Getting customers to navigate to product pages, fill their shopping cart, and complete the checkout process has been the chief focus of online marketing and customer service teams for over twenty years. When your customers do make it to this part of the sales funnel, they need and deserve to have everything go smoothly. They need your shopping cart software to exude ease of use and inspire confidence. After all, they have just trusted your online gateway with their banking information as well as their hard-earned money. The moment they start the online checkout process, the customer service phase begins.
For this, many quality shopping cart software solutions have been developed. There are different types of shopping cart solutions and worthwhile software producers and software service providers that deliver shopping cart utilities. Here, we will discuss all the shopping cart solutions and how to choose the best one for your online business.
What is an Online Commerce Shopping Cart Solution?
If you have ever purchased anything online, you have almost certainly encountered one of these from the user side. At its core, a shopping cart plugin is a way to ensure the customer knows what’s happening by presenting the point of purchase completion in a familiar and simple way. The customer can browse your products, and select items by putting them into their cart, and they can continue in this way while viewing a running tab until they decide to proceed to the checkout.
The popular online marketing platform, Mailchimp describes it this way, “Online shopping carts are ecommerce software that enables customers to select products and buy them online.”
In a way, it is all about creating a familiar shopping experience. But most importantly, it is about ensuring that the customer knows where they are in your online store and know what they can expect to pay and receive. Even more important is that they have the choice to finalize payment after items are selected, payment and shipping methods are selected, or to cancel and make a change.
It gives the customer a real feeling of control over the shopping process which inspires confidence and makes them more likely to return.
Types of Shopping Carts
As a business owner, you know that your business model is unique and has unique needs. That’s why there are different types of shopping cart software for you to choose from. Here’s an overview of the basic shopping cart options that most sales pages use.
Full Shopping Cart Platforms
These provide all of the capabilities you could need for your online store and are a full-service solution to your product sales needs.
Licensed Shopping Carts
With this form of shopping cart plugin, the software provider delivers a shopping cart feature that you host on your server. These come in premium, budget, and even free and open-source forms.
Add-on Shopping Cart Platforms
These shopping cart options allow you to add the functions of a complete online store to any existing website. This is an excellent choice for new businesses just starting out to jump right into sales.
Hosted Shopping Carts
These are hosted by a 3rd party provider who provides full sales portal functionality to you for a regular fee. This is another turnkey solution that works great for new businesses.
Simple Shopping Cart Integrations
Companies that only sell a small number of products can do well with this simple shopping cart format. These are low in features, but simple, and easy to manage.
The Top 5 Shopping Cart Ecommerce Platform Providers
There are many, many shopping cart solutions out there for you to choose from. While popularity is not always a sign of merit when it comes to online sales software services it usually is. To that end, here are our top picks.
5. Zen Cart
Zen Cart gives you the option of having a full online store designed and able to sell products and services, not just one or the other. Where Zen Cart really stands out is the fact that it lets you select the hosting service company you like best rather than making you use the one they partner with. If you already have a partnership with a hosting service, this is perfect. It gives you complete control over your sales pages.
4. OpenCart
OpenCart is known for being exceedingly user-friendly. It lets you design, activate, and manage your sale pages in your time with the click of a button. OpenCart also gives you a number of custom checkout page templates. This is a big help in getting the checkout process fine-tuned just the way you and your customers like it. Even better, it automatically generates heading titles, meta tags, titles, and short and long product descriptions.
3. Magento
One of the all-around best shopping cart solutions available, Magento is ideal for small and medium-sized businesses looking to expand or just get started. If you want your checkout pages to look and feel original and be beautifully on-brand, Magento is the best choice. You will also get open source code for the utilities Magento provides. This means you have ultimate control over the way your checkout process works and feels. It may be a bit harder to use than the other top options, but if you’re up for learning how to use it, you won’t be sorry.
2. BigCommerce
Our number-two shopping cart solution, BigCommerce, lets you build an online store that can sell products and services. The interface is one of the most user-friendly among the top-tier shopping cart software products. It also lets you handle your own storefront while BigCommerce does the maintenance and hosting for your sales processing pages for you.
1. Shopify
Of all the shopping cart platforms we’ve mentioned, Shopify is the most familiar, and for good reason. It lets you build a unique online store with the ability to sell both products and services. It helps you manage your inventory, which is extremely valuable. It also helps you track orders and customers for customer service and to help you develop customer loyalty outreach. Checkouts are extra easy for customers, and it’s user-friendly from the front to the back-end of the user experience. For just $9 a month, it’s a steal.
How Leap Payments Can Help
Here at Leap Payments, we have a number of useful solutions to help you get the most out of your online sales. These include:
- Credit Card Processing
- Recurring Payments
- Gift Cards & Loyalty Programs
- Lifetime Rate Lock
- Buy Now Pay Later
- Mobile Card Processing
- Same & Next Day Funding
- Point of Sales Systems
- Electronic Check Processing
- Terminals & Hardware
- Virtual Terminals
- Developer Tools
As you may have noticed, the internet is in the middle of transitioning from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0. Unfortunately, for ecommerce businesses like yours, that means governments, institutions, and the legacy credit processors are going to demand more from you. As a result, more and more businesses are being flagged as high-risk merchants.
Leap Payments is dedicated, first and foremost, to serving businesses that have been or are at risk of being hit with this label. When legacy credit processors deny you service unexpectedly, Leap Payments is here to back you up. We are a full-service online sales utility, here to help you stay in business.
Applications are processed quickly, and our customer service is second to none. Get in touch with Leap Payments today, to learn more.
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