A Guide to Ecommerce
High-quality shopping cart systems offer you a lot more than just a method for taking payments, which is why they’re called “systems.” The best software will provide you with comprehensive eCommerce solutions from top to bottom. They’ll not only be able to help you to process payments via credit or debit card, PayPal, online check or other methods, but will also assist you with design aspects of your site, shipping calculations, tax calculations, marketing opportunities, and more.
What Should I Look for in an eCommerce System?
At the most basic level, you do want as many different methods for taking payments as possible. Whether a customer will make a purchase or not often comes down to how convenient the purchase is. It’s hard enough to get a customer to buy something; you don’t want to make it harder by not taking all the payment methods you can. Likewise, however, you don’t want the shopping car to be confusing and counterintuitive. That’s why you should look for a system which will provide a simple interface for customers and provide website design tools which help you to integrate your cart seamlessly into your online store.
The system you purchase should not only take payments but also calculate them properly. That means that for every purchase, the system should be able to accurately reflect the correct shipping and tax rates and add them into the price for the purchase. That way you won’t find yourself paying for international shipping yourself because a customer was only charged for domestic shipping.
Marketing features are also important in an eCommerce system. These are advanced features that have come about as a result of today’s social media and other popular marketing outlets online. Marketing features allow you to offer incentives like coupons and gift certificates as part of your sales and also to analyze sales information in order to figure out which marketing tactics are successful and which ones aren’t providing you with anything substantial.
A good eCommerce system will provide you with useful administrative tools which make it easier to control your shop. You should be able to review your inventory and to take care of some basic accounting using your cart system. Some systems even provide video tutorials to help you learn how to run your shop effectively.
Finally, one more essential feature is security. There are a number of factors that may deter customers from shopping online, one of which is security. If customers do not feel that their personal information is safe with your site, they will not buy from you. Your cart should offer encryption and should inform customers that you use SSL security at checkout. Systems that offer fraud protection for customers also can help customers to feel assured.
In eCommerce, the Art of Persuasion is Important
Technically the site design element of your system is also tied to security in the sense that a professional, clean, simple design will help to persuade customers that your shop is a secure, legitimate place to shop. If customers find your shop confusing, they will consider you less trustworthy and will be less likely to buy from you even if you are encrypting their information and providing buyer protection. Because of this, you can really consider all the features of an eCommerce system to be interrelated. Every aspect of the design has an impact on the final result, which is buyer conversions. TopFiveAdvisor will introduce you to a number of popular shopping cart systems and help you to find the ideal software solution for your needs, one which will maximize your conversions and optimize your work flow for the best results.
