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Product Reviews Of Shopping Cart Software

Bendigo Web Hosting — Sat, 29 May 2010 04:53:47 +0000

Your website and the ability for customers to check out quickly and easily is incredibly important. As many website owners know, all too often a customer will place an item in their cart and go to check out. However, for whatever reason during checkout they change their mind and never complete the transaction. This could be due to any number of reasons, but in many cases it is simply because the checkout procedure is too much of a hassle. If you don’t want to lose sales at the last critical point then make sure you have the best shopping cart software. How do you do this? There are several ways, but one of them is to read product reviews.

Product reviews are important because it allows you to see from a website owner’s point of view the benefits and drawbacks a particular program might have. This is important because before you can learn from other’s experiences before you buy and install the software. You want to avoid as many lost sales as possible and the best way to do this is by reading product reviews and finding shopping cart software that will meet your needs. There are a few things to look for.

First, you want a software that makes it easy to checkout as well as make changes or return shopping. Some individuals may be in the process of checking out and realize they forgot to look through the clearance items. The last thing you want to do is have them start over so you need a shopping cart software that will easily let the customer return shopping and then back to the shopping cart with no confusion and seamless transition.

There are many different shopping cart software options on the market and some are great while others are just so-so. You don’t want a so-so shopping cart software but rather one that is right in line with what customers want from a checkout process. They don’t want to have to fill out a lot of forms, they don’t want to have to create an account, and they want to be able to make changes to their order and see the immediate price changes whether this be with shipping, taxes, or simply adding or removing items.

Finally, make sure your shopping cart software is never the reason why a potential customer leaves with her cart half full. This is the worst possible situation and if you are doing what it takes to get customers to your website and then making a purchase then the last thing you want is for your shopping cart software to turn them away.

Presented by Aaron Goldberg. Aaron is a defender d' Interspire, a supplier of software of carrito d' purchases of trade electr

Shopping Cart Software Product Reviews

Bendigo Web Hosting — Thu, 27 May 2010 07:15:04 +0000

When you start shopping for shopping cart software you need to know how to read product reviews to ensure you get the best understanding and knowledge of the product being sold. Keep in mind that often times the actual rating does not reflect the shopping cart software. Sometimes reviewers will give too many stars for a bad product or not enough stars for a good product. You will find that reading the information written in the reviews is considerably more helpful and will help you make a decision on what shopping cart software to purchase. Good Good shopping cart software will be rated 4-5 stars.

Of course, within the overall rating you will be able to read reviews and will certainly find some that are 1-3 stars. That’s because some people won’t be happy with the product. They may have purchased the wrong software or simply don’t rate things very high. Regardless, you should check on the shopping cart software reviews and not only read the 4-5 star reviews but the other reviews as well. Average Average shopping cart software will have an average of 3 stars. You should look at the reviews and see if this is made up of many 5 star reviews and 1-2 star reviews or if the reviews are mostly 3 stars. This is important because if the review is average based on many good reviews and many bad reviews then you will want to know why. Read the good reviews and bad reviews and see what people like and don’t like about the shopping cart. This could help you determine whether it will work for you or not.

Similarly, if the average rating is 3 stars because most people gave the software 3 stars then you will know that it’s not bad shopping cart software, but it’s not good either. Bad A bad shopping cart software review would be one with an average of 1-2 stars. This generally means the product is not worth your time or money. Only in the case of there being one review should you consider researching the product more. The reason why is if there is only one review you can’t totally trust it. The person who wrote it could have been hired by a competitor or they could have been dissatisfied with the software for other reasons. If there are multiple bad reviews of the shopping cart software then you will need to stay away.

Brought to you by Aaron Goldberg. Aaron is an advocate for Interspire, a provider of ecommerce shopping cart software, content management software, email marketing software, and other web software solutions.

Ecommerce And Product Reviews Of Shopping Cart Software

Bendigo Web Hosting — Mon, 10 May 2010 04:52:08 +0000

More consumers than ever are conducting their shopping online and in the future even more people will conduct their shopping this way. The reason why is that shopping online is fast, easy and it is simple to compare prices from many stores for the same product. The only big drawback of ecommerce is the inability to hold a product in your hands and look it over. Fortunately, there is a substitute for this and it is known as product reviews. Sure, product reviews don’t let you feel what the product is like, but they will explain to you the benefits and drawbacks and personal experiences. This is incredibly important for online shoppers because they can read others’ experiences. Many times the product reviews will be informative enough to help online shoppers make a decision and choose to buy or pass on a particular item. When you are looking for shopping cart software it is even more important to read product reviews. The reason why is that everyone will have a different experience and they will detail those in their review. Some users will find the shopping cart software to be perfect for their needs and explain what those needs are. Then, there will be others who found the software to be lacking for whatever reason and will explain why. You read these reviews and can tell by others’ experiences if the software will fit your needs and future needs as well. Keep in mind you should read all reviews before making a decision, or at least a good sampling. You want to focus on the bad reviews and see why someone rated the software low. Perhaps they didn’t like the price or they didn’t know how to use it. If that’s the case then the bad review is irrelevant. Yet, if the review states that the software has glitches and explains what those are then you should pay more attention to this type of review. Spending a few minutes reading what other consumers have to say about different shopping cart software may help you make a decision as to which software will work best for you. Remember, don’t read just one or two reviews. Instead, take 10 minutes and read as many good, average, and bad reviews as you can. This will help you understand more about the product and its benefits and drawbacks. When you know more about how the shopping cart software works when implemented then you can decide what to buy.

Removing product counts next to category names in ZenCart

Bendigo Web Hosting — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 11:20:29 +0000

This video tutorial will show you how to remove the product counts next to category names in zencart. Visit www.geraelindsey.com for more zencart. oscommerce and wordpress tutorials.

Shopping Cart Technology Limitations and Moving/pushing Product Catalog Data to Shopping Comparison Sites and Marketplaces: 5 Q & A’ to Help

Bendigo Web Hosting — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 01:38:43 +0000

As EVP at MerchantAdvantage, one of my responsibilities is to analyze multiple shopping cart technologies before integrating storefront data into our Channel Management system.

This is an essential process as it ensures that an online merchant’s data is compliant with our data transport system from which we easily distribute data into various marketing channels, such as shopping comparison sites, comparison shopping engines, marketplaces, such as Amazon, Shop.com and Underbid, and other unique marketing channels such as m-commerce sites, such as iSave.com, mPoria.com, mShopper.com, and review and coupon sites, such as PowerReviews.com and MyCoupons.com.

As I do this, I have established 3 points of analysis to make the process as reliable as possible. As technology changes, and new marketing outlets emerge, I think it is important for each merchant to look at their shopping cart infrastructure and analyze the ease of portability of their data into other systems in order to keep ongoing marketing integration “surprise-less”.

Merchants should perform this type of analysis in between the busy season; let’s say before or after March – ergo after the holiday season and before the summer rush. My suggestion is that a technical person should compile a list of questions to ask their shopping cart vendor, in order to ensure that the online merchant fully understands the “power” and “limitations” of their shopping cart technology and how it allows the online merchant to utilize many other software technologies to help the online merchant grow their business.

To begin, here are some definitions to consider – just so we understand each other.

Portability: A shopping cart’s capacity to integrate into a totally disparate system without losing product data impact.

Data Impact: The scale of impact that product data has functioning independently within an online merchant’s or marketed outside of an online merchant’s website. Product data contained within a an individual shopping cart, and website, may have “high impact” on marketing — as product descriptions, manufacturing names, pictures, pricing, and general marketing is robust and current.

However, if incorrectly formatted and mapped to an outside “software system”, the robust product data will have a “low impact” if it is taken out of its current shopping cart technology infrastructure and put on/within a marketing. In order to maintain product data’s “high impact” it is essential to ensure that the original data is mapped to correspond to the required elements of a marketing channel. This might include updating and creating: varied coding requirements, dropping/eliminating symbols, dropping/eliminating line breaks, adding varied prices and inventories levels, changing pictures and product names, and updating marketing descriptions.

An example of something that can cause “low impact” data on marketing channels is a shopping cart’s capacity to output a “new” product file on a scheduled basis, without encoding or symbols. This type of “new and daily export” yields usable data and not blank columns, or duplicate columns, in a data feed to marketing feed, that then will be rejected.

Marketing Outlet or Channel: A separate system used to market product data and drive sales into an online merchant’s site or on another site on behalf of the online merchant.

Marketplace: A marketing channel where the purchase is made outside of the cart and orders are fulfilled by the merchant. The order may be processed by the marketplace or the merchant, but the merchant is somewhat invisible during the view and ordering process. Examples would be Amazon.com, Shop.com, and Underbid.com.

CSE: Comparison Shopping Engine, a.k.a. Comparison Shopping site. This is a marketing channel where the goal is to drive a consumer back to your shopping cart to complete the purchase there. CSEs may charge the merchant a pay-per-click pay-per-lead or commission from all sales referred by the CSE to the online merchant, such as couparison shopping sites do.

Parent /Child Relationship, Options: Many products have options associate with the product before a final purchase is made, i.e., size, color, etc. This is especially true with clothing. These options show up on web pages and the website directs the consumer to select certain options related to a product before the consumer proceeds to checkout. This is great when the purchase happens on the merchant’s website, but how does an online merchant handle all of these options when exporting data to marketing channels and having to deal with a myriad of taxonomy and mapping issues as they relate to each marketing channel?

To answer this, the online merchant must assess:

1. the origination point of the data within their shopping cart technology

2. the options available to access the date therein

3. portability issues (i.e. ease of output and export)

…ultimately forcing the online merchant to analyze how the data is stored in its rawest form in the original database.

Just because a shopping cart technology can export data does not mean that that data is exported in the “form” that you need it exported. For instance, some shopping cart technologies export feature creates new line items for each option; some may create a field with every possible color/size possibility, while others do not.

Essentially shopping cart technologies, while trying to “play well with other,” simply do not and export features inherent in many shopping cart technologies are not designed to sync easily with the many requirements that are essential to working with marketing channels.

This lack of syncing of data is why we created MerchantAdvantage – to make the communication between systems seamless – and is the NUMBER ONE BREAKING POINT for online merchants to work with, and integrate with, systems and marketing channels out side of the their shopping cart technology.

So what should an online merchant be asking themselves to work effectively and efficiently with marketing channels and other systems out side of their shopping cart technology?

Remembering the definitions I outlined above, here are the questions I ask of online merchants about their shopping cart technology before transporting their data to ensure that we have the same “highest impact” data on/within marketing channels. I would be glad to do it with any online merchant, just give us a call at MerchantAdvantage, or you can do it on your own.

5 Questions to ask about your company data & company to see if your shopping cart is portable:

1. Where will this data be used to market? Marketplaces, CSEs, other marketing channels?

2. Is there a unique identifier for each product that stays the same all of the time?

a. Is that unique number for joined products (options) referenced in all joined products (i.e., do child products reference parent – see definition above)?

3. Are there Product URLs and Image URLs? And do they work?

4. Are there encoded characters, ASCII Characters, Line-breaks, or data anomalies?

5. Can any product data export process be automated?

a. Is the location to where exports are updated and pushed to always available on the internet

b. Is the location updated on a scheduled basis that parallels your shopping cart technology cart updates and changes?

5 Questions to ask to see if your portability is optimized:

1. Is each piece of necessary data stored in separate fields or columns, i.e., manufacturer, manufacturer part number, or availability, and not all clumped together in one general description.

Special Note: Some marketing channels require this data in different orders and formatting unique to their marketing channel.

2. Are the marketing descriptions sensible and concise, containing all important data at the front of the description (within first 100 characters)?

Special Note: descriptions can be indexed/searchable and are usually trimmed to the first set of 100 characters.

3. Is the “Cost Field” present in the export?

Special Note: Adjustments to the “Pricing” and “Marketing” fields may be made at any time of the product data dispersion process.

4. Do the unique identifiers match competitors’ unique identifiers?

Special Note: Consumers will and can see your items when viewing competitors’ products on CSEs.

5. Does my data meet all of the requirements of each requested marking channel that I am trying to get/feed to?

Special Note: Each marketing channel requires different types and formats of data delivery.

Okay, now what?

My suggestions:

1. after each question has been answered and each possible point-of-failure has been addressed then you can move onto the planning and process of into which marketing channels you want to work with and feed your product catalog data.

2. You have taken the most important step of data feed integration and marketing, namely understanding what your shopping cart technology allows you to do and not to do and, most important, understanding what you need to do to make sure that you create and market the “highest impact” data to your marketing channels.

3. Integration is ready to be achieved.

Good luck and if you would like to make your life a lot simpler, give us a shout at MerchantAdvantage, we would be glad to work with you, and start feeding and having fun with over 100 marketing channels, cost effectively, with the most uptime, least surprises and zero technician’s heart attacks!!

Happy Holidays!

– Chip Arndt

chip@eTaildTail.com

chip@merchantadvantage.com

I am lucky to have the opportunity to leverage over 10 years of internet e-commerce experience to bring small to mid-sized merchants tips and advice to make their businesses grow. While I write eTaildTail, it is actually one voice of many minds. More precisely, my blog entries are powered by the brain power and knowledge base of the team at MerchantAdvantage and my time in the world of online commerce and the internet. That team has over 50 years of combined experience in online shopping and technical support and share a desire to learn all there is to know to help small to mid sized online merchants be successful.

We all know that the e-commerce and m-commerce (mobile commerce) marketplace is growing rapidly and so too are methods, philosophies and business applications to take advantage of this growth. With rapid growth comes the need to synthesize information so that the online merchant can quickly make prudent, short, and long term business decisions. Of equal importance is the need to share this information, because what works today often does not work tomorrow.

This reality led me to supplement my thoughts with an online forum for merchants to share their own stories and questions. I welcome anyone in the world of e-commerce and m-commerce into this forum with the goal to help all of us. Just click on the eTail dTail Tattler tab.

Beyond my opinion, which some may not agree with from time to time, and this interactive forum, the real value of eTaildTail is to share information on what is happening in the world of e-commerce and m-commerce so that you can grow your business. Each day I will report on topics important to better market your online business. This will include industry updates, commentary on other people?s insights, links to other resources, and above all attempt to be a daily resource for you to help make your online business successful.

I will write from trade shows, from my office [yes it over looks the ocean = lucky me] and from the road, as I learn of information that I think is important to the small to mid-sized online merchant. While my blog is focused on marketing solutions for all of you, I often will speak to other issues that may affect all of us, such as ?internet neutrality?, state and federal regulations for online e-commerce?you get the point.

I also love to bring other experts into our world, so I will link to other bloggers, who are far more knowledgeable about certain topics, and encourage industry insiders to make guest comments and appearances. By the way, if you know of some people who might want to be a part of eTaildTail community, in some way, please let me know. The internet is a powerful medium of communication and with your participation we can grow eTaildTail together to be a wonderful meeting place to learn and to help provide you with the answers to grow your business.

Welcome one and all and thank you in advance for sending me your thoughts and insights.

Chip Arndt

Reporting from my home base in South Florida

Bendigo Web Hosting » Product

Product Reviews Of Shopping Cart Software

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