What's The Right Shopping Cart For Your Online Store?

February 8, 2018

If you ever want to feel overwhelmed the easiest way to do it is to look at all the available online shopping cart solutions for your E-Commerce Store.

From all the different shopping carts and the variety of capabilities, it can be a challenge to find the right one for your store.

Once you begin carrying more items or complex add-ons, you’ll need a product managing shopping cart that can calculate custom orders or possible discounts.

There are so many solutions, but there are some key factors that merchants tend to overlook when selecting an online shopping cart for your business.

Tax calculations

Depending on multiple factors, your business may be required to collect sales tax on your E-Commerce transactions. Certain shopping carts feature the ability to calculate sales tax, and with others, there are additional options for multiple state taxes or international costs.

However, there are many states that have hundreds of different sales tax rates depending on the city, and it can be difficult to always add the right one to abide by state law. A basic shopping cart solution might be limited by what it can accurately calculate.

Working with a shopping cart that can do the math for you and your customer makes for a better experience. There are countless solutions out there for varying prices and it’s always a good idea to do research to find the best option.

Promotions and discounts

Promotion and discounts are a part of sales. However, not all shopping carts will have promotions and discounts options, so you'll need to add that to your checklist. 

The same is for adding on discounts or coupons, not all shopping carts come with the ability to change out discounts or run special promotions.

You might have to pay a little extra for a cart that has all those additional add-on features and work with a web designer to make sure they are properly installed on your site.

Shipping costs

There are multiple ways to handle shipping as an E-Commerce store. There’s free or flat rate shipping, weight or price-based shipping, or real-time shipping based on current shipping carrier costs.

Usually, you want to have a couple of different options depending on how many items you have. For instance, offering free shipping on large purchases, and then charging based on the weight of the items.

Having a couple of different options can be a good way to cover the expenses of shipping without pushing customers away from a purchase. Many people will spend extra money on the product in order to save money on shipping.

You need to take time and analyze what the best option to offer for shipping is for your business, then pick a shopping cart solution that can provide what you need. Having that all decided before you begin searching can help you narrow down the choices.

Credit card processing shopping cart integration

The ability to accept payments is usually the last items added to a new E-Commerce store before it is launched. This leads to a shop owner being stuck with limited integration options.

There are different costs to weigh when finding the right payment solution for your business, especially with a shopping cart. They can be expensive and over-complicated if you just process a few transactions.

Researching and talking to a good payment processing company is the best way to explore all shopping cart options. On top of finding the right shopping cart integration, you can find out what your payment gateway costs are and weigh the options.

There are several questions that you can answer about your business to narrow down the choices. For instance; the number of transactions, transaction size, the type of payment methods like credit cards, ACH, or Apple Pay.

Payment processing for an E-Commerce store doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated if you work with a trusted partner.

With over 150 shopping cart integrations we have no shortage of options and advice to share with you.

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