By Bradley E

Overview

The software that powers your online store is a crucial part of the success of your brand. Not only does your shopping cart software form the core of the checkout process, but it also plays a crucial role in your consumer-facing front end design, your ability to adapt to insights and requests from your customers as your grow and to ensure safe, secure transactions as your business grows. This guide aims to provide a road map to helping your select the right shopping cart software for the needs of your business.

Considerations when Choosing an eCommerce Solution When choosing your software platform it is important to, first, consider the choice between self-hosted and commercially-hosted options. Hosting Platforms Self-hosted platforms allow you the ability to host a shopping cart on your own server, which brings both opportunities, in terms of customization, and responsibility, in terms of maintaining your server and installation. In general, if you have a strong technical background, feel comfortable with managing a server and are willing to spend the necessary time working on upgrades, patches and customizations, then installing a store on your own server can provide you a level of control over the store that you otherwise would not have and can save you money in the long-run since the costs are primarily up-front, as opposed to recurring (note: commercial self-hosted carts may charge for upgrades, so make sure to read the fine print.)

Hosted solutions provide a level of convenience and stability that allows you to focus on the business-aspects of your online store while relying upon the provider to keep the software up-to-date and running smoothly. The drawbacks to hosted solutions are primarily the incremental monthly, recurring fees associated with them, as well as limitations in customization of both design and functionality. Open-Source Software Another option to consider is whether an open-source (free, in terms of both code availability and basic cost) solution is appropriate for your store. In general, more technically-inclined business owners will be able to better navigate an open-source shopping cart, as support tends to be decentralized and community-based.

The main advantage of open-source solutions, such as osCommerce and Magento Commerce, is their lack of an upfront cost, as well as the fully flexible customization structure. If you chose an open-source package, keep in mind that the software will continue to evolve and improve only insofar as the community remains active – case in point: osCommerce, the largest open-source shopping cart, hasn’t been updated since late 2007, although the many previous years of development produced a largely stable cart. The recent introduction of the “freemium” open-source model by Magneto provides the benefits of an open-source community, while allowing for paid support for those who require it.

Accepting Payment: Merchant Gateways In order to successfully accept credit cards for your transactions, it is necessary to chose a merchant gateway that serves as a means to both finalize a transaction and also to keep your customers’ financial records secure. You can think of the gateway as a virtual credit-card swiping terminal that you can find at most retail stores – these serve to complete the transaction and encrypt the financial information to keep it secure.

A number of major gateway provides are available on most carts including Paypal, Authorize.net, Cybersource and Verisign – factors to consider include ease of implementation, breadth of payment options (some gateways, for example, may accept Discover cards while others do not), fee structure (this can vary widely, so pay close attention to the fixed and per transaction fees). Functionality and Features While most shopping carts will get a user from browsing to checkout, features vary widely. The ability to add unique features to your store such as user wish lists, intuitive navigation, coupons and gift certificates will vary widely depending on the cart.

Shopping Cart Reviews

Magento Commerce Review

For years, osCommerce remained the largest open-source shopping cart community with thousands of stores, countless voluntary developers and a growing list of features. As technology evolved and development slowed, a number of offshoots emerged, including ZenCart and, most recently, Magento Commerce. Mangento is a natural successor to OS as the next-generation open-source shopping cart with a full set of features and professionally-driven development community.

With over 400,000 downloads shortly after emerging from Beta earlier this year, Magento already has an impressive set of features. While Magneto does require a lot of customization work to get the most out of the software, the learning curve is lessened by an active support community and intuitive software structure. On the backend, Magento offers an impressive integrated suite of analytics and reports, including integration with Google Analytics, a highly customizable inventory management interface that allows for advanced pricing rules and robust options for categorization and product tagging, a clear presentation of customer database and order management (including automated integration of call center, invoicing and shipping options), near-universal payment gateway integration, as well as a rich set of pricing and discount features. On the shopper presentation end, Magento similarly delivers a strong set of options including an ability to zoom-in on multiple product images, wish-list integration, interactive tagging, an automated recommendation engine, clean URLs for SEO, a wide variety of design templates and multi-lingual support.

Commercial Shopping Carts

Volusion Review

If you are seeking a more streamlined, out-of-the-box hosted solution, Volusion can simplify the technical aspects of starting a store and allow you to focus on running your business. Since Volusion is a hosted, commercial solution, there is both a nominal setup fee (normally $199, currently $99 to $129), as well as a sliding scale of monthly recurring fees ranging from $29.95/mo up to $197/mo (no long-term contract required) depending on the feature set you chose. These fees entitle you to 24/7/365 phone support as well as Rackspace hosting and 50 ready-made store templates and training videos that can greatly streamline the process of building a store.

Volusion comes with a rich, growing feature set including a full set of tools to manage your backend with an integrated CRM. Additionally, as an integrated solution, the payment gateway and security features are automated, simplifying the process. Volusion is particularly impressive in terms of its marketing features with a full array of SEO features from clean URLs to automated sitemap generation to a number of social media features including a widget builder that allows you to sell directly on sites such as Facebook.

Bradley E. is an editor at iReviewer, a leading reviews site providing the latest reviews and news covering everything from technology to business and travel. Find more shopping cart reviews at iRW.

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