Internet Marketing -- Nine Important Tips to Pick a Shopping Cart System

1. Calculate Shipping & Tax

This is one of the reasons you have a shopping cart. It's a basic function, but some do it better than others do. Make sure you have several options on how to calculate basic shipping charges. Don't forget. . . some customers will want fast shipping like Fed Ex. Can the cart handle this?

2. Soft & Hard Goods

This is extremely important for speakers and authors, or anyone who wants to sell informational products. A hard good is a physical product that has to be shipped to the customer. A soft good is a downloadable product or software type of product. You want the shopping cart to be able to handle both types of products in the same transaction so the customer doesn't have to go through the ordering process twice if he/she wants to order a tape and a downloadable book. (See downloadable below)

3. Receipt and Confirmation Emails

The shopping cart should be able to send an email confirmation automatically to the customer and also generate a receipt for you to put in the package when you ship the product.

4. Multiple Order and Dropship Email Capability

The shopping cart should be able to email suppliers who ship directly to your customer (dropship). The email sent to the supplier would not have the customer's credit card info.

5. Web Based Admin Page

If your shopping cart has a managers administration page that is web based, then you can work on your shopping cart i.e., add products, change prices, etc. anywhere in the world. You are not stuck at your home base to make these changes.

6. Encryption

This is the PGP stuff I talked about earlier. Just make sure you have it.

7. Back End-Output to your accounting software

This is a very handy feature that allows you to export the sales data directly from your shopping cart to popular accounting packages like Quickbooks, Quicken, and Peachtree.

http://www.quickbooks.com/

http://www.quicken.com/

http://www.peachtree.com/

8. Associate Program Compatible

This one point caused me enormous nightmares. If you plan on having other people sell your products by means of an associate program, try to get a compatible system right from the start. It could be difficult or impossible to add one later.

9. Help with Off Line Shopping

Make sure the shopping cart gives the customer an option to print out the order form so the customer can fax or mail it to you. You should also post your 800 number for customers who want to call an order in. Do whatever it takes to make it easy for them to order.

It will be extremely difficult to get everything on the above list in an inexpensive shopping cart. Go through the list anyway when you are considering a shopping cart system. Pick the cart that has the most features that are important to you. If it only has say six out of nine, that's pretty good. You can usually pay a custom programmer to add the 6^th feature.