Online shopping cart software is a vital aspect of every online business. Your shopping cart has to work together with your online catalog, customer service desk, and payment processing gateway. We will outline some of the best online shopping cart software that businesses should have.
If this doesn’t work well with all these tasks, you will soon be out of business because you will not earn regularly on all transactions.
The web hosting platform your business operates on typically comes with a shopping cart. When considering which shopping cart software to buy, it’s important to check these factors; the type of shopping cart you want to integrate your business into, the shop you’re operating, your target audience, and the way you decide to sell the products or services.
For most small businesses with the intentions of going into the web space, building a web store and a good shopping cart can appear to be a frightening task. Do you need to have an experience in coding? Is there a need to hire a staff to manage your online platform? How much will all of this cost? These are a couple of initial questions which will come up.
Fortunately, starting an e-commerce online business isn’t as challenging as it seems with the wide selection of online shopping cart platforms available for businesses. Today, someone with little or no knowledge of website design can easily launch their own e-commerce shopping cart by following simple steps.
So, let’s dive into explaining what an e-commerce shopping cart means and its features.
Also see: Best payment gateway for your business
What Is Shopping Cart Software?
An online shopping cart, or e-commerce shopping cart, is a cloud-based software that permits customers to order and buy items online. The capabilities of an online shopping cart include; store building, payment processing and customer management tools.
An online shopping cart can involve a good number of components and can function differently depending on the system you use not as we have in physical stores.
Shopping cart software allows you to track and manage product inventory and also take and ship orders. With this platform, you can maintain a product database, track sales, advertise to customers, and maintain a loyalty program. In many cases, you’ll also use offline channels to sell and even run a blog.
Features of an online shopping cart software
The shopping cart page on your business website is a vital aspect of your customer shopping journey. It works as a bridge between the business detail page and the checkout page.
To get to this page, customers must’ve added items to their cart and thereby indicating their interest to buy. The cart/basket pages must allow customers to see key details of the items they’re buying and move them into checkout without an excessive amount of friction.
Below are a number of the features to look out for:
Show product images
It’s important for your shopping cart software to show images of the products customers have selected in order to make sure they’ve added the right products to their cart. Visual reminders are way better than text.
Product title
The products should have clear tittles because this serves as a reminder of the product(s) added to the cart. Shoppers can also be sure of what they’re buying.
Price
Your shopping cart software should clearly display the price of items shoppers are about to buy.
Edit options
This feature allows shoppers to easily adjust the quantities of products added, or to quickly remove items from the shopping cart.
Delivery and returns information
Every shopping cart software should have delivery and return information as it’s a part of customer’s purchase decision. So, it’s important for these options to be highlighted or a link attached to it.
Calls to action
Not all customers would want to waste time on the page, some will just want to go straight to checkout to shop for as quickly as possible.
Clear, standout CTAs help here, as they permit shoppers to ascertain the next steps that is requires. Clear text and contrasting colors assist in making them stand out.
Payment methods
Highlighting accepted payment options, using icons to point out the various cards and alternative payment methods accepted.
Contact details
Clearly displaying the contact options like a telephone number or email address allows customers to access help if need to, and can also act as a reassurance.
Quantity and size selected
This is another important key feature in a shopping cart software. It helps customers to check if they’ve selected the right product size and quantity.
Help options
This particular feature is important especially when customers abandon their shopping cart. Perhaps they aren’t sure of some aspects of the business or delivery option. The help option comes in handy as customer service can persuade the customers to continue shopping by providing clarity.
Link to continue shopping
When customers add an item to their cart, they’re automatically directed to check the items out. It’s important to have a link that takes them back to continue shopping if they’re not done.
Persuasive messages
Finally, his is also important and this can be in form of a POP message to serve as a reminder for key selling points. This can also be in form of a USP/offer bar that’s shown throughout the shopping journey, or through specific messaging on the shopping cart page.
Who doesn’t wish to buy products in a lower amount than displayed? Prompt your customers with special offers by using your shopping cart and the probability of them making purchases increases significantly. Best shopping cart software of 2022
Benefits of a shopping cart software for your business
Online e-commerce stores are designed to use images to display a good range of products to internet buyers so as to simplify their buying decisions. It enables users to simply find the products and carefully choose the ones they want to buy by reading through the product specifications and description.
Every online business needs a shopping cart software to successful sell online. Shopping carts not only boost and establish the credibility of e-commerce stores but also promotes customer satisfaction and draw traffic thereby increasing revenue for businesses.
Below are a couple of benefits of including a shopping cart to your online store:
- Payment process is simplified as a shopping cart breaches the gap between a payment gateway and the business website.
- Shoppers can easily make informed purchase decisions.
- It helps to promote ranking in the Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
- A Shopping cart software boosts the efficiency of a web store.
- Customers get to enjoy a simple and easy shopping experience.
- Transaction record of customers is properly maintained.
- It assists in managing multiple customers efficiently.
- Functionality of the e-commerce store is improved.
- Wish lists, backend tracking, coupons, and inventory tracking is properly managed.
- It enhances the web store’s flexibility.
- Store visibility is increased and more customers gained.
- Customers can easily track their orders.
Importance of E-commerce shopping cart for every business
Shopping carts act as the bridge between shopping online and buying. The importance of a shopping cart in a web store isn’t a topic that should be up for debate. There are never-ending reasons and benefits for it.
Moreso, the ease and convenience that comes with having a shopping cart software act as a double-headed sword; with easy processes, the purchasers can quickly purchase products and as well as abandon them. This makes it an important reason to add a shopping cart feature to your online store to bridge the gap between shopping and buying.
Below are a couple of vital reasons which will convince you to add a shopping cart feature to your online eCommerce store:
Adding Products to the Cart
Most online sellers were once web buyers. Imagine that you simply are surfing through an internet business site and you wish to buy a specific product. Finally, if you directly get an ‘Add to Cart’ button, you’ll surf ahead to find out similar products to match the products and then pick the one that best fits your requirements.
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