Online Shopping Cart
By selfemployedblog | March 22, 2006
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I wanted to share my experience of using numerous online shopping carts. A good friend of mine is having a heck of a time deciding on what type of online shopping cart to use for her custom jewelry business. Here are some of the shopping carts I’ve used and my experiences with them:
1. 2Checkout - Their business model is providing you with a shopping cart and merchant account all in one. This is nice because you won’t be paying any monthly fees, application fees, gateway fees, or leases. You pay a one time set-up fee of $49.00 then on each sale, 2Checkout takes 5.5% and $0.45 per sale. Now this method can be costly in the long run but may be great for someone who is just starting out and has no idea how to create a shopping cart.
2. ProStores - This shopping cart was easy to use. They make it simple to add in products, prices, descriptions, etc. and you are on your way. You can modify the templates to add your logo, change fonts, and colors. They have three different plans but the basic plan would work well for most small businesses. The monthly fee for the basic plan is $29.95. Since it is an eBay company, ProStores works hand in hand with PayPal’s “Website Payment Pro” service.
3. PayPal - PayPal remains, in my opinion, the easiest shopping cart to set-up. You can use their shopping cart and “buy now” buttons to have products selling on your site in no time. You would have to read up on their fee structure. PayPal is a well recognized brand and many people will feel safe completing their payments through the PayPal interface. Their “Website Payment Pro” service is great if you want to intergrate payments directly on your site rather than users leaving your site when it’s time to check out.
4. OSCommerce - This is an open source shopping cart software that is free to use. You can have a full online store with all of the bells and whistles. It integrates nicely with a lot of merchant accounts such as 2Checkout and PayPal. You will need some technical knowledge or hire someone to have it installed and set-up with a payment processor. There are numerous plug-ins you can install and developers are constantly working on improving the software and working out any bugs that may pop up.
You would really have to read up on the various carts I’ve discussed above to see which ones would work well for your business. I personally like OSCommerce but that is only because I’m able to install it and tweak it as I need to. You would need to work out the fees and costs of set-up to be sure the shopping cart you choose will leave you profitable in the end. Of course there is always good ol’ eBay. You’ll have an audience already waiting, you just have to mind the fees.
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