Shopping Cart 101—Which shopping cart is right for me?
How to choose a shopping cart for your web store

So you are thinking about starting an ecommerce business and are not sure how to choose a shopping cart software. The fact that there are different types of shopping cart software and the need to have additional services such as a payment gateway and merchant account can make your selection process more confusing and complex.

The first step is to pick the right shopping cart for your business. There are two different types of shopping carts offered by companies:

1. Shopping cart software that you purchase outright and install on a server

Based on past experiences, this kind of shopping cart software can be nothing but a headache.

The most important element to a shopping cart is security. You need to make sure that you know all about servers, shopping cart software security, and their vulnerabilities. Ecommerce servers are always a big target for hackers and scam artists. Even the big companies with fully staffed IT departments have security breach issues. If you set up an insecure shopping cart software that allows hackers to steal your customers' credit card numbers, you can be held liable for the security breach and face substantial fines.

You also need to know additional security and technical requirements such as securely gathering and communicating customers' payment information with a payment gateway company and displaying the approval results back to the customer.

It is also important to make sure that the shopping cart software has all of the key features that you need to compete and succeed in your online business. Unfortunately, most of the inexpensive shopping cart software has very limited features.

Additionally, you need to look for a hosting company that allows you to install the shopping cart software on their servers. You will find that most hosting companies do not permit installation of software on their servers, especially, ecommerce software . Your are then left with the option of having to purchase a server, install the software and colocate it at a colocation facility. This also requires periodic maintenance and you have to worry about hardware failure, backup needs, viruses and hackers.

The bottom line is if you are not experienced in server and shopping cart software security and maintenance, this option is not a good fit for you.

2. Hosted shopping cart software

This type of shopping cart software is already installed and configured on a server. All you have to do is to start uploading/entering your items, descriptions, photos, etc. Then you are set to start selling.

Be careful when choosing a hosted shopping cart. Some are developed poorly or just put together by someone as a hobby without any security breach considerations. Make sure to choose a reputable ecommerce shopping cart provider with experience. Read shopping cart company's security policy implementation to make sure that the proper security is implemented to protect your customers' credit card numbers and financial data.

Also, do not waist your valuable time on a hosted shopping cart software with very limited features. In today's ecommerce marketplace, in order to be able to compete and stand out to your online competitor, you need to have a feature rich shopping cart with added search engine optimization and marketing capabilities.

CashCowCart, a hosted shopping cart software developed by Comentum Corp., has been programmed and improved upon since 1998. Our developers have been listening to our customers comments and implemented every possible feature and security policy for developing the best shopping cart software available on the internet.

Here are some of the features and capabilities of CashCowCart ecommerce software:
- Fully manage your online store and shopping cart pages with ease.
- Write a comprehensive description of each one of your products
- Organize and structure your products and categories so your customers can easily navigate and find a product.
- Being able to optimize your shopping cart pages with the proper keywords for best search engine indexing
- Provides the ability to display related items for up selling to your customers
- Capability to send out email marketing, monthly coupons or newsletters.
- Site statistics reporting to help you analyze your traffic and make future advertising or marketing decisions.
- Capability for groups or memberships discounts and promotions.
- Ability to track orders and delivery dates.
- Flexibility to customize the delivery and shipping chargers based on item weights, pricing, shipping states, etc.
- Capability to upload PDF, Word, Excel, JPG documents to better describe your products and get better search engine ranking.
- Multilevel security to protect your clients' sensitive financial information.
- Capability to keep track of your items in stock.
- US based Helpful phone support - you need to be able to call and get a hold of a senior level technician to discuss and solve any issues that you may have.