Shopping Cart Software
A shopping cart is a piece of software that acts as an online store's catalog and ordering process. Typically, a shopping cart is the interface between a company's Web site and its deeper infrastructure, allowing consumers to select merchandise; review what they have selected; make necessary modifications or additions; and purchase the merchandise.
These applications provide means of capturing clients' payment information, but in the case of a credit card they rely on the software module of the secure gateway provider, in conjunction with the secure payment gateway, in order to conduct secure credit card transactions online. Some setup must be done in the HTML code of the website, and the shopping cart software must be installed on the server which hosts the site, or on the secure server which accepts sensitive ordering information.
E-shopping carts are usually implemented using HTTP cookies or query strings. In most server based implementations however, data related to the shopping cart is kept in the Session object and is accessed and manipulated on the fly, as the user selects different items from the cart.
Later at the process of commit, the information is accessed and an order is generated against the selected item thus clearing the shopping cart. Although the most simple shopping carts strictly allow for an item to be added to a basket to start a checkout process (e.g. the free PayPal shopping cart), most shopping cart software actually provides additional features that an Internet merchant uses to fully manage an online store. Data (products, categories, discounts, orders, customers, etc.) is normally stored in a database and accessed in real time by the software.
We typically use paid shopping carts as opposed to using free open source shopping carts as the paid ones tend to be more reliable, and in case of glitch problems upgraded versions get released much faster. Paid carts also comes with options to buy add-on modules whereas free carts will require custom coding for special needs. Shopping Carts we normally use have the following features, however, if you need some unique features we can code something custom to add to the paid cart as well.
Shopping Cart Features
100% custom template-based design
Customer Care
All orders stored in MySQL database
Customers can search & browse personal order history
Integrated configurable store product search
Real time order tracking
Customer can choose between account registration and express checkout
Fast Lane Checkout module for quick and intuitive checkout
The possibility to disable checkout without registering
Password reminder for customers
Customizable e-mail notifications/invoices
Wish list
"Send to friend" section
Ability to save the customer's cart
Newsletter management for multiple lists, edit/import/export of subscribers, news archive for customers
Printable versions of pages
Multiple customer types w/unique pricing for every customer type
Memberships and special pricing
"Clear cart" button
Edit product options in cart/wishlist/Gift registry wishlist
Printable invoices
Configurable contact form
Second address line for user profiles
Ability to change the order of products on the customer side
Product Catalog
Unlimited number of products
Unlimited number of categories
Unlimited category nesting
Products can be assigned to unlimited number of categories
Ability to modify multiple products simultaneously
Members-only categories
"Featured Products" box
Automated display of bestsellers
Related products, up selling and cross selling
1-click enable/disable switch for products and categories
Support for up to two different currencies in the products catalog (NOTE: payment processing is possible in one currency only!)
Automatical currency conversion
Configurable search by title, description, category, SKU, price and weight
"Stop words filter" for product search facility (a special filter ensures that service and link words occurring in the search pattern are ignored when search by
individual words is performed - available for English language only)
Product Details
Unlimited product options/variants/properties w/optional price modifiers
Unlimited custom input fields for products
Customer-defined prices
HTML-enriched product descriptions
Unlimited number of product images
Storing images in DB or on a file system
List a product in several categories
Manufacturers module
Ability to display product detailed images in popup windows
Merchandizing and Inventory
Discount coupon codes and gift certificates
Full inventory control
"Out of Stock" Messages
Quantity discounts
Retail and wholesale price
Limit minimal order amount
Shipping and Taxes
Real-time USPS, FedEx and UPS shipping calculation from one location
Unlimited number of custom-defined delivery methods
Flat rate, weight, order total and per-item based shipping
Different weight limits for different delivery methods
Markups for realtime shipping
Mark your products as "free shipping" products
Promotional "free shipping" coupons to your customers
Add handling/freight charges
Handle international, domestic and local shipping
Ability to clone a zone and all zone information
Restrict shipping by location
Allow your customers to choose delivery methods
Support for downloadable goods (e-goods)
Customizable tax calculation
Product-specific taxes
Taxes & shipping fees depending on client's location
"Tax exempt" feature
GST/PST (canadian tax system)
Canada post shipping
DHL (Airborne) ShipIt API support
Australia Post's Delivery Rate Calculator support
Shipping Label Generator for USPS and UPS
AustraliaPost order tracking
Sales Analysis and Tracking
Comprehensive statistics:
- Number of orders
- Number of customers
- Product views
- Category views
- Products removed from cart by customers
- Sales by product / best sellers
- Total sales
- Client environment settings
- Statistics on search patterns customers use when searching products
Searchable order data
Order data is easy to print
Printable shipping labels
Automatic creation of shipping labels for orders intended to be shipped by USPS and UPS
Search engine & incoming traffic tracker: the cart keeps referrer data for all
customers
Shipment/fulfillment interface
Export sales & customer data for use in a spreadsheet
Export orders to QuickBooks format
Optional Add-on Features
Affiliate System
Configurator - This simplifies the process of creating and tracking made-to-order products with many interchangeable or optional components. The module allows defining compatibility rules (for example, AMD motherboard is compatible with Athlon processors but incompatible with Intel Pentium). This is a perfect solution for webstores which are selling computers, software, mobile accessories, webhosting plans, etc. If your store has cross-selling products then Configurator can be applied to increase your sales.
Gift-registry Feature Comparison Special Offers Magnifier Poll & surveys Merchant account integrationShopping Mall Features
Online store selling products from multiple suppliers.
Web-supermarket with several departments.
Online distributor/wholesaler.
Internet mall with joint catalog.
Shopping Mall extends all above features by adding specific functionalities:
Unlimited number of isolated provider/seller accounts
Sellers/providers can edit only products belonging to them
Different providers/sellers can set their own shipping rates for pre-defined
shipping methods
Admin account is separated from provider/seller accounts
Independent tax settings for providers/sellers