You have done everything right so far. You have created a killer ecommerce website with some great content, provided features that guarantee extraordinary user experience and ensured that the hosting is of impeccable standards so that users experience no downtimes and enjoy high availability. And obviously, you are getting great traffic as a result of all your efforts.
But will all these guarantee the kind of conversion numbers that you are aiming for? It probably will if you have selected one of the best shopping carts for your ecommerce business.
Why Choosing The Right Cart Is Critical To Your Business
With such cutthroat competition in the ecommerce industry, you must find ways to provide your customers a truly unique and hassle-free shopping experience, every time they visit your website. In online business, efficiency is what works. You might have cracked the code for bringing customers to your website, but it amounts to nothing unless they perform the specific action that you want them to – buy from your site. That’s where ecommerce shopping carts can come to your aid.
Last minute shopping cart abandonment is a dreadful truth that every ecommerce business has to deal with. This may happen because of many reasons but there are ways of dealing with it. Choosing the right checkout process is the best way to minimize incidents of last minute sales abandonment. Yes, minimize is right because you cannot eliminate such incidents in online shopping.
Work With Your Team To Choose The Perfect Cart For Your Business
During the course of your ecommerce website development process, the design team must be provided all possible input about your business model so that they can incorporate the most suitable shopping cart that best compliments your business. New ecommerce websites sometimes prefer free, open-source software that can be upgraded as business grows.
The cost of shopping carts also varies with their design, features and user-convenience. Customizable carts will cost more than the manual carts which are very basic in nature. Subscription-based middle ground shopping carts are also available and can be integrated into the website. You can research and discuss the various options with your developer. The kind of inventory you plan to have and your budget will be other factors that can influence your choice of your checkout cart for ecommerce website.
Types Of Shopping Carts
Some shopping carts are programmed to provide inventory and stock data. Advanced carts can even inform you about sales figures for specific products while some are capable of generating analytical reports to give you detailed sales data of your store for specific categories. Choosing a shopping cart that can manage both front-end and back-end applications can help you gain greater control over a wider area of your business without having to put in much time and effort.
Smart ecommerce entrepreneurs prefer investing in shopping carts that can evolve with their business. You must be able to add a specific feature to improve user experience or scrap some specific functionality because you discovered over time that it’s of scarce use to your customers. Choose a cart you can easily upgrade or downgrade to match the changing needs of your business.
Mobile Friendly Carts Are A Must
Mobile and hand-held devices are becoming increasingly popular tools for online shopping. Customers need not visit their desktop computers to browse the web. Now they have it in their pocket, making it easier for them visit ecommerce sites and make purchases from anywhere and anytime. To keep up with the changing times, you must implement a shopping cart optimized for mobile devices. All the information that the customer needs must fit in neatly within the mobile screen with error. Without a mobile friendly checkout process, customers might lose interest and abandon the purchase process.
Keep Checkouts Simple And Quick
A long-drawn checkout route is the easiest way to guarantee abandonment of the purchase process. It can be quite frustrating for customers to be confronted with endless requests for information after they arrive at the checkout page. The transaction step of the ecommerce shopping cart should be the easiest to complete for clients. Overtly complicated procedures could force customers to abandon your website. You could lose valuable business after having done all the hard work. Keep checkouts short and simple. You will see a significant surge in conversions.
Use a shopping cart with the ability to store customer payment details. This may involve requesting customers to register with your store but experts are of the opinion that if the checkout is efficient, customers have no issues in signing up.
Choose a shopping cart that you are comfortable handling. If you find it complicated and confusing, chances are your customers will find it puzzling too. It is always advisable to keep testing the system on different types of customers before you find one that works best for all types. This is a great way of ensuring that the shopping cart is free of any glitches before it goes live.