No matter whether you run a small business or are a large entrepreneur, the success of your online internet business depends on how well you have planned your ECommerce web solution. As we already know that ECommerce emphasizes

Following are few important reasons why you should opt for a Shopping Cart for your business:
• Shopping Cart is a single automated unit that performs a variety of tasks for your business efficiently and accurately ranging from adding and displaying featured products on site, managing inventory to flexible purchasing for customers, thus saving your time and money.

• With easy to use automated Checkout process, shopping cart attracts more visitors to stay on your site and come back again and thus increasing your sale.

• Shopping Cart software allows you to view and manage all the customers’ orders from a single place, track them and process them and thus increasing productivity.

How to Choose among Shopping Carts:
Selection of shopping cart for your online portal depends on the number of factors. However, following are the most commonly used shopping carts:

• OsCommerce
• Opencart
• Magento
• Zencart

At Aphro ECS, we have specialized Ecommerce team who can help you decide the best shopping cart software suitable for you. We have several years of experience in customizing the needs of customers for their online portals through Ecommerce software. Aphro ECS has served clients from different industries including Retail, Telecom, Travel, and other sectors from India, USA, UK, Canada, AUS and other European countries.
Use of appropriate shopping cart can help boost the growth and expansion of your business in several ways. By selecting appropriate shopping cart, you can provide your existing and potential customers a convenient, safe and secure payment mode while purchasing the products and services.
Also, as you are aware about the huge surge in the competition when it comes to ECommerce market, therefore, it has become imperative to use effective shopping cart software to meet your business needs failing which you might not be able to attract new customers or retain the existing ones.

We would love to hear from you.For any queries, please contact us at info@aphroecs.com

There are lots of eCommerce shopping carts available in market as follows:

• OsCommerce
• Zen Cart
• PrestaShop
• CubeCart
• Magento Commerce
• Digistore
• Opencart
• CREloaded
• Zeuscart
• Agoracart
• Afcommerce

Before deciding, which shopping cart you choose, it’s important to understand the role of the shopping cart: (see image below)

Generic Features of Shopping Cart:

All of the above mentioned shopping carts have their own unique features depending on your web store requirement. However, there are some generic features which should always be kept in mind while choosing a shopping cart as follows:

Costing and Ease of Installation:

There are lots of shopping carts which are free or very less in costing. You can go for any of these if all the other required features are supported. Also, other important thing to be kept in mind is that it should be easy to install and configure so that once installed, you can maintain it in future without getting technically involved in this.

Easily Customizable:

An ECommerce shopping cart should be easily customizable and scalable to match your Ecommerce site design. It should allow the developer to update the look and feel of the site. Also, a shopping cart must be upgradable to help your site compete with other Ecommerce sites.

Security:

One important aspect while considering shopping cart is security. It’s crucial to make sure that shopping cart you use should have standard security features like SSL secure checkouts, built in hack attempt logging, fraud protection. There are also some advanced features available in some shopping carts like PGP encryption support for admin email, IP blocking feature built in and MD5 encryption keys used to prevent editing of product information.

Web Design:

In order to make an ECommerce website which allows prospective customers to stay there and enjoy and visit repeatedly, it’s very important that it should have professional and intuitive web pages. So shopping cart you choose should offer a variety of design templates to choose from. Also, they should be easy to use and customizable that enables you to create the site of your choice.

Search Engine Optimization:

In order to have higher search ranking (more traffic to your store) to your site, shopping cart you choose should have standard SEO features i.e. it should be 100% search engine friendly, should allow you to manage all the Urls at the category, product and page levels. It should also allow you flat URL generation i.e. www.example.com/yourownurl.html. It should give you the ability to generate meta tags and keywords for the site.

Customer Management:
Customer Management is very important part of any shopping cart, better is the Customer Management, more are the chances that customer will stay on your site more and visit repeatedly. Standard Customer Management features include the following:
• “My Account” area allows customer to view previous orders, status and shipping tracking information
• Allows customers to create Wish Lists
• Automated emails when customer creates order and order is shipped
• One-Page Checkout – fastest checkout available in the industry
• Guest Checkout – allows customers to checkout without creating an account

Payment & Shopping Options:
A standard Ecommerce shopping cart provides multiple payment options to merchants and customers. Options include payment by credit cards, Paypal or any other secure payment method. Standard shipping options include as follows:
• Offer free shipping
• Sell in multiple currencies
• Create custom shipping methods
• International shipping supported

Marketing & Promotions:
Shopping cart you choose must have robust marketing and promotion tools so as to increase traffic to your site, generate more revenues for your site. Some of the features include the following:
• Bulk discounts by products
• Automate abandoned cart emails
• Run detailed sales reports
• Setup an affiliate program for site
• Send promotional emails to customers
• Hot Deal feature
• Top Selling Products

Administration:
Shopping cart should give you and admin interface which is easy to use. Also it should include the features like multiple products upload, editing and catalog management options, and support for both hard and soft products. Some of the standard features include ability to create unlimited administrator accounts, restricting the admin users’ roles by super admin, block the account on too many failed login attempts etc. Various shopping carts have various features available; you can choose the one which fulfills your needs.

Help & Support:
It’s very much likely that you need technical help for your shopping cart at times. The manufacturers of good shopping carts provide support and resources which you can refer when required. Some of them include the following:
• Knowledgebase
• Community Forums
• Video Tutorials

The manufacturer should also provide direct technical assistance via email or telephone.