Shopping Carts – 2 Reviews Cashie Cart and Open Cart

During the course of developing my store, shopping carts were a major obstacle. Spending countless hours, weeks, and months of time, researching and experimenting with countless carts. Every shopping cart has its pro’s and con’s but some more than others.

Saving Time

The purpose of writing this Hub is to save you time, in what may be one of the most important decisions you will make. I say this because the checkout is where customers make their decision to make the purchase or abandon the checkout completely. A recent Forrester survey found that 88% of consumers have abandoned shopping carts. But that is a discussion for another hub entirely.

Customer Expectations

These days, customers’ expectations run very high and they have many choices to shop online. If your website is successful in attracting a shopper, that’s great and very exciting. The problem is closing the sale and keeping the customer. That is done with a well thought out shopping cart.

Secure, Easy, Experience

Shoppers expect a secure, easy, experience. They want all the information clearly stated. That includes product description, pictures, price, shipping cost, return policy, store policy, and delivery schedule. You should offer a guest checkout or log in for repeat customers. Don’t make log in required, you will lose the sale. You can always offer an incentive to register, coupons, discounts, and free shipping to name a few.

Questions You Need To Ask

To make an educated decision about which cart to use, you need to ask yourself a set of questions to narrow your search;

1. What products are you selling?
2. What features are you looking for?
3. Do I want to Pay monthly fees or not?
4. Is your website already built and do you have a specific design?
5. How many products do you have?
6. Do you want your cart to be fully automated? Sends out thank you emails, sends out receipts, and keeps track of client info and purchases.
7. Are you selling items that you can download after payment?
8. Advertising, and affiliate codes, easily integrated into your cart?
9. Payments, International, US, Checks, bank transfers, PayPal?
10. Social Media Integration and apps?

The list of questions can get pretty extensive, and will vary by you needs. This is just a basic set of questions that one should consider.

My review is going to be limited to only two shopping carts for the purpose of simplicity. With the thousands of shopping applications that exist, it would be nearly impossible to review them all. The first cart is pretty basic, but very complete and super easy to implement on any website, blog, even in an email. The second is a bit more complex and fully customizable. Rich in features and new technologies. There is a slight learning curve on the second review, but easy to master.

Review One – Cashie Ecommerce Shopping Cart http://cashie.biz

Cashie Ecommerce for Everyone - This is a well thought out and easy to set up shopping cart solution. It requires no programming skills just copy and paste some code onto your site or blog and you are done. The whole interface is super simple, and easy to integrate with PayPal. It is compatible with every blog or website. Including Wordpress, Joomla, Blooger, Drupal, and PHP. It is also PCI compliant and SSL secure. What that means is all the transactions are run in https: secure transaction, which is a great selling tool. Customers want to know there information is safe.

If you are looking for a basic, very easy to customize, and call your own shopping cart. Then this might be the perfect solution. You control the way your buttons look, from the color of the boxes, background, the text, the size and shape of the buttons. Simple cut and paste, to place buttons and prices everywhere. You can even send it via email or add it to a blog. The whole integration works flawlessly. You can add more items to the cart, and it populates it automatically. You can remove items and continue shopping. All from your own site. It doesn't leave until the time you checkout.

The settings are super easy to use, “even a caveman can do it.” Nice details, example; after a successful transaction, your customer is brought back to your site, you decide. It could be a thank you for your business page or if they cancel take them to your order was canceled page. Everything is run from your site; the transaction is taken care by PayPal, and then brought back to your site. One smooth transaction.

The nice thing is. It is free to try, it is free to use, you only pay 1% transaction fee ONLY on money you make. If you make zero, you pay zero. $100 = $1, $1000 = $10. I think that is fantastic. Super nice when you are on a tight budget.

Cashie Cart doesn't take your customers payment, PayPal does so it goes into your account in seconds. You do have to set up shipping and that sort of stuff through PayPal, under profile and settings. But that’s pretty straight forward. Detailed instructions are available. To View all the video's, how to add it to Wordpress, Drupal, or your website plus so much more. This will take you to Youtube's Video's

Just Updated NEW FEATURES for Cashie Cart AGAIN WOW

December 1, 2011 - Once again, more improved updates that make this my top top choice for easy shopping cart. Just received another letter telling me about all the new features. Very impressive and powerful. Watch the new video to really understand how easy and beautiful this cart is.

Dear Cashie Customer,

If you use PayPal Website Payments Standard, this update is for you!

We just launched some exciting updates for our PayPal Website Payments Standard merchants. This includes a sleeker, smarter checkout process and the ability to use the tax and shipping rules that were previously only available with PayPal Website Payments Pro. Continue reading to learn more and find out what you need to do to get your shopping cart updated.

A SLEEKER, SMARTER CHECKOUT SYSTEM

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Your customer will now see the final price of their order (including tax, shipping and discounts) before going to PayPal and entering their payment details.

To see a demo, check out our Platform Examples here:

SHIPPING RATE LOOK-UP AND TAX RULES

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Until now, you had to use PayPal Website Payments Pro to take advantage of features like shipping rate lookup, tax rules, and free shipping discounts. We are excited to announce that PayPal Website Payments Standard merchants now have the ability to configure tax and shipping on their store directly from the Cashie admin.

UPDATING YOUR ACCOUNT

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If you want to update your Cashie account to use these new features, email us at community-manager@cashie.biz. We will reset your PayPal settings for you to configure your account. You can also sign up for a new Cashie account to get these features right away!

Important Note: When you switch to using these new features, your Cashie store will stop using your tax and shipping settings that are on PayPal.

So, be ready to configure these settings when you request to be upgraded.

As always, thanks for using Cashie!

- The Cashie Team

Just Updated NEW FEATURES for Cashie Cart

Letter that I just received making Cashie my number one choice. Will be integrating into my blog. Updated September 28, 2011

Hello Cashie customers,

We are excited to announce that we just released another big update to Cashie to support a full product catalog along with features to help you manage your products, create product pages, and manage your inventory levels.

That's right, Cashie will now store your product information so when you update your product, the changes will be immediately reflected on your site.

If you already have a store with Add to Cart buttons, they will continue to work as they currently do. You can decide whether or not to migrate to the new product system to make it even easier for you to sell online.

Best,

-- The Cashie Team

Hello Cashie customers,

You've been asking and we've been listening. We're excited to announce that we just updated Cashie to support the two highly requested features: real-time shipping rate look-ups and advanced coupons and sales. Your shoppers will now be able to get real-time shipping rate quotes when they check out and be able to choose the shipping option that suits them. Cashie supports the following shipping providers:

• - UPS
• - FedEx
• - USPS
• - Australia Post
• - Canada Post

You can also offer a wide variety of discounts, sales, and promotions that will help drive traffic and revenue to your store. The different types of discounts that are supported are:

• - Flat rate discount
• - Percentage discount
• - Buy quantity X get quantity Y free
• - Buy product X get product Y free
• - Free shipping
• - Coupon codes

You can easily set up shipping and discounts in the Cashie admin so log in to

Thanks,

My rating for Cashie Cart would be 9.5/10 Excellent and easy.

Review Two – Open Cart Shopping Cart http://www.opencart.com/

Fantastic open source shopping cart solution. OpenCart is designed feature rich, easy to use, search engine friendly and with a visually appealing interface. OpenCart is a turn-key ready "out of the box" shopping cart solution. You simply install, select your template, add products and you are ready to start accepting orders.

Using this shopping cart on my current project and it works without flaw. Tons of features like 20 payment gateways, 8 shipping methods, promotions and coupon creation. Keeps track of all your sales and products. Keeps customer information. Passwords, and sales tracking.

One feature I love is automatic email notification when you have a sale. It also emails your customer thank you and receipts. If they paid for an item that is downloadable, it sends them the the download link or they can log in to your account and download it there.

This cart cost is 100 percent free. You can purchase templates or use it out of the box. You can change the way it looks very easily.  Since it is open source, donations are accepted.

Some Important Features

Open Source, Unlimited Categories, Unlimited Products, Unlimited Manufacturers, Templatable, Multi-Language, Multi-Currency, Product Reviews, Product Ratings, Downloadable Products Automatic Image Resizing, Multiple Tax Rates, Related Products, Unlimited Information Pages, Shipping Weight Calculation, Discount Coupon System, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Module System, Backup & Restore Tools

Printable Invoices, Sales Reports

The main reason I use it, as an administrator you can add products and keep up with the business from any computer. After you install the package onto your website. Just log into your website were you uploaded the files and your set to go. You can view my store at http://nikashi.com/boutique

Well those are my two picks for this hub. Both chooses are great, just have to decide what features you want. Let me know how to improve this hub and please leave me a comment.