Whether you sell goods or services, having an easy-to-use shopping cart should be one of your top priorities. You’ll need to have a good, user-friendly application to take care of two main things:

• Your clients’ user experience by providing them with an easy way of going through the purchase process
• Safety for your business by making sure you have secure transaction apps that won’t put your money or your clients’ information at risk

By putting a shopping cart on your website, you’re both improving your service and reducing any risks that come with having to exchange money online – a win-win solution for both you and your clients.

What’s a Digital Shopping Cart?

A shopping cart is a piece of software that sits on your ecommerce site. Its main task is to help your customers choose the items they want to buy from you, collect it in a virtual cart, take them to the checkout page and help with the payment process.

Depending on your configuration, your shopping cart software will calculate all addable or deductible fees, like tax, coupons, sales and shipping and handling before adjusting the final payable prices.

What Important Features Should it Have?

Your shopping cart software is the one thing responsible for handling some of the most secure data your company will get its hands on, including cash exchanges and personal information gathered from your clients. Your top goal when looking into shopping carts should be data security.

Beside ensuring all information exchanged is safe and secure, you’ll want to look at software that offers you plenty of options. Different businesses in different industries have different priorities, so consider what you want to get out of your shopping cart software before making your decision.

1. Diverse Payment Options

Today, there are many payment options, including credit/debit cards and payment gateways like PayPal. If you want to give your customers the best experience, incorporate as many of these payment options as possible.

Be sure to also let your consumers know what payment methods you offer, since so many people start with keyword searches like, “stores that accept PayPal” or simply “PayPal accepted.” Take advantage by adding these keywords to your website’s content.

2. Search and Easy Browsing

Your shopping cart should make life easier for your clients. The best shopping carts include search options and an easy-to-use browsing capability. Visitors should be able to find exactly what they are looking for – or anything similar that you might have to offer – within a matter of seconds.

3. Sales, Offers and Suggestions

Your cart should be able to entice your visitors into buying other things – even if they hadn’t planned on it. You’d be surprised how many people make impulsive purchases based on advertised sales or reduced price offers. Just take a look at these coupon statistics. Your cart should offer reduced-price items where visitors can see them clearly.

While shopping, your users should also see a “People who bought this item also bought…” section, enticing them to buy related items.

4. Customer Input

There’s no better marketing than positive word of mouth from your users. When visitors arrive on your site, showcase reviews your previous clients have left praising your goods and/or services.

Whenever possible, put these reviews where your visitors can see them as they shop for the same or similar products. A good cart will make it easy to both write and display these reviews.

5. Shipment Tracking

Nothing can be more frustrating than buying something online and having to wait for it to arrive. Now, imagine having to do that without tracking features. How many times do you click on a tracking link after it’s emailed to you? Can you imagine what it would feel like to not know where your package is or when it’s supposed to arrive?

Work with your postal or courier service to fully integrate a shipment tracking solution, if it applies to you. This is a must in today’s ecommerce world. Besides, you won’t like answering tons of “Where’s my package?” phone calls each day.

6. Fast-Track Checkout

Some of the best shopping cart solutions have express checkout options. They usually do this by capturing and storing registered users’ data. That way, the next time they come to make a purchase, all their information is stored and they can pay in just a few clicks or taps.

7. Extended Multimedia Options

While the standard shopping cart is expected to list images of your products, the best ones will let you go beyond that. Zoom in photography, how-to-use video, virtual tours and more can help users make up their mind during the checkout process, providing them with more value and potentially helping you close more sales.

 

Find Your Shopping Cart

There are tons of shopping cart software choices out there and, with enough thorough research, you should find the one that best fits your business model. Find all your preferred features and you’re sure to have more happy customers!