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What to Expect When Buying a Shopping Cart or Ecommerce Solution
By: Paul L Stevens
It's only natural to have high hopes that our choice of shopping cart software and the company behind it will conform to our every wish. Unfortunately this is a rare occurrence, being that most online store owners go through several systems until they finally find the right one. But you can avoid these mistakes with proper preparations and realistic expectations of the software, the publishers, and yourself.
1. Prepare for diligent testing of shopping cart demos to determine the exact features you need. If you have a list of "must have" features that are critical to your business or client, it is your responsibility to test the demos to make sure it functions the way you need it to BEFORE you buy. Do not assume an "affiliate program" or "e-newsletter" feature will operate the way you need it to. The definition of a feature between different publishers can be vague and subjective at times, such as an "e-newsletter" really being a page of news on the site, or "padding shipping quotes" being a separate handling fee. "Search engine optimization" could be as basic as defining product's meta tags (not very effective), versus an actual static rebuild of the site (more effective). Thoroughly test the demo of the ecommerce solution your interested in, both the admin area and the storefront. Place a test order from the standpoint of your customers, and process the order in the admin area. Imagine all the scenarios you can that you'd have with your customers. Do you want to offer discounts? If so, how do the coupons work? Is it just a general coupon or can it be applied to a specific product, category, or vendor? What if your customers need to change their order? Does the admin area allow editing an order? Do you have heavy items that you want to ship with realtime UPS/Fedex rate quotes? If so, the cart better be able to set a maximum box weight because realtime rate quotes max out at 75lbs for UPS and 150lbs for UPSPS. The more test runs you try with the demo, the more you'll understand if the cart will fully meet all your expectations.
2. Always contact the developer to verify your assumptions about your crucial shopping cart features. If you can't determine from the demos if the software has all the features exactly the way you need it to be, contact the developer's sales department and explain your situation and needs. If it turns out that the cart doesn't have the feature you need, the last thing you need to say is "this seems like such a common feature, and all other carts have it" or "I can't believe you don't have this feature, it should be standard!" Ninety-nine percent of the time, it only seems like such a blatant feature because it's so important to you, but yet it's impossible for any one company to have a one-size-fits-all shopping cart for a few hundred bucks. A better response would be "what will it take for me to get this?" In that case they may explain that the feature is in future upgrade plans, or they may suggest custom programming of your cart system, either from themselves as the manufacturers or their approved 3rd party developers. Maybe now you'll have a better idea of how this feature needs to work for you, and can start researching other systems that may have this in their core software.
3. If you have very industry specific needs, don't get upset that a $250 cart system doesn't wash the dog. If your web business is simple and straightforward, such as "here's my products, let me take your order", then most all carts will do great for you. But if you start throwing curve balls into the process, an off the shelf shopping cart system will need some customization. Software programming is built upon the assumption of repetition. It assumes that every step is the same from checkout to fulfillment. But if you want Product A to suddenly be excluded from the shipping charge because it's too big or it's being drop shipped from Vendor A who adds a 5% handling fee to KY and CA residents, plan on spending a good several hundred dollars, if not thousands on custom programming. It's understandable that as a small business owner or a client with a small budget is going to find the license fee itself to be a huge hit, so naturally they have high hopes that it will perform like an employee who can adapt to most any situation flawlessly. But there really are only two options, either simplify and streamline your business and ordering process, or budget some custom programming to get it done the way you want.
4. Don't skimp on the investment of your shopping cart software...it's your storefront to the world. Most large companies spend millions on their web store, yet some see $500 an insurmountable price tag for software. But think back to the days before Al Gore blessed us with the internet, where a new business startup would require at least $75,000 or so to open up shop. Rent alone would average $2000 a month and up. Now, for a few hundred dollars, you can sell to the entire world, and with a little search engine optimization effort, customers come to your store without spending a dime on advertising. It's an incredible age we live in for anyone to have their own business for such a small investment. So if you find out that you have to spend thousands of dollars as a one time fee for your storefront to sell to the world, it's still a spectacular deal. Maybe you're considering a bottom of the line cart system simply because you're trying to spend the bare minimum for what you need at the moment. But why not plan ahead for the future? The $800 cart system would may reveal many new features you never were aware of that may increase your profits. Suddenly you find out that you can have affiliate links send you new business, e-newsletters to tell your current customers about new products, or reoccurring billing for service contracts or membership content. It's better to spend a little more now on the enterprise level package versus always starting from scratch with the cheapest package every couple years. Always plan for the future when comparing shopping cart programs and determining your budget.
5. Great tech support is crucial, but be prepared to pay for it. As you may have already experienced, web software is more tricky and temperamental than the cd rom you load in your personal computer and double click to install. There's files to ftp up to the server, permissions to be set, installation wizards to run, and globals to be set. If you said "huh?" to any one of these, you'll probably want the developers themselves to install the shopping cart program for you. Usually this will run about $50-$100. Then comes integrating your design, loading products, configuring the payment gateway, and processing orders. Even if you choose a hosted solution, design integration can still demand enormous amounts of support. Sometimes all the documentation and help forums in the world can't compare to calling someone up and having a professional assist you. It is highly recommended that you choose a company that offers real phone support, either as part of the license price or as a separate support package. Trying to troubleshoot technical issues over email can be very tedious, time consuming, and frustrating. Keep in mind, however, that phone support is one of the most expensive costs of software publishing. Be grateful that your $200 purchase includes 30 days or more of phone support time or tokens. Customers walk a fine line when they demand free support beyond what their purchase included, asking for exceptions to the policy. If you can't afford buying additional support, then make sure you allow plenty of free time to work on your shopping cart implementation so you can take advantage of your free support time. It's not the developer's fault that you got real busy and didn't have the time to use your free support time. Also, most publishers don't offer unlimited bug support either, contrary to popular belief. Software warranties are treated like any other product warranty...you get a specified time that they will repair defects, and that's it. Therefore, allow ample development time to use your free support, and budget for additional support/upgrade purchases.
6. Determine your goals with the shopping cart software or ecommerce solution. As stated earlier, it's going to be very difficult to find one shopping cart system that does every possible web application you need, fully loaded with every possible feature in the world. Every cart will have strengths and weaknesses, so you must define what your main goals are in your web business. Is it to provide an easy interface for your dealers to order, to save your employees time? Then search for a cart that has strong vendor support and dealer login and invoicing capabilities. Is it to launch a new business and hope most of your traffic comes from web searches? Find a cart that has a strong SEO system. Do you want to build a small base of regular customers? You'll probably want a shopping cart program that has a product-specific email list management and easy reordering with saved customer credit cards. Selling digital products? Make sure it can handle multiple-file downloads per product, and maybe even reoccurring billing so you can charge monthly membership fees to your digital content. But don't expect a shopping cart system in the sub $1000 range to be your own personal amazon.com.
You can expect, however, that if you focus your goals, do your research, test the demos, and have a realistic long term budget, your shopping cart software will serve you very well and pay for itself many times over.
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