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A shopping cart is software used in e-Commerce to assist visitors to make purchases online. Upon Enter question
checkout, the software calculates the total of the order, including shipping and handling, taxes and other
parameters the owner of the site has previously set. The shopping cart typically provides a means of
collecting the shopper's payment information.
Some shopping carts strictly allow for an item to be added to the basket to start a checkout process, other
shopping carts actually provides additional features that the merchant can fully manage the online store. Continue to post
Shopping cart software consists of two main components:
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Storefront The area of the website that is accessed by the visitor.

Administration The area of the website that is accessed by the merchant to manage the
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Using Brainstorming activity, extract features that are required in an e-shopping cart application for both link
components.

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Online ordering system (different from your regular website). These usually provide HTML code for "order
buttons" that you can attach to pages on your regular website. Your customer is looking at your website to
select products, but when they click the order button, they are taken to the order system (usually hosted My Textbook Solutions
on a completely different website) to complete the transaction.
The store-building program, on the other hand, manages your web pages and orders in the same place.
If you only sell a few products, an online ordering system will do just ne. But if you are trying to show and
sell 50 or 100 different products or a thousand or 100,000, you will need a store-building system, a catalog
management system, which produces and manages the product pages for each of your products.

The term "shopping cart" is not enough to describe all the functions of a variety of modern e-commerce
Principles of... Electric... Biology for...
systems. “Software Storefront Software” might be a better time. However, whether you like it or not, the
word "shopping cart" is sticky, so that's the word I'm going to use throughout the book - "cart" for short - 16th Edition 1st Edition 0th Edition
as a common term to refer to both types of programs. To distinguish between the two I would refer to the
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"online order system" or "store building program."

In this chapter, I will describe the features that are commonly included in all carts - the order system. In the
following, I will discuss additional features included in the store building plans. As you read these chapters,
I hope it will help you to decide which features you need and which ones are not essential to your needs.

There is no magic car that will meet all your needs, but perhaps a lot that will meet your speci c needs.

Basic Tasks
Sally Shopper does not care about the internal functioning of your store, she only looks at the
convenience, safety, and good management of her order. Let’s take a look at the purchase rst from his
point of view.

shopping cart
He wants Sally Shopper to feel free to look around without having to worry about making decisions until
later. Online stores quickly create a shopping cart metaphor or a shopping cart (“cart” in Britain) in which
customers enter a selection. Business-to-business (B2B) sites such as WW Grainger (www.grainger.com)
use the term “order form,” which best suits the business purchase model.

This product selection feature requires allowing Sally Shopper to add or remove products to her cart and
display quantity. Almost all carts these days allow here to feature two or three options for each product,
such as a large (large) annel shirt. Consider choosing shoes (size, width, color) or window blinds (color,
height, width). A few carts allow the sale of parts for something, such as when buying fabric or lumber.

An increasing number of store building plans re ect the items on the cart and the total running per page.
This helps customers remember where they are in the order process.

Tax Calculation
All order plans keep track of the number of items Sally has put in her shopping cart. Once Sally logs into
her local address, the program can calculate taxes.
When you need to calculate only consumer taxes in the seller's country or city, a simple check table with
tax authority indicates the percentage of sales tax you can add. All carts do this enough. Better carts allow
for a tax calculation with a ZIP code, which allows you to manage collections from provinces (such as New
York) that require retailers in the province to collect taxes on an average in each region or region.

But what happens when you own real estate in 15 states? Complex software now allows plug-ins such as
TaxWare's Sales / Use Tax System (www.taxware.com) or CertiTax (www.esalestax.com/products.htm)
calculating real-time US and Canadian taxes.

Currently, the federation of about 35 states wants to simplify the collection of sales taxes and make the US
Congress pass a law requiring all supermarkets (more than $ 1 million, one proposal) to collect and
distribute sales tax in all participating states. If you do a lot of business online, make sure your software
allows for a tax plug-in. As the law is currently proposed, small businesses will be exempt from that
requirement, so it is likely that any vehicle will do tax calculations.

If you are exporting to Europe, however, be aware that the EU requires foreign exporters to collect and pay
VAT. So far, it is unclear how this will affect small retailers outside the EU.

Posting Statistics
Shipping statistics have become more complex in the last few years. All modern carts include two types of
shipping calculations:

Statistics from viewing tables set by the merchant.


Real-time statistics that draw information from major senders and messengers.
If you nd a cart that does not offer at least UPS shipping statistics, you may nd a cart that is not stored
properly. Even if you don't need UPS shipping, this is a very accurate "up-to-dateness" cart. Avoid carts that
do not offer this, even if they look cheap.

Having said that, counting ships from the merchant watch tables you set can work very well. Of course,
shipping costs may be more or less than your table setting, but it should all be in the long run. Trailers
usually include various shipping statistics, such as:

For a full sale


By weight
Number of items in order
By weight and location
Fixed shipping price for all products
Generally, you should choose one application that works for all of your products, unless multiple carts
allow you to add shipping fees to selected products that are larger or require special boxes or shipping
containers. Many retailers are nding a system that is "very weighty" very exible, especially if they have a
wide variety of products in different sizes and shapes.

If you make multiple submissions, however, you will nd it easier to use the plug-ins provided by some of
the major senders. Each of the following provides a service to online retailers that estimate shipping costs,
depending on the type of service the customer chooses (such as next day, second day, ground, etc.).
Usually, the seller must sign up for each shipping service through this free service. Vendors often limit the
shipping options they show to customers, even if the sender offers other options.

Secure transactions
When it's time to test, Sally Shopper wants to complete the transaction safely and successfully. These
include four things to prevent hackers from stealing sensitive credit card information:

An SSL secure connection between your shopper and your website to prevent hackers from stealing
sensitive personal information. The current standard here is called SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), which
encrypts the connection. In most cases, you can return the piggyback at no additional cost to the digital
certi cate and secure server provided by your web hosting service or to order a reseller program. Without
a secure server, don't expect to sell more.
Payment gateway to provide secure connection between your website and credit card processor.
Protection of credit card numbers stored on the website. The best way to protect yourself is not to store
credit card numbers on your server. Some carts, however, offer careful encryption of these numbers which
can provide protection to your customers.
Secure order retrieval that allows merchants to receive orders without disclosing credit card details to
attackers. This usually achieves merchant views and downloads orders from the site through a web
browser using a secure SSL connection. Other methods include XML, secure FTP, or encrypted email.
Almost all vehicles have these built-in types of protection.

Payment Methods
However, to get real-time credit card authorization, you will also need to secure the payment gateway with
an additional monthly fee. (Excludes this include: PayPal, Yahoo !, and third-party services that handle
credit card transactions themselves: 2CheckOut.com, CCNow, DigiBuy, Kagi, and others.) You can often
nd a payment gateway that is well integrated with your credit card account. of the seller.

Make sure you do not secure your payment gateway before deciding which shopping cart system best
meets your needs because most payment gates do not t all shopping carts.

The most common payment methods available - with US-based carriages however - are Authorize.Net,
VeriSign PayFlow Pro, LinkPoint, and WorldPay. PayPal is also offered as an alternative to payment on most
shopping carts, although PayPal's Instant Payment Noti cation (IPN) is only available in a few cases.

Is real-time credit card authorization really needed? Can't authorize your orders with a desktop
authorization program you use for real store, trade, or market? You can, perhaps. Some credit card
merchants do not allow online transactions, because they offer a lower discount rate for "current card"
transactions than they do for a CAR or "non-card" online transaction - a full percentage point, in general.
If you make a lot of online sales, you will nd that real credit card authorization is a cost-saving tool
because it saves you:

Time to rewrite orders and credit card numbers


Errors made in re-ordering
Time to place orders, because the authorization step has already been completed.

Email Order Con rmation


Almost all carts provide the customer with on-screen and e-mail receipts to con rm the purchase. Only a
few carts offer email con rmation for shipping, but we’ll discuss that below under order management.

Keeping Speci c Orders


Have you ever shopped at your local store and never found your shopping cart? Someone took a mistake
on your cart and left you with 20 boxes of gourmet fortune cookies. In an online store, the shopping cart
system should differentiate between buyers - before it can tell you who the check-in time is. Apps use
several systems to track shopping carts:

A cookie (a small computer le) containing Sally Shoppers' cart number is transferred to its Web browser
and resides on her hard disk during a visit to the store. The use of cookies is very widespread and many
store software is used because this is probably the most effective method. Few people see cookies as a
secret attack, however, so alternatives are sometimes needed.
The provisional IP number is automatically provided by the Sally Shoppers Internet Service Provider (ISP)
to identify when accessing the Internet. While not detecting an IP number, it can be read by store software.
The randomly generated cart number can be entered in the URL from its "Location" or "Address" eld.
Whenever Sally goes to another product page, that cart number goes with her.
Some programs, such as ColdFusion, can maintain customer status at all times.
It is important that the vehicle you choose is able to identify consumers in ways other than those that
require cookies because a small percentage of consumers have blocked cookies. However, the cookie
method is preferred, if possible, because it sometimes allows the customer to return their cart when they
re-enter.

Advanced features
We have looked at some of the basics all carts share equally. Now let's look at some advanced features.
While this varies from cart to cart, I will explain some of the common features.

Identifying Customers on Return


More important to the seller than just the cart numbers, however, is keeping track of buyers' names and
addresses. Better software products store online information for customers. When a shopper is ready to
place another order (or, of store-building sites, click on a site), a cookie in the shopper's browser identi es
him or her as a previous customer and knows him or her by name. Some of these database-enabled sites
are able to customize customer contact, such as:

Email details about sales and special offers


Preferred billing address and shipping address (although it is usually not your credit card number)
We present the shopper with offers and product recommendations based on previous purchases or items
placed in the shopping cart
Enabling customer sign-in to past order history, current order status, package tracking, etc.
You won't nd complicated customizable features for low-cost carts, although the customer login feature is
becoming more common.

Product Details
Almost all carts have an online database that counts, minimum, SKU (item number), product name, weight
and price. But one of the most important low-cost carriers, PayPal, does not use an online database. All
product details are included in the HTML order button. When a customer clicks on the order button,
product details are transferred to PayPal to start the transaction.

The danger of this approach is fraud. It is possible for an unscrupulous buyer to copy a product from your
product page, and do one of two things:

Change the price included in the order button. Then click on the changed order button. You may not
notice the price change and bring the product with a big “discount”.
Check the URL of the thank you or download page where the electronic product is shipped and go to
download the item without worrying about paying at all.
You can circumvent these issues by entering a code on the HTML webpage or by using PayPal Instant
Payment Noti cation to withhold product downloads until you are actually paid. Or email the download
code in practice only if you con rm payment has been received. I use PayPal as an alternative to payment
to sell my products without having to deal with these issues. However, the way most vehicles avoid these
problems is to use an online database that hackers can access and contain product and price information.

Uploaded and downloaded


Most, but not all, carts allow you to keep your database offline and upload it to your cart when changes
occur. You can still make changes online using the web interface if you prefer. However, if so, you need to
be able to download the entire product database, including your changes.

Innovation Management
Increasingly, I see some sort of built-in management capacity. You enter the total number of products you
have and the system removes this number from each sale. The system alerts you by e-mail when the
minimum limit is reached and when inventory is complete. When the inventory reaches zero you can
choose to (1) inform customers that the item is not in stock and does not allow purchase or (2) accept the
purchase and re-order the product.

A few small business plans may indicate how soon a product will be shipped, depending on the stock or
availability of the seller. The best programs offer real-time coverage on real-time accounting companies.
Store Statistics
Many programs offer speci c reports on viewed and purchased products. One of the best things about
this is Yahoo! Yahoo! Merchant Solutions generate a lot of good statistics that not only tell you what
products are viewed, but also the general trends that consumers take from your store (good for design and
optimization analysis), what a customer clicks to get to your store, and which ads, search engine links, and
search terms generate the highest sales of each person in your store. Many online stores allow you to track
sales within days, but there is no place near Yahoo! Details.

Statistics are very important in strategies when you learn what works and what doesn’t. If you know which
ads and search terms generate sales, you can focus on your investment in them, rather than on non-
productive ones.

Yesterday I spoke to a woman who had a problem with a shopping cart that her web hosting service had
sold to her. You need to move to a different cart - and a different hosting service. If he can't download his
product details and upload them to the new cart, he can move his store in a short break. Of course,
redesigning a new cart is a pain in the neck. But for my friend, the most important thing is her product
details: product descriptions, photo names, etc. - representing many working hours in his 100-product
store.

Before you buy a trailer, check how easy it is to load product database. Will it “map” the elds to import
your original elds to their corresponding eld names in the new database? Also, make sure you have an
exit strategy - make sure you can fully download your product database for backup purposes or to move
to another cart.

Sales, Coupons, Discounts


Fun online stores work hard on sales with various promotions. How do you set up what you are selling?

All stores allow you to change prices - and take them back using the web browser interface.
Several systems allow you to set pre-determined sales, scheduled to start and end automatically.
Some (but not all) store building programs enable you to place installed products, sales products, or new
products on the front page of the site to drive sales.
Another way to advertise is to offer discounted coupons by email to your customers or subscribers.
Carefully consider the features of several stores before making your nal decision, as the features vary.
Others to consider include:

Percentage or amount of a coupon code.


Product or departmental coupons by comparing coupons across the store.
Discount coupons expire at certain times.
Discount coupons are entered when you purchase a lower price for a particular product or a full product
limit.
Free shipping for orders over $ 50 sounds easy - and can help you increase your value for work - but many
coupon systems can't handle it.
In many stores, discounts can be obtained with or without a coupon at the time of sale. How do the cars
you are interested in handle?

The best trailers allow you to set prices for speci c products: One for $ 7.50, 3 or more for $ 6.50 each, and
12 or more for $ 5 each.

Some stores can be set at a discount of a certain dollar limit, such as a 10% discount on orders over $ 50.

B2B stores often offer discounted prices. Customers identify themselves with their private login passwords.
At the most basic level, these customers get a discounted percentage set on their order forms at checkout.
In more sophisticated vehicles they see only the prices that re ect the negotiated discounts of their
companies.

Graphics
All cart software that helps you manage your online catalog provides ways to upload product images and
place them on the product page. The product website will display the le name of each associated
drawing.

A few programs simplify your work by automatically creating icon images from your existing product
images. Sometimes they also appear in the cart so that the customer can see exactly what they have
ordered. These icons can then be used on category pages to give the customer a visual look.

Navigation Programs
If you have a few products on your website with order buttons that connect you to a managed order
system, you do not need to worry too much about traveling. Small stores with 20 or more products can go
through a simple menu on the main page, perhaps with a small thumbnail of the product image. Click on
the icon and take it to the product.

But if you have a lot of products, it is very important to have a well-thought-out navigation system. One of
the main reasons why a consumer does not complete an order is because c
don't get the product you want. The best systems offer not only one, but many different navigation
programs:

Search program
Sequence and browsing sub-category
Specialty items and sales
Best-selling products
The more sophisticated store-building software offers one-step and one-phase or several sections on each
product, so they can be easily integrated into the dynamic menu menu of the store. The best programs
allow you to put the product in multiple categories, so you can nd it in several situations.

Ideally, your goal is to allow your customer to nd any product in the store within three clicks using your
category plan. That’s hard to accomplish with supermarkets. You will need to have a comprehensive but
shallow phase plan to implement it.

Catalog management
To create a systematic, customer-centric approach, your product catalog needs to be highly exible While
only order orders may require a brand name, SKU (product number), price, and weight, catalog
management systems can contain many product details. Here is an example of the elds used in ShopSite
6.0.
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