If you own a retail website or an even a huge online store, then you will surely have heard of this little icon called "shopping cart." If you haven't, then you have pretty much lost to your competitors, as well as lost some sales along the way.
Shopping cart systems are not new concepts, as they have been around for as long as those big online stores like Amazon and eBay existed. They have been great tools that allowed these big time dudes become successful in the business.
"Well, my online retail store is not that big, so why do I need a shopping cart system anyway?" That is precisely why you need a shopping cart system, because it will help your business expand and grow. If you want to be more specific, here is a list of 3 different reasons why you will need an online shopping cart system for your website.
Convert visits to sales
When a guest visits your website, or any other website for that matter, they are usually looking for information about a particular thing. Sure, you can expect them to stay a little, linger longer and click through your products and read through your great descriptions. Looking great, isn't it?
Well, that is unless they hit the big "X" button on the upper right corner of the page and be gone without making any purchase.
That is the biggest problem of many retail store owners. They have traffic, but they don't have buying customers. By having a little shopping cart icon in your website, you can increase the chances of making this visits into sales, as your guests become more enticed to click the "add to cart" button even if they don't actually plan to buy anything at all.
Collect Emails for your List
Another reason why need a shopping cart in your site is because it can help you to collect those valuable email addresses in order for you to build your email list.
We all have heard of the saying, "the money is in the list," and you would do well by making a note of that in your mind permanently. You see, when you have an email list, you have someone to send newsletters or promos to. When the people at the other end (those receiving the letters) open, read and are encouraged to buy, then you have basically made another sale. Now, imagine if you have a thousand of those people in your list that you send letters every day or at least every week. How much sale do you think you could make?
Now, the biggest problem for most people is they have a hard time building their email list, as many web users do not freely give away their email addresses. But with a shopping cart system, you immediately get their email addresses every time they add something to their cart. All you have to do now is create a great newsletter or product offering in order to get them to press the "buy" button. And believe me, they will give you their email address, simply because they want and need to receive a confirmation of the item they bought from your online store.
Easy Computation
Like in an actual store,, selling online also needs to go through different computations. There are tax computations, shipping fees, and so many others. Of course, it can be quite a daunting task to have to do these math alone, especially so when customer orders are pouring in. That is where a shopping cart system comes in.
Most (if not all) shopping cart systems are designed to automatically compute taxes and other fees whenever a customer makes a purchase. This saves you time, and the customer from frustrations when he or she receives the package and sees extra charges that were unexpected.
These are just three of the many reasons why you need to have a shopping cart system installed in your website. Be sure though, to have it designed by a professional web developer, instead of getting one of those free shopping cart systems on the net, since there are benefits to getting the services of a professional web developer. But, we'll get to that in another report.
