PHP Shopping Carts: What to look for and how to choose the right one.

Choosing the shopping cart solution that is right for your e-commerce website can be a tedious task. There are varied choices and it’s really hard to know which ones are best for you. There’s a list of things that you have to consider to ensure that your business online is running smoothly, while providing a hassle-free shopping environment for your customers. If you want to learn more about the things that you have to look for in a shopping cart that will be perfect for your business, this guide will explain the points you should consider before purchasing a cart.

Installation
Are you a techie kind of person or the complete opposite? If you’re proficient with the PHP scripting language, you can just install on your own and customize the open source code provided. But if you’re not proficient, you’ll definitely need a web-based installation process that is very easy to follow.

Managing Customization
If you are in a hurry to get your online store up and running, you may buy a shopping cart that has predefined templates or some base designs already available for customization. In that case, you can quickly modify the templates to suit your preference and start selling right away.

If you’re familiar with HTML or you are confident of your PHP knowledge, you may consider buying a cart that gives you the flexibility to customize your website using HTML. You will then have the necessary tools for you to be able to make a high-functioning e-commerce site.

Availability of Technical Support
If you’re not that confident about being able to install, run and manage the shopping Kamagra cart yourself, the availability of technical support should be an essential factor to consider before buying one. Choose a shopping cart with available technical support. Make sure that the tech support is helpful and that they give you a quick response to your queries and problems.

Search Engine Friendly
As we all know, search engines drive a great amount of traffic to a website. It is therefore essential to make sure that your product pages can be easily accessed by the search engines.

For e-commerce websites that sell a lot of products, dynamically-generated websites can be very beneficial. However, some search engines are not able to spider websites that are dynamically generated. As a result, they often do not rank high on the search engines. To avoid this issue, some shopping cart solutions produce static pages. This may be an important factor for you to consider.

Conversion-Friendly Checkout Process
Obviously, the main reason why you’re opening an online shop is because you want to make sales. The fewer clicks a user has to make when buying a product, the better. If the shopping cart makes a user do a lot of work before they get what they want, it is likely they will not become a customer.

Product Growth
The moment you conceptualized your business, you naturally thought about your business’ room for growth. This is also important to consider when choosing a shopping cart. If your product line is still small, you may want to grow it in the future if your business goes well. Some shopping carts can offer unlimited products or provide an upgrade feature in case you’ll need more from your shopping cart software.

The key to being able to choose the right shopping cart software for your online business is practical testing. You should download a free version of the shopping cart that you are considering to experiment with the features that are available and see if they cater to but not surpass your needs. Hopefully this article will help you can find a cart that fits your needs and can help your business skyrocket.

Author Bio: Marc Trimble is a web developer and CEO of West7th Design and Development (www.west7th.net). With over 18 years of internet experience, Marc Trimble helps small business and non profits succeed online using a PHP Shopping Carts Software and other web 3.0 technologies.

Category: Business/E-Commerce
Keywords: php cart, php shopping cart software, shopping cart software, online shopping cart software