Selling online using shopping carts

do it yourself

Hosted payment systems (like Roman cart and products from PayPal and Google checkout) allow you to have the typical functions of a shopping cart without having to install or configure a shopping cart application on your web hosting service provider’s servers.  You don’t even have to integrate the cart into your website application all that’s required is that you add specific links on your website that will take the customer to hosted payment website where your product’s details reside and the customer can pay for it there then return to your site.  The links and button’s codes are generated when you sign up and enter the product details you intend on selling.

Roman cart uses payment gateways such as paypal, Google checkout, HSBC, Barclays, Protx etc.  When a purchase occurs an email is sent to you and the customer as notification and confirmation receipts.  Plus there is a dashboard that allows you to find out about your sales and other reporting figures.

Google checkout allows the customer to purchase items online using their Google account login details.  One great reason for these kinds of services is that the user enters their details on a trusted company’s site where the payment processing takes place so the fear of fraudulent possibilities is minimal.  As with most payment services Google checkout charges a transaction fee (service charge + commission).

Google checkout has a similar option to ‘roman cart’ and ‘paypal express checkout’ where the customer can press the ‘buy now’ button and pay instantly for that item.  In addition to roman cart Google checkout can be integrated with an existing cart so customers can build up and delete items in an order before purchasing them all in one transaction.  The third option offered by ‘Google Checkout’ and PayPal’s ‘Web Payments Pro’ requires knowledge of programming and allows the website owner to integrate the checkout ‘behind the site’ so transactions are made through a payment gateway then into a merchant account without the customer leaving your website.  This may look more professional but has the overhead of managing your customer’s data securely and in accordance to Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) like encrypting card holder data, tracking and monitoring of access to systems holding card holder data, securing systems that hold card holder data with firewalls, plus additional criteria.

Shopping carts provided by website hosting packages

Some web hosting companies give their customers preinstalled shopping carts as part of their hosting package.  Some of them can be configured easily with the site owner only having to add the details of products they wish to sell and an account they wish the funds to go into.  The simple carts often give the web owner an easy start to receiving payment but the quality of how the cart operates in terms of performance, product layout and transaction wizards can be poor and not to your customers expectations.

Using open source shopping carts

osCommerce has attracted a large growing e-commerce community that consists of over 205,400 store owners and developers who support each other and extend osCommerce Online Merchant with add-ons being contributed on a daily basis. To date there are over 5,300 add-ons that are available for free and their customizable.

Zen Cart™ is a free, user-friendly, open source shopping cart software and can be set-up by anyone with the most basic web site building and computer skills.  It works around templates (to allow you to make multiple appearances of your store and to accommodate future updates easily).  The website owner needs to configure and customise these templates to their taste using PHP a web programming language and a MySQL database (recommended).

Both osCommerce and Zen Cart offer an exhaustive list of functionality and incorporate the typical features that most website owners want from a shopping cart and reports that allow them to get appropriate stats about their products and sales.  However, both products claim to be easy to setup but in reality it is quite tricky.  In addition when using open source and commercial shopping carts you have to consider which payment gateway you will use with your shopping cart.  So there’s more work to be done.

Developer customising open source carts

There are a number of website development companies that will integrate these shopping carts into your site.  Making sure that the templates, layout designs and configurations are correct, to your liking, work efficiently and in line with your customer’s expectations.

Payment gateways and internet merchant accounts

A payment gateway is basically a feature that manages debit and credit transactions.  It is offered by a number of online/offline companies including banks.  However banks do tend (currently) to charge more and claim to offer a better quality of service along with many options to receive payments.

An internet merchant account is basically an online bank account.  However they do have some restrictions when compared to high street accounts, mainly extremely low interest rates and the period of time before you can access the funds you receive in them from your sales.  Most merchant accounts make their money from the interest accumulated from their customer’s funds.  That’s why there is usually an incubational period of around 1 week to 10 working days before you can access/transfer the funds in your account.

As we discussed previously if your site stores or handles card holder data you are subject to PCI DSS standards for you and your customer’s safety.  You will have to encrypt the customer’s data on every transaction you send through a payment gateway and may have to consider other aspects of the PCI DSS standards if you hold some of those details locally in your database.

 

Developing a shopping cart from scratch

When you have a shopping cart developed from scratch it allows you to include features that are built and centred upon your individual business needs and operational goals.  Your shopping cart is not just a basket for customers to put products in it could be a portal into understanding your business and customer trends, products that are doing well and highlight the customers you should be focusing on.

Extracting particular data from your customers and their purchases may allow you to profile or typify other potential customers within your marketing strategies and identify other products you might have a reason to sell that your currently do not.  This all adds to better customer relationship management (CRM).

Automated email marketing based on sales data could be another feature implemented at the end of a transaction or on a timely basis e.g. a customer may want insurance with their product of purchase or when it runs out.  It could be that a newer product of the same series has become available and you want to let those who bought previous model know and give them a discount.

When you have data about your customers and their purchases it is simple to up-sell or cross-sell automatically after transactions when they are still on your site.  By implementing business logic inline with your requirements it would be possible to make recommendations for add-ons, or imagine the phrase “people who bought this product were also interested in the following products” then pictures and links following.  Just like on Amazon when you select a book to purchase.

Information can be displayed from the backend of your site where only you and your staff can access metrics and reports that highlight the 10 ten best selling products, which types of people bought which products, where your customers are based and much more.  Basically, if you have requirements that can be met by the data you hold from your customers it should just be a case of implementing the right processes to convert that data into useful information.

Plus your cart could be responsive to your fulfilment and inventory status.  It could even give you a heads up indicating when you should buy the next batch of products and how much in accordance to the previous month’s sales trends.  Maybe you would like to know the worst selling product and to be able to mark them down to just above their costing price giving promotional discounts.

Your cart should offer you opportunities to create efficiencies in your business. 
Although, most of it will be sales and marking driven because that’s the data your information has derived from. 

Need more information?  Feel free to contact us with your questions.