Basic Online Store By Affordable Web Sites

Licensed versus Hosted Carts

Shopping cart software is software used in e-commerce to assist people making purchases online, analogous to the American English term 'shopping cart'. In British English it is generally known as a shopping basket, almost exclusively shortened on websites to 'basket'.
The software allows online shopping customers to accumulate a list of items for purchase, described metaphorically as "placing items in the shopping cart". Upon checkout, the software typically calculates a total for the order, including shipping and handling (i.e. postage and packing) charges and the associated taxes, as applicable.

Licensed vs. Hosted Shopping Carts
Shopping cart software can be generally categorized into two main categories.

• Licensed software: The software is downloaded and then installed on a Web server. This is most often associated with a one-time fee, although there are many free products available as well. The main advantages of this option are that the merchant owns a license and therefore can host it on any Web server that meets the server requirements, and that the source code can often be accessed and edited to customize the application.

• Hosted service: The software is never downloaded, but rather is provided by a hosted service provider and is generally paid for on a monthly/annual basis; also known as the application service provider (ASP) software model. Some of these services also charge a percentage of sales in addition to the monthly fee. This model often has predefined templates that a user can choose from to customize their look and feel. Predefined templates limit how much users can modify or customize the software with the advantage of having the vendor continuously keep the software up to date for security patches as well as adding new features.

Basic Online Store Features

Our Basic Shopping Cart

General store settings

Upload your company logo for use with store invoices and printer-friendly versions of order receipts.
Set general order properties:
- Minimum order amount for retail customers
- Minimum order amount for wholesale customers
- Maximum number of products for each order
- Maximum number of units for each product within an order
- Change the starting order number (so the first customers don't feel uncomfortable)
Specify whether or not your store uses SSL. Customers are directed to the secure pages for payment processing after they verify their order during the check out process.
Inventory settings:
- Set whether to show inventory data (units in stock) on the product details page
- Set whether customer can purchase out of stock items or not
- Enable/disable a customizable "out of stock" message
Edit records shown in the "State" and "Country" drop-down menus throughout the store.
Add optional, custom checkout fields to collect special customer information (e.g. What is your tax ID? What is your account number? Etc.). Make these fields required or not. Show them during registration or checkout, or both.
Add optional, order related checkout options:
- Order date & time (e.g. a catered event): allow customers to select a date for the order/event, enforce that the order date and time are at least 24 hours in the future, enter a list of blackout dates (e.g. catering service is not available on certain holidays).

Display settings

Fully customizable graphical interface, store buttons and store icons. It's easy to create a professionally looking ecommerce store that merges seamlessly with the rest of your Web site.
Easily change font type, size and colors store wide
Set the number of products per row and rows per page.
Set a default ordering criteria (part number, name, high price, low price).
Set the exact order in which products should be displayed in any category.
Decide whether to show category images or not.

Product catalog features

Add unlimited products & product categories to your store catalog.
Import updated product information by appending data to the existing store database. The
Automatically link the standard image to the detailed image, which pops up in a new browser window on the product details page, automatically resized to the image's height and width.
Upload product images to your Web server right from Our Shopping Cart.
Assign free shipping to a product. Select whether or not to show a free shipping message.
Inactivate products without having to delete them.
Enforce a minimum quantity amount (e.g. you can't order 1 business card, but rather at least 250).
Easily add product options (e.g. size, color, etc.) to one product or multiple products at once.
Set the order in which attributes should be shown (e.g. 'small' should show before 'medium', not after).
Keep and manage product inventory. Our Shopping Cart automatically updates inventory levels when an order is placed, and reinstates previous inventory levels when the same order is cancelled or returned.

Shipping options

Our Shopping Cart includes a powerful shipping component. Here is an overview of some of its features:

Support for multiple package shipments.
Ability to properly calculate shipping charges on very light products (e.g. business cards, pins, buttons, electrical parts, etc.)
Show special shipping instructions on the shipping service selection page.
Let customers preview shipping rates before even starting the checkout process.
Support for UPS, USPS, FedEx, CanadaPost. Each shipping provider can be easily configured by running an intuitive, Wizard-style setup utility.
Only show selected shipping services from each service provider (e.g. only display UPS Next Day Air and UPS Ground, not UPS Second Day).
Set "free shipping" for any shipping option above a certain order value (e.g. make UPS Ground free when the order amount exceeds $150).
Add shipping and handling fees as a separate charge or built into the shipping rates. Fees are specific to each shipping option.
Enter standard packaging type and size, and standard delivery method (e.g. daily pickup, customer counter, etc.) for each shipping provider, to increase the accuracy of the shipping rates.
Flag a product as oversized to more accurately calculate rates. Specify special packaging size for a specific product. Oversized products are automatically considered a separate package when calculating shipping rates.
Add any number of custom configured shipping options based on weight, quantity, order amount, incremental values.
Mix custom configured shipping options and dynamic shipping options (e.g. UPS Next Day, UPS Ground, In-store pickup).
Set the exact order in which shipping options should be presented to the customer
Allow or disallow the ability for customers to provide a separate shipping address. This allows a store to require that the billing address be the same as the shipping address.
Automatically store multiple shipping addresses for a repeat customer, so that the customer may select the shipping address that applies to a new order from a drop-down menu, without having to re-enter it.

Payment options

Add real-time and non real time (e.g. Net 30) payment options
Easily integrate with all major payment gateways for real-time credit card processing. Our Shopping Cart currently supports the following payment gateways:
- Authorize.net (both SIM, AIM and eChecks). Our Shopping Cart is a certified Authorize.Net shopping cart.
- LinkPoint Basic
- PayPal
Selected gateways: set up transactions to be automatically captured or only authorized (credit card is authorized, but not debited). This allows you to verify the accuracy and legitimacy of an order before processing it (the order remains pending until you process it). See the Our Shopping Cart User Guide for more details.
Process credit card offline (e.g. you already have a POS system and want to collect the credit card information securely to process it through your existing system).

Storefront Features

Then, take advantage of the following feature that you can make available to your store customers:

Let customers browse by category: set up the store by choosing from 5 different category display layouts.
Let customers search your catalog using multiple filters at the same time (category, keywords, brand, price, etc.), or from a 'Quick Search' box that you can place anywhere on your Web site.
Link to a printer-friendly order receipt at the end of the checkout process.
Show customers where they are in the checkout process by looking at the progress bar.