Critical Decisions for eCommerce Shopping Cart Solutions

Searching for the best ecommerce shopping cart solution for your online store can be frustrating. Sorting through confusing articles that different ecommerce builders post could make you feel like you’re going to lose it. I know, I faced this when I was looking for a suitable ecommerce solution myself. The more I searched the more options I uncovered. So which solution did I opt for? I wanted a solution that was reliable and guaranteed to worked, so I kept reading about each feature, and ultimately was lost.

Today, ecommerce retailers face more challenges than they would have a few years ago. On one hand, consumers keep demanding for faster and engaging shopping experiences on their desktop, tablet or mobile devices. While on the other, internal stakeholders want a solution that can keep up with the functionality of competitors. Everyone out there is searching for a platform that can manage inventory, promotion, merchandising and order management with ease. However, with time we find that a shopping cart solution that was great a few years ago isn’t so suitable today. Here are key decisions you may need to think about before embarking on finding the eCommerce Shopping CartSolution for you business.

Hosting your own cart versus using a SaaS solution

Making this decision isn’t very easy. The choice would depend on your team (is your staff capable of handling your own hosting?), budget, cart requirements and plans for the future.

SaaS Based Cart

Although SaaS carts come with more conveniences, they certainly have their fair share of shortcomings. Here are some fundamental elements you may want to consider:

Its billing model – will the ecommerce shopping cart solution you choose to use, charge you by revenue share, the number of products listed, order volume, access to features, data usage or a combination of some of these factors? Be sure to consider your costs during the year and your peak times like during holidays.

Design – most SaaS-based carts tend to limit their users to certain templates. To get a customized template, you have to pay more. Other carts will also need you to upgrade the subscription plan so you can access and customize your CSS, HTML or PHP.

Ecosystem – Choosing to use a SaaS-based cart has the potential to accelerate the development of your website because such carts come bundled with certified applications, partners or developers. Ensure that you investigate the apps and its developer communities of the SaaS cart you choose. Make sure you will not lose the key features relevant to your business. Also, factor in all additional costs for third party add-ons.

Self-Hosted Cart

Many shopping carts offer retailers installed solutions to host their cart. They let the retailer host it on their web server, and to customize it to fit their needs. The key elements to look out for include:

The performance of the server – the biggest challenge customers face with this solution is server maintenance. In case, you don’t have adequate bandwidth and server performance, the pages on your website load slowly, and conversion rates drop. It is necessary for you to have accessible, accurate site logging so that you can diagnose potential server problems. Customers don’t like slow loading websites. Google’s indexing can also rank you below your competitors because of your page loading speeds.

Design – most installed solutions come with editable templates. To make a cart solution work for you, consider familiarizing yourself with design languages like CSS, HTML, and PHP. If you don’t, you will have to hire a consultant, and that means an increase of your costs.

SSL Certificates – you will definitely need one. The certificate allows your clients to checkout securely on your store.

Regardless of the type of cart, you opt for there are other topics you may have to consider as well. These are:

Analytics

Google analytics can be your best friend. Just make sure that you track the current key metrics like time on site, conversion rates, site speed, and bounce rates. If you had another platform before, be sure to compare the results.

Managing SEO strategy

If you are moving from one cart solution to another, you are trying to move years of Google index from one platform to the other. Failing to have a great plan ahead of time means, you will set yourself up for a possible drop in SEO traffic.

Combination vs. all-in-one

When looking for a cart, you need to look for a mix of the best-bred solutions versus a platform that does everything. Some solutions can be integrated into your cart to deal with order management, shipping, email marketing or any other needs unique to your operation. Nevertheless, remember, the primary functionality is to make merchandising easy while providing the best possible shopping experience.

Don’t forget to make a list of functionality that is crucial to your business. Circulate the list to all your departments, get their feedback and use the list as a basis for searching for the besteCommerce shopping cart solutions.

Top 7 reasons why shopping carts are abandoned

Shoppers abandon more than half of the shopping carts instances just before final checkout. This has reduced conversion rates to a large extent. If you want to boost sales and increase revenue, you would need to reduce shopping cart abandonment. You can hire a company that offerseCommerce shopping cart solutions to help with it.

Knowing why shopping carts are abandoned, and the problems that customers face, could help you device a method that helps reduce shopping cart abandonment. Here are some of the reasons why shopping carts are abandoned that you could investigate before you hire an agency that provides eCommerce shopping cart solutions,

1. High product costs:

People avoid buying when they find that the price of products no your website are high. They may know of alternate sources online that sell the same product at a lower price, so it is obvious they will not buy it from your store.

2. Long, complicated checkout process:

People visit your website, like some products, and then add them to their cart. However, they leave your store empty handed. Why? Having to navigate a complicated and time-consuming check out process that asks for a lot of information could be the culprit. So, make sure you create a simple one-page checkout.

3. Shipping issues:

Various shipping option related issues could also contribute to cart abandonment; like high shipping cost, slow shipping or listing the cost at later steps in the checkout process. For retaining customers, deliver it as soon as possible and offer either free shipping or keep shipping costs as low as possible. One of the most important tips here is to mention the shipping cost on the product page itself. If you surprise customers with high shipping cost while they checkout, most of them will leave your cart without purchasing.

4. Forced registration:

Most people tend to leave your store without purchasing when they are forced to register an account on the website. Most visitors find filling up huge forms and registering on a website annoying. So, if you don’t want to lose customers, it is advisable to allow guest check out.

5. Lack of payment options:

Most people have started buying online, but it is not necessary that all of them have started paying online. Few people choose to pay cash, and they will abandon cart if they do not find a ‘cash on delivery’ payment option. So, make sure you offer the maximum payment options possible.

6. Lack of product information:

Most visitors know exactly what they want to buy and they look for certain features in the product description. They will not buy a product if they do not find the feature they are looking for, mentioned in the description. So, make sure you use as much detail while describing products and provide images, features, benefits and specifications wherever possible.

7. The urge to look around:

Some people visit online stores to research products they are interested in and not with an intention of buying. They just want to have a look at products to check out the latest trends in market. This is one of the most common reasons for shopping cart abandonment.

Now that you are aware of some of important reasons that lead to cart abandonment, and determine that there are issues that you may want to resolve, it is recommended that you consult a professional eCommerce shopping cartsolution provider and get the issues resolved to augment your conversion rate at the earliest.

3 Ways Ecommerce Sites Can Reap More Profits

Profits are what businesses run on. They are the reason for the success of any business and also the main aim of every entrepreneur. One should know how to boost their profits while not fleeing the customers away by being too expensive. This goes for the digital world too. In such a competitive market, ecommerce application and website development companies need to focus on both quality and the cost involved in delivering a product or a service. This can be tough owing to so many players in the market. Consumers are price sensitive and as a businessman, you also have to protect the price image of the brand. So what should be done? Let us tell you some key points which will make your business soar without the customers going down.

1.    Why not automate?
A lot of time is needed to conduct repricing manually. Besides taking time, it will also take up a lot of your money. As a retailer you wouldn’t want to spend your time nor money on this when automation is an option and a pretty good one. It increases productivity while significantly reducing operating costs.

 2.    Deals and discounts
Your customer should feel pampered and the best way to keep him/her coming back is to provide them with great deals and discounts. Nothing attracts a customer more than that. You being a customer can yourself imagine getting into a store that flashes some discounts on display and choosing that store over others. The same goes for your customers too! This in no way will mean reducing your profit margins. In fact, if done smartly, this strategy can increase your profits manifold. Now imagine if you tell your ecommerce application and website development company to create packages and deals where you club more products together to give a great discount? This way you sell more products with clubbed profit too. Just make the minimum purchase higher than what they averagely sell. Another thing to attract the customer is to provide free shipping for an order above a set price. A consumer won’t mind spending extra to purchase another product to get his shipping free of cost. This is a psychological game you can play with your customers where they benefit from it too and you don’t lose out on your profits either.

3.    Customer is god
This is an old proverb which holds true for any business whatsoever. Customer is the main reason and cause behind a business. Happy customers are the main crux of a successful business. Customer service can’t be overlooked at any cost and is of prime concern which goes hand in hand with the goodness of your products. While shopping online, a lot of things can perturb a customer and these things have to not only be addressed by you but also solved by you in an efficient manner. It all depends on how your business handles emails and calls from customers who are unhappy about something. If handled well, it builds credibility for your company and the customer is more likely to return to you for future purchases. He will be assured that even if anything goes wrong, your customer service team will solve it effectively. How does this increase your profit? Firstly, you retain customers and secondly, great customer service is like a magnet. People don’t mind paying more for the products if they are getting perfect customer services from you. You can charge a little more on your products with great customer service to justify that cost.

These are the three key points that will ensure the rise in your profits over a period of time and will lead to a successful business that every entrepreneur wishes for. If everybody in the field of ecommerce application and website development adhere to this for themselves and for their clients, the profits are sure to hit the roof and beyond. Make sure your profits are not breaking into tears every time a customer smiles. You have to balance both in order to make the most of your business.