Shopping Carts

There are a lot of different shopping carts out there, and it can be hard to find the right one for your online business. Many new online business owners find that they have so many options to choose from that it becomes very difficult, and even confusing, to find the right shopping cart software for their needs. Often the best place to start your search for a shopping cart is by starting with the most popular shopping cart software and services. Chances are that if it worked for so many other people, it will work for you too.

The most popular shopping cart software is called Shopping-Q. This shopping cart software comes with a lot of great features, including the ability to enter multiple items at once and email all of your customers. It can hold up to one million products, but does not have a product database, so all of your products must be entered manually. Still, at just $150, this is a great shopping cart for smaller retail businesses.

Another popular shopping cart software is called the Fortune 3 Shopping Cart. This shopping cart service is actually an e-commerce package. It allows you to set up your online store with ease, with the ability to email all customers, set up an affiliate program, and ad multiple products at once. It also integrates with accounting software. The shopping cart product database only holds thirty items, however, so only use this shopping cart if you don’t have a large product database.

The next popular shopping cart is called X-Cart Gold. This fabulous shopping cart software is only slightly more expensive than Shopping-Q, but has a lot more features. It supports over twenty payment options like PayPal, with no merchant account needed. It has a product database with an unlimited number of products. It supports all major shipping interfaces, integrates with QuickBooks, and has all of the other features that Shopping-Q offers with their shopping cart, for only thirty dollars more.

Finally, Web Site Director is a very popular shopping cart software for the starting online retail business. Although quite expensive, this shopping cart software supports a variety of product databases, with an unlimited number of products. It also comes with many html editors, interfaces with accounting software and major shippers, and several payment gateways.

Remember, these are just some of the shopping carts that other online businesses have found to be successful for their online store. You should still shop around and make sure that you are getting all of the features you need, and at a price that you can afford. But, it is always good to have a place to start, and these shopping carts are definitely worth looking into.

By: Charles McLaughlin

Creating A Shopping Cart Web Page

Creating a shopping cart to integrate with a website or to create a shopping cart webpage has always been challenging for small business. It's very difficult without knowing some programming in languages such as Perl, PHP, Javascript to create a shopping cart system.

Once a shopping cart system has been setup it must be integrated with a payment acceptance method such as a credit card processor or Paypal. All of this requires some programming knowledge which is generally beyond the scope of most small business owners seeking to make a profit selling their wares on the internet. Until now this process has been difficult or costly. It's very expensive to hire programmers to create shopping cart for websites. Software packages are available, but they usually require installation and configuration.

Recently service application provider, Centranet, has launched a service which makes it easy for merchants to create a shopping cart webpage. With the launch of Create Forms added service of payment method integration small businesses can now create shopping web cart pages in minutes.

Instead of requiring any programming or configuration users of the CreateForms service simply set-up a custom html web page which is integrated with 2checkout.com and paypal.com. A merchant signs up for a free Create Forms account and uses an online wizard to setup a shopping cart web form. The merchant then enters his paypal and/or 2checkout information. The form is seemlessly integrated with the chosen payment method(s).

This new service now allows small business owners to quickly and easily accept online payments with custom web forms.

By: Kyle Ware