Finding a good shopping cart for your E-commerce site is extremely important. After all you do not want all your hard work with SEM, SEO, Social networking, etc to go to waste right at the clincher. So how do you choose from the hundreds of options out there?
1. Shortlist your choices. Do not waste your time checking out every single shopping cart application out there. First, only select the ones that are in your price range to be on the list. Disregard the others even if they are only $5 more. Next, choose the one that have the features that you want.
2. Your online store might have specific needs, in which case identify the top three of those requirements and narrow down your list based on that. If you have any doubts or are just curious, contact the vendor and ask for a demo. This will allow you understand first hand if this application will work with other applications you might have.
3. Send out a test email to the vendor with some questions you have about their sales. Monitor the reply for speed, content, relevancy and friendliness. If you receive an automated reply or they take forever to even send you a reply, this should be a warning sign for you. You should also find out about what kind of technical support they offer as this could be a crucial component in the development of your E-commerce site.
4. Finally when you have arrived at a small manageable list of shopping carts, browse around for user reviews on those products. Get rid of the ones that have a large amount of negative reviews and focus only on the better ones. Users will have a lot to say about the products and you may even learn a few things that never even thought about.
Try these tips out and you will save time, money and avoid a lot of frustration and hair pulling in your search for the ideal Shopping Cart!