Shopping Carts
It should be noted at this stage that selling one's goods on the Web is not like traditional selling. Hopefully if your customer has searched for the words that have lead them to your website this is because they are already interested in making a purchase. Over-agressive selling as such smacks of barrow-boy tactics and is a quick turn/click off! The most important task now is to convince your potential customer that you are a genuine supplier, that the goods will match their description and will arrive when you say they will, and that their payment is handled professionally via a secure system. Your shopping cart needs to convey the image that you are friendly, helpful and willing to speak with your customer in person if need be. There are many shopping carts on the Internet which are too complicated to use, and there is no personal contact available to assist the customer. As a small mail order business your personal contact with your customer is much more critical than it is for a large well-established mail order business.
When you enter a shopping cart to make an online purchase, you may not realise that you may not be on the site that you first visited - unless you inspect the URL (website address) carefully. Then, when you go to make your payment, you may find that you are on yet another website! Using a shopping cart is indeed an obscure process for many customers!
In order to find out more about our TOPS software and how it can integrate with your shopping cart, please see our presentation.
Various shopping cart software companies provide their clients with special software or online tools for building their shopping cart so you do not need the services of a web designer. This can be the cheapest way to being online, but it all depends on the image you want to project to your customers. If your goods are high class and top quality, the image you need is rarely going to be projected by a "build your own webshop" system with the design contraints that brings. But some homespun goods are almost better sold by a homely webshop that you have done yourself - as they say, "horses for courses". These shopping cart systems also often involve the client uploading their shopping cart webpages to a special website provided by the shopping cart company, or even building their pages online using a "content management system". These websites, in turn, link through to a "secure server" where the financial transaction is completed - the one area which gives greatest concern to online customers.
Initially a lot of these sites were in the USA, as British institutions seemed to take a while to get into shopping carts and ecommerce. However, increasingly, online shopping cart website systems are available as a UK-based service.
Actinic are one of the best known shopping cart companies. However, there are many alternatives - there are now numerous shopping cart software companies within the UK. Shopfitter, for example, have a useful pay-per-transaction system which saves you having to meet upfront costs.
You should study the payment system first to see whether this is something that would be practical for your existing banking / credit card processing arrangements. You might find that this is the major hurdle. We have a lot of experience in this area, and we are always willing to give you useful advice. We would recommend you visit the DTI electronic payments website which has a very useful chart showing projected costs for various electronic payment systems.
Another area you should study before choosing a shopping cart system is to see whether they provide a facility for what we call "gifting". Due partially to credit card restrictions, some shopping cart software systems do not provide for goods to be sent to addresses other than that of the credit card holder.
Another feature to consider is whether the shopping cart system allows your customers to set 'remember me', so they will not need to enter all their own details or those of the friend and family to whom they have gifted before! If you are aiming to be really customer friendly, this is essential! Nothing is worse for a customer than repeatedly having to fill in their personal details online. Shopping carts have become unpopular among many of the public in the UK and elsewhere due to these kinds of problems.
Moreover, there should be space for the customer to provide the carrier with special instructions - such as "Please leave parcel across the road with Mrs Jones if not in". If your shopping cart software provider does not allow for such a facility this could affect your ability to get your goods to your customers in time.
We are able to interface with various shopping carts, and therefore save you a lot of extra work in terms of processing the customer information that is derived from the cart. We would recommend you speak to us first about your choice of shopping cart if you are going to use our software.
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