Online shopping carts are an integral part of online stores, but there is much more to them than simply being a tool that holds items for purchase and calculates costs during checkout. Without these shopping carts, an e-commerce website would be nothing more than a regular website giving visitors information. Only with the presence of online shopping carts are e-commerce websites able to complete business transactions.
The online shopping cart, from the customer's perspective, allows a retail website to hold their chosen items until they are ready for checkout. Once all the items are chosen, the shopping cart then calculates the total cost of items adding taxes and shipping costs if necessary. Behind the scenes of an online transaction, the online shopping cart plays a much more important role and the quality of the software can mean the difference between the success or failure of an online retailer.
An online store that is managed through using an e-commerce software solution usually does not have to worry about the reliability of its shopping cart. The store owner manages merchandise, prices, discounts, payment settings, product categories and pages, shipping costs, customer information, etc. All this data is stored in a database that the e-commerce software accesses in order to complete the order.
There are two choices available to an online merchant who is in need of e-commerce software. They can either purchase the software outright for a one time fee or they can subscribe to the service for a monthly or annual fee. The benefits of using one of these e-commerce providers is that it is not just the software, but the whole service. As such, it is responsible for software upgrades and provides templates the merchant may use to build their storefront.
Since the e-commerce software or hosting service is responsible for storing and transmitting customer payment information, it is very important to find a good quality service that meets PCI regulation standards. PCI (Payment Card Industry) standards were put in place by a council comprised of members from the most influential credit service providers and is there to protect the customer's payment data. For instance Visa can deny services to merchants who use e-commerce software not following these regulations.
The better quality e-commerce services offer not only more features and professionally designed templates, but also top notch online shopping carts to the merchant. These extra features result in better and more complete management of an online store. It's important to review all your options carefully before choosing just one.
Where Does E-Commerce Go?
0 comments:
Post a Comment