How to Start a Small Online Business: 8 Things to Remember when Choosing Your Shopping Cart

Some online businesses do survive without a shopping cart. They simply let their customers call or e-mail their orders, and then the owners process them. Nevertheless, this works only if your customers are living very near you. Besides, it takes a lot of time to process orders, and you’re going to have a huge headache once you receive plenty of requests at one time.

If you wish your online business to grow, you’d have to invest in a shopping cart. It’s a program that helps both the customers and the business owners. The former can create their own accounts where they can keep track of their orders, while the latter can monitor the orders, process them, generate sales reports, and manage inventories.

The importance of shopping carts has led to the emergence of several brands in the market. Many of them are worth the price, but your goal is not to get the best one but to find a shopping cart that matches your needs.

Here are some tips on how to pick your shopping cart:

Analyze your business model first. What type of business do you own? What’s your marketing plan? The shopping cart should help you achieve your goals. For instance, if you have affiliates, it’s important that your shopping cart can accurately keep track of their commissions. Some shopping carts allow you to create and give away gift certificates, but are they really necessary?

Check the level of security it offers. E-commerce websites are hot among phishers and scammers since customers do give away their contact information. But you can prevent them from snooping around by finding a shopping cart with an impeccable level of security. For one, it should limit other people’s access to your customers’ orders.

Search for a shopping cart that’s flexible. Do you know that a lot of the shopping carts have limited options for shipping? This is a downside since you want to offer as many as you can to your customers, especially to those who are living on the other side of the world. But a flexible shopping cart is much friendlier to modifications, including shipping updates.

Make sure you’ll have quality customer support. A shopping cart program can undergo glitches, but it’s wrong to keep it that way for a very long time. Ensure that you can depend on a 24/7 customer support. Besides an e-mail address, you can rely on phone numbers and live chat with a quick response to your needs.