TerraNetwork

Anybody selling online will need to settle one question: Which shopping cart system do I choose? Googling in this case will not help – for one simple reason: there’s no “one best cart” out there. But there is the right cart for you. And we’ve got 7 simple steps to get you there.

7 steps:
1. Have a business plan
2. Put together a list of requirements
3. Research payment systems
4. Decide on who does what
5. Look into the future
6. Make your choice
7. Test, test and test again

1. Have a business plan

Established businesses will already have this, but start-ups and especially anyone exploring the idea of selling online may start out with a hazy desire to sell online. The days though of just having a shop are history and if you want to survive online, you must be clear on what you sell (products), whom you sell it to (customer group) and how you’re going to sell it (marketing). So if you haven’t yet got a business plan, now’s the time to write one.

2. Put together a list of requirements

Now that you know what your shop is all about, write down what you need your online shop to do. If you e.g. sell clothing then tracking attribute stock (sizes, colours) is important. If you sell B2B having the ability to differentiate prices based on customer group can be vital. If you want to sell overseas, multiple currencies and/or languages are required. You can also capture design requirements e.g. fashion shops will need a different feel to discount office products. [see end of post for some suggestions]

3. Research payment systems

Taking money online is the heart of your shop. Some payment systems such as PayPal have wide support, but others may not be available with your chosen cart. Getting a payment integration written for you usually requires a decent budget (e.g. paying a week’s development time), so if you have a specific payment system in mind, make sure there’s an existing payment integration available.

4. Decide on who does what

Have a think about who will be doing the build of the shop, the design and the maintenance. If you are intending to do it yourself, then an easy to use design templating system could save lots of time. If you intend to outsource to a design/development agency, then research going market rates to see how it fits with your budget. If you employ staff, consider whether you need role-based permissions and training for using the admin area.

5. Look into the future

Software doesn’t stand still. Currently most shops/servers are run on PHP5/MySQL5 but PHP6 and MySQL6 are both in development and will impact on shopping cart scripts. Same goes for security vulnerabilities. It therefore pays to choose a cart which is actively maintained so you can upgrade your shop when needed. Forums and past release schedules can give you a good feel for the activity around a cart.

6. Make your choice

Now that you’ve got your list, you can do an evaluation of the shopping carts you’ve had in mind and see how they measure up. A simple tick list system usually does the trick. Ignore features which may sound interesting but are not on your list. If you don’t need widget ABC, then having widget ABC won’t help even if it’s a really cool widget. [ we're currently working on a comparison of popular open source shopping carts which we'll publish in this blog soon!]

7. Test, test and test again

Before committing to a cart, give it a test run. Open source software can be downloaded for free and run e.g. with XAMPP on your PC. Paid software may have a free trial period. Try using the shop with a few categories, products and test orders – this will give you a feel for the admin and test how easy it will be to run the shop. Switching carts can be a hassle once you’ve got customer/order/product data so you’re likely to be using this cart for the next years.

And if you’ve followed this process, you should now have the confident to launch the shop with the shopping cart which is right for you!

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Suggestions for requirements:

Stock Control
Attribute Stock Tracking (variations of a product e.g. size)
Payment integrations
Shipping methods
Currency
Languages
Integration with accounting software
Integration with drop ship suppliers
Reports and CSV export of data
CSV import of products
Manually entering orders in admin
Managing refunds/returns
Multiple product images
Cross Sell
Product Bundles
WYISWYG editor support
CMS for adding/deleting/editing pages
Newsletter management
SSL handling (shared vs full SSLs)
URL rewriting
Metatags (description, keywords)
Discount Coupons
Selling virtual products / downloads
Customer group based pricing
Multiple shop frontends