look for the support? Perhaps, you will turn to the customer support team of the shopping cart software, isn’t it? Depending on your technical capabilities, you may want to know how much support is offered by the eCommerce platform owner. Be informed, some service providers offer free support of certain hours, and some may even charge you for support after the office hours.

Conclusion:

It is said that half the battle is won when you make the right decisions at the right time. The same goes true for shopping cart software, too. There is no single software that meets your needs. All aforementioned tips will help simplify your selection process. Futurism Diginyze is one of the popular AI-driven eCommerce shopping cart platforms for your consideration. This all-in-one intelligent platform stands out with its advanced eCommerce features, security features, customizability, and so on. You can get in touch with the team at Futurism Diginyze for more information on the platform and its adaptability.