eCommerce Shopping Cart Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is a shopping cart?

The software that catalogs the items a customer wishes to buy on a site as they shop, tallies the price for checkout, and communicates with the payment gateway to facilitate the purchase of goods online. Some carts also calculate shipping, tax, discounts, and a variety of other functions.

Q: What’s the difference between a shopping cart and a storefront?

A shopping cart is a software component that works with a current store catalog by collecting information on what a customer has chosen to buy, tallying the cost, shipping, and tax, and then communicating with a payment gateway to facilitate payment. Storefronts offer a more all inclusive software product. Typically, a user would set up their entire store using the storefront’s webpage building tool, the storefront would include web hosting, a shopping cart software, a payment interface, and bookkeeping software. There are many companies offering storefront software, for more information on the different storefronts available, click here: BUTTON –to storefront comparison

Q: Why do I need a shopping cart?

Shopping carts provide a quick and easy software option for collecting data as customers shop, check out, pay, and ship from an online store. Shopping carts do the work that would otherwise be done by a person at a checkout stand (scanning the items, tallying them, adding tax and shipping costs, receiving payment), and delivers an order to be filled to the business. It is possible to write your own cart software, but using an existing product is typically more economical, and the competitive market for users has spawned a variety of carts with different features depending on the needs of the business.

Q: How does the cart integrate with my bank?

Carts are programmed to work with a variety of payment gateways (such as Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, Paypal, echecks, etc.) to accept payment from a customer, and deliver it to you. Depending on the payment gateways you choose to use, and the specifics of your bank, it is possible for you to arrange deposits from the payment gateways directly into your bank account. Contact your bank representative for the specifics on setting this up.

Q: What payment methods are available?

Different carts support different payment gateways. Major credit cards and PayPal are typically accepted, as well as e-checks. You should scrutinize the cart software you intend to use before you buy it to make sure that all the payment gateways you want to use are built into the software.

Q: How does a shopping cart integrate with an internet business?

Example: Assume I have a business selling coffee mugs and I want to take it online. I hire a firm to design a website that lists all my products. Now I need a way for the customer to keep track of what they selected as they navigate around my site, tally up the total, and allow them to pay me, and tell me where to ship the product – functions that can be handled by a shopping cart. The shopping cart would make a list as the customer clicked on different mugs, tally the costs, collect payment from the customer by getting credit card (or other payment gateway) information, collect shipping information, and produce an order for me to fill.

Q: How do I decide which cart is right for me?

Just like with shoes, carts come in all types of designs and sizes. There are carts that have capacity for large businesses and small. You need to start by having a firm understanding of the internet business you are trying to integrate; what are the business’ needs, capacity, how do we want to accept payment, etc. Once you have an idea of the requirements, then review the features of different carts, and find the best match. If you still need help, you can use CartCompare.com’s recommendations for small business, or big business to help you make a decision.