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Effective shopping carts - How to avoid 'abandoned shopping carts' in an online store?

When we think of online stores, we immediately think of shopping carts, product catalogs and payment processes online. Some of us think, - "Oh, the bother of adding products to a shopping cart that finally doesn't work", or "The check-out counter that springs nasty pricing surprises", and more.

In this article, we'll discuss shopping carts, the issues surrounding them, their usability and navigation. You might ask, why? Well, a shopping cart is not a mere repository for items that your customers may want to eventually buy. Several significant issues come into play here. The cart should ensure that it doesn't place private information at risk; and it should take care not to interfere with the navigation or usability of a web site. Statistics prove that about two-thirds of web shoppers abandon shopping carts online. Is it because an online store can never replicate the experience that a brick and mortar store affords? Or is it because online stores don't plan their strategies smartly? What does it take to improve the online shopping experience?

Let's take a look at what an effective shopping cart is and thus help get rid of the present day e-commerce woes to a certain degree.

A shopping cart is a part of the e-commerce solution

Any web site that sells items online uses a shopping cart. What is a shopping cart? A shopping cart is a software program that tracks what each user has placed in the shopping cart, how much of each item, any preferences for that item (color, size) and what stage of the ordering process the customer is in. If the shopping cart is part of the entire e-commerce solution, then it also takes the user to the checkout counter where the user selects the payment mode, shipping option and so on.

Definition of a good shopping cart
Some of the basic components of an online shopping cart are:

Web host
Where you can host your web site. You could use your own server or another company's servers to provide web space. Instead of this, you also have the option of using a storefront from a web site that gives you this option.

Merchant account
This is absolutely essential when you want to accept credit card payments online. Owning a merchant account makes you affiliate to a bank that will process the credit card payments that you accept from your customers.

Secure server
A web site that processes online payments requires encryption of some kind. Customers look for security on the site and want to know for sure that the information they give is safe.

Procedures for fulfilling purchases (order fulfillment procedure)
What happens once an order is made on the site? You will need to process the order, take it from the database and put it together. You will then follow the policies you have for orders to ensure that all the orders on the site are honored to the right degree.

Database
A database is where you will hold order information. Customers require information about the products, shipping time, shipping and handling charges, and taxes to make a purchase, and also information like the status of the order, what time it will reach the customer and so on. Sometimes, a customer might want to know if a product is available and in stock before ordering the product. Real-time data about the inventory status is something that an online store has to provide too.

Product Catalog
Reduce shopper's incentives to abandon shopping carts by telling them everything that they need to know about the products in an attractive product catalog. Customers should be able to browse or search the catalog according to user-defined parameters. Also, these pages should load quickly, be easy-to-read and posses a navigable interface to the database that actually holds the product information. Once shoppers add items to the shopping cart, find out their zip codes and include tax on the order, so that they can see what their order totals truly are as they are shopping.

Interface and navigation plans
Shopping carts should be attractive and provide all the information upfront without distracting the user and at the same time, not overloading them with too much of information. Navigation is equally important here. Customers would like to add to their shopping carts and then return quickly to the last page they were on before moving ahead.

How do you create/get a shopping cart?
You could build your own or purchase an entire e-commerce package that includes shopping cart, product catalog, storefront, database and so on and thus avoid the hassle of programming, testing and debugging. When you purchase a turnkey solution of this kind, handling any technical difficulties is a lot easier as the company that builds the solution for you will fix these problems. You can also build a standalone-shopping cart that can be integrated with the rest of the system. Even your merchant account provider may include a shopping cart with the merchant account provided.

Security breaches that can occur with a shopping cart
Your customers are giving you personal information in a shopping cart and this can make it vulnerable to a security breach. Shopping carts can be compromised in a number of ways, visitors can tamper with forms used to send items to the shopping cart, and the database can change values according to the parameters submitted from the web site.

A few steps that can be taken to avoid security breaches are to make sure that you double check everything that your users tell you especially if there is a potential for the user to change information on a web site.

Features of a shopping cart that can make a big difference to your online store

• Secure ordering support and real-time processing of orders
  
  
• Enables easy adding, deleting and modifying of shopping cart contents
  
  
• Easy back navigation
  
  
• International currency payment support
  
  
• Automatic calculation of tax, shipping costs and total costs based on information from buyer's address
• Select different methods of shipping costs
  
  
• Incomplete orders removed automatically
  
  
• Save customer information once entered
  
  
• Final cart page lists all items, prices, user-specified parameters, shipping and handling charges, tax and estimated date of delivery

It would also help if your web site offered the following features to a user:

• Recommendations on product pages about related items, accessories to the product listed there
  
  
• Dates of shipping and delivery and order status
  
  
• Online Receipts
  
  
• Order confirmation either through email or via the web
  
  
• Selection of multiple destinations for products
  
  
• Shipping tracking number with links to the shipping site