If you own or are thinking of launching an online business, your shopping cart software will be the make or break of your success. Without reliable and economic shopping cart software it will be very difficult to make sales online and choosing the right software for you can be difficult. How do you know which one to choose? Are they all as good as each other?
“You need to start by figuring out which ones your server will support,” says Jake Mogul, Internet entrepreneur and the owner of the niche favourite online store, Magic MegaStore, “Different software programs require different server specifications, so that is definitely something to consider. After that you would look at other things like what requirements your store has and which software will suit it best. How many products are you selling? What sort of extra features beyond a shopping cart will you need? Things like that.”
Hosting packages range from around £20 a year to £100. Hosting requirements for an online store include MySQL databse support and PHP, as well as a reasonable amount of web space to house all your product images, videos and email.
Many new online entrepreneurs hoping to liberate themselves from boring day jobs make some fundamental mistakes with this process. “When I started, I did not research the choice available and invested thousands into developing my own software – a project with had to be dumped eventually because it just was not economically viable. Do your research,” continues Mr Mogul, “And don’t get bogged down with bells and whistles.”
The shopping cart software programs out there range from free and open source shopping cart software like ZenCart, all the way up to monthly subscription packages like Yahoo Store and X-Cart.
Jake advises, “If I had to do it all again, I would use a free cart like PrestaShop to begin with and see how well that suited my needs. Only once you are sure your business is going to work should you bother investing money into things like software.”
