E-Commerce Beginners Guide: Shopping Cart Software

Shopping cart software, shopping cart, shopping basket or basket is the software used to facilitate purchases online. Shopping cart normally represents and electronic analog of the regular shopping cart used in malls. While browsing the web-site, users collect the appropriate items and proceed to check out. Shopping cart calculates the total for the order including delivery and handling fees along with associated taxes if applicable. Shopping cart software is also responsible for transaction processing, i.e. communication of the calculation results along with product codes and other service data to the credit card processor.

Modern shopping carts are easy to install and require minimum coding adjustments from administrators. All shopping-cart related data (product codes, prices, descriptions, customers, discounts, etc.) is stored in on-line database and are accessed by the software on real time basis.

Typical shopping cart consists of two components:

Storefront - area of the web-store accessed by the customers to purchase the goods or services. Product pages are generated dynamically basing on the available data.

Back office - administrative area controlled by the merchant. Back office contains tools required to control the online shop. Set of available tools varies for different types of shopping cart software. Normally, shopping cart manager is able to edit products, categories, prices, discounts, descriptions and other product-related information. Besides, many shopping carts provide merchants with detailed statistics on dynamics of sales, origin of the customers and other information.

You will have to select hosted or licensed version of the shopping cart software.

Hosted version does not require installation and is normally very flexible in terms of initial setup. Besides, hosted versions propose templates to choose from. Thus, time and effort required to have everything running is minimal with hosted solutions. On the other hand, choosing to utilize a hosted solution you bind your business with another business: hosted versions charge percentage for each transaction processed and may change their condition at any time.

Licensed version represents a fully functional version of the shopping cart software installed on the merchant's server (with the right to re-install the software on other servers if the license permits). Obvious advantage is independence from other businesses and absence of per-transaction charges. Licensed version requires more time for installation and requires qualified administrative assistance.