Shopping cart solutions are crucial for selling online and serve as eCommerce platforms where merchants can set up an online store. Some shopping carts offer pre-made templates while others require them to start from scratch. Business owners who want to run their own eCommerce store will need to pick an all-inclusive shopping cart solution, especially one that supplies reliable web hosting tools and multiple options for processing transactions.
Fortunately, it’s not too difficult to launch an online store if you already have experience creating a website or adjusting your server settings.–Just let the support team handle all the back-end work while you concentrate on growing your business. Shopping cart services have plenty of features to help you cater to your customers from marketing analytics to product listings.
Here are the five best shopping services recommended by sellers worldwide:
1. Shopify
Most of you have probably heard of Shopify. This eCommerce platform provides its own hosting and is reasonably priced to boot. Shopify is well-received by its users, supplying them with all the basics features of a shopping cart including 24/7 customer support. It started off as a snowboard selling service but now hosts millions of digital stores. There are five monthly-billed plans where some allow merchants to establish multiple sales channels or scale their business with an all-purpose point of sale integration. It even recovers abandoned shopping carts.
2. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is another popular, open-source shopping cart to consider. This plugin can be activated from your WordPress dashboard and gives you access to inventory tracking, pending orders, and product descriptions, factoring in flat-rate and overseas shipping fees. WooCommerce is primed for SEO to ensure your site ranks higher in the search results. You have the option to sell digital products, adjust checkout settings, allow user reviews, or sort merchandise into separate categories. You’ll receive in-depth analytics about your store’s daily performance.
3. Magento
Magento boasts over 260,000 satisfied merchants due to its high scalability and extensive features with both SaaS and open-source versions on the market. Magento Commerce is designed for enterprise businesses and comes with global selling, B2B functionality, visual merchandising, mobile-optimized shopping, and additional cloud-hosted services. Magento allows you to configure different product types under its catalog management features. With marketing and SEO solutions, customers will be able to save items to their shopping cart or compare related products.
4. 3dcart
Depending on the size of your business, you might want to choose 3dcart to take advantage of its robust eCommerce platform. The 3dcart toolbox is divided into four subscription levels based on the store’s annual revenue and the number of email accounts you own. Many user inputs require a two-step process such as adding products or previewing orders. On the front-end, you can display wishlists, rewards programs, out-of-stock items, and use a calculator to estimate tax and shipping fees. Merchants will get to synch their stores to Amazon and eBay too.
5. BigCommerce
A company based in Texas, BigCommerce is praised for its stellar customer support, excellent usability, and a sizable selection of built-in tools. BigCommerce makes the setup process easier starting from the admin dashboard where you get to customize your store. Merchants can upload their product lists and add images on top of their shipping, inventory, and SEO information. All subscription plans offer the following: Reporting metrics, unlimited storage, single-page checkouts, and free transactions. It has stencil themes to assist with storefront editing.
What to Look for in an eCommerce Shopping Cart
At first glance, it may be hard to tell the difference between eCommerce shopping solutions when all of them are subscription-based, software platforms with loads of extensions and multi-channel integrations. But, selling online doesn’t have to be complicated: Rather than worrying about transaction fees and processing payments, you should concentrate on the essentials by weighing the positives and downsides of each plan.
Be on the lookout for eCommerce hosting sites that feature the elements shown below:
- an easy-to-use platform
- custom storefront themes
- unlimited storage space
- email marketing tools
- inventory management
- delivery and shipping
- discounts and coupons
- a category search engine
To decide which shopping cart software is worth your money, think of it as a trade-off between a premium plan where everything is ready to use versus a half-baked one that guarantees affordable pricing but has fewer features to help you manage your eCommerce site. Either way, operating an online store carries little financial risk even if you end up failing to generate a profit in the first year.
The real question to ask is: Does this eCommerce solution operate within the scope of your business?
