Shopping Cart, Online Store & Ecommerce Solutions

• Ecommerce Solutions
  • Ecommerce Solutions
  • Shopping Cart
  • Payment Gateway Integration

Need a Shopping Cart or Online Store?

Let Tall Emu cut through the noise

There are literally hundreds of shopping cart solutions to choose from but the difference in quality, price and functionality makes it a very confusing decision.

That’s where we come in. First, we have built our own cart that can be fully integrated with your internal systems like your CRM (or even better, our CRM) or your accounting system or payment gateways.

We can also advise you on hosted off the shelf solutions as we have worked with many of the major shopping carts you are likely to have come across. If you are looking to buy one or are just wanting to upgrade your current shopping cart solution then speak to us first.

Call us on 02 9299 9959 or use our contact form

How to choose the best shopping cart?

Selecting the best shopping cart service is vital to the effectiveness of your ecommerce business. This quick guide specifies what you should consider before purchasing a cart.

Shopping cart 101

A shopping cart is a dedicated section of your website where you can list your products and services that can be purchased. It can include categories, descriptions, prices and any other pertinent information that will aid the visitor to buy. Finally when the visitor is complete they can proceed to the payment page to make the payment.

In most cases shopping carts don’t handle the financial transaction. In essence the shopping cart is the front end (of your online store) which passes information via a secure connection to a payment gateway. This is a separate service called the payment gate or online merchant facility.

Here is a list of some the choices and features you may have to consider

• Free or premium shopping carts?

• Hosted or self-host?

• Subdomain, iframe or cross domain?

• Free ecommerce solutions?

• Does it enable you to Suggest sell/cross sell

• Can it handle quantity discounts/coupons or promo codes

• Can you setup autoresponder or a newsletter functions?

• Support your Affiliates and Reseller programs

• Other features commonly incorporated into carts include inventory tracking, sales tax calculation, stationery creation/management, reviews and wish lists

What kind of shopping cart does my hosting service support?

Getting more technical, shopping cart scripts are written in many different coding formats - PERL, PHP, ASP just to name a few. You’ll need to check with your website host before purchasing a program. If you opt for a remotely hosted service (explained in more detail below), then it won't matter what programming language the cart software is written in.

What are you willing to spend?

It's easy to blow your budget on a turbo-charged shopping cart only to find that there were a number of other critical items you didn't factor in, such as a payment gateway, or the fact that the cart software may be so complex that you need to hire somebody else to assist in implementation!

What are you selling and how are you going to deliver it?

If you are selling hard goods that need shipping, choice of cart is a little easier as this is a standard function. Many carts also offer customers the ability to calculate different shipping options and to get live quotes back from shipping companies.

If you are trading in soft goods such as software and want to make delivery available online immediately, you'll need to carefully compare carts.

Some shopping carts that are capable of delivering goods online redirect customers to a static download page after a successful transaction. This isn't a good idea as the customer (and his/her friends) are able to return to the page to download again and again. A better equipped shopping cart will only provide customers with a temporary URL that will be unique to that customer and may only be available for a few hours after purchase before it is deleted.

Another strategy employed by some carts for soft goods online delivery is to use a static URL for downloading, but scripting is implemented to ensure the visitor to the page has come via the shopping cart after a successful transaction has occurred.

Yet another soft goods delivery method used by carts is to attach the software to an email sent to the customer after a successful transaction. This may be suitable for very small files, but I don't think many ISP's would appreciate you sending 20 megabyte attachments to a customers inbox - in fact, it would not be possible in many instances.

Where will my business be in 6 months time?

Does the package allow for scalability? While you may not require bells and buzzers now, as your business grows you may find that your needs change. The better shopping carts are in a modular format which allow for scalability with minimum downtime. Be sure to check the prices of modules you may need in the future. It isn't uncommon for companies is to offer the base model for next to nothing and then to charge like wounded bulls for any upgrades.

Is the cart software compatible with my payment gateway?

There are dozens of different payment gateways which plug into various shopping cart packages - but perhaps not yours! Before purchasing your cart, also review gateway services supported by the software (and also make sure that the payment gateway is compatible with the Internet merchant account you have with your bank). It can be a bit of a challenge getting the cart you want to talk to the gateway service you want and also to your bank! Read our guide to payment gateways and merchant accounts.

What kind of payments are supported by the cart?

Credit card transactions are now a normal part of our online world. If your shopping cart software does not support credit card transactions or if you have not enabled credit card processing, you're in trouble - you may as well just close up shop!
There are still some customers who will refuse to use a credit card over the Internet, so you will need to be able to offer other forms of payment - e.g. money orders, echecks etc.

Backup support, importing or exporting data

A good shopping cart application will have excellent support for backing up files and allowing for export into a variety of formats. Flexible exporting functions will also be of value in the future should you need to change carts and wish to import existing data into a new application.

What level of support will I need and receive?

All shopping cart providers will tell you that their software is simple to install and configure. Few will be actually acurate in making that statement. If you don't have the technical expertise to configure your shopping cart, get quotes from the company or a third party contractor to undertake this work for you.

The last word

As you can see from the summary above there is quite a lot involved in your decision making process. Let us give you the benifit of our experiance and call us today.