How can Online Shopping Carts Increase Sales and benefit Your Merchant Business?

Your Web site is your online connection to your prospects and customers. You can host your own or work with an Internet service provider (ISP) or a commerce service provider (CSP), such as EarthLink. Your Web site design is essential to the success of your e-business. It must look appealing, attractive and be very easy to navigate. Most important, it must appear professional to ensure that customers and prospects perceive you as a legitimate, credible business. The appearance of your Web site is crucial-it is the first experience that customers and prospects have with your business. It forms a long-lasting impression of the type of business you are.

This is your bank-authorized transaction processing account, which allows you to accept major credit cards and electronic checks online. Many banks avoid Internet merchant accounts, which they classify as high risk. Look for a transaction processor with experience in both traditional and Internet commerce, one that has made Internet accounts an important part of its business model. Find a processor with high approval rates and relationships with many different online shopping carts vendors. In addition, with a one-stop processor, your account can easily and conveniently be set up online through an Internet service provider.

This is the software that actually processes your customer order information, address verification, credit card number, etc. The software-or gateway sends the data to a credit card authorization network, which verifies that the customer's credit card is valid, and it verifies that the shipping address matches the billing address. This software helps reduce fraud, because a card where the billing and shipping addresses do not match could be stolen.

Your secure payment gateway is your link to a special computer that encrypts confidential ordering data and protects you and your customers. Your customers know they are on a secure server connection when the uniform resource locator (URL) in their browser reads https://. The "s" stands for "secure." If your customer's ordering information is not sent via a secure payment gateway, it can be intercepted by computer hackers.

Online shopping carts are electronic order forms for a merchant's business. Customers access the order form via a hyperlink placed on the merchant's Web site. Similar in concept to a physical supermarket shopping cart, customers can put in as many or as few items as they wish, selected from the merchant's Web site catalog.

Shopping cart software allows merchants to accept product orders for multiple products from their Web sites. Shopping cart software automatically calculates and totals your customers' orders, including tax and shipping.

Some setup is required to make your shopping cart operate on your Web site. The shopping cart software must be installed on the server that hosts your Web site or on the secure server that accepts sensitive ordering information. A credit card processor that is considered a one-stop shop for e-commerce can get you started with all five of these essential Internet business components.

Whether you are a startup or established business, there are certain online sshopping carts criteria that should be available to your Web site. These criteria include:

Does your shopping cart feature back-end browser-based administration that helps ensure quality service and customer satisfaction, including:

International capabilities-Do you conduct business in other languages, in other countries, in other currencies? Your shopping cart partner should be able to accommodate these needs.

The right shopping cart relationship can facilitate building and managing your consumer and e-business catalogs, as well as making online shopping as easy as point, click and fill in the blanks. Browser-based shopping cart management lets merchants control all aspects of their storefronts, from product maintenance to category management to order and credit card processing.

Your customers want shopping and payment options. The right credit card processor and shopping cart relationships ensure that you make it easy and pleasant for customers to shop on your Web site. The right online shopping carts ensure that your e-commerce platform is easy to implement, use and customize. This makes your business a full-service e-commerce solution for your customers. It encourages them to buy from you and to return to your Web site again and again.

Prices of online shopping carts vary widely depending on a number of considerations:

Your best bet to select the right shopping cart is to develop a relationship with a trusted, one-stop credit card processor, which can help you conduct e-commerce securely, safely, quickly and effectively over the Internet.