Over the past decade, the term “shopping cart” has become widely popular among internet users. Especially in the recent few years, shopping carts have become the talk of the town for almost everyone. With the rise of eCommerce businesses, many digital users have shown interest in making purchases from online stores. While the majority of smartphone and computer users are aware of the online marketplaces, there are still many individuals who need familiarity with modern digital terms and tools. Soon after the global pandemic crisis, small as well as large businesses were forced to rethink their modes of operation. While a lot of companies suffered huge losses and shut down, others moved to digital channels of operating businesses and reaching out to customers. A lot of companies created online stores and fully-functional eCommerce websites to engage with their customers over the internet. This trend of online stores would never be possible without the shopping cart facility. In this article, we will look into the details of what is a shopping cart, the scope of shopping cart websites, and the importance of shopping cart solutions for businesses. Let’s get started.
What is a Shopping Cart?
By definition, a shopping cart on an online store website is a software or program that facilitates the buying process of a product or a service from a particular retailer. The key features of a shopping cart are adding products to the buyer’s list, accepting payments, and organizing the distribution of related information to the merchant, payment processor, and any other parties involved in the purchase process.
The term “shopping cart” represents a shopping trolley or basket used by customers in supermarkets to carry products and (ultimately) purchase while paying at the cash counter. The same concept is applied to online shopping. When you visit an online store website to buy products, you may scroll through multiple categories and pages to buy more than one product. However, to make sure that you selected a product to purchase, you need to add it to your shopping cart. Once done, you can proceed to other categories and add more products to your shopping cart. Once all the products are added to your shopping cart, you can proceed to checkout where you can choose a payment method. After making the payment successfully, all the products added to your shopping cart will proceed for shipment to your delivery address.
Why is Shopping Cart Important?
Shopping carts can make or break the deal between you and your online customers. With the help of a fully functional shopping cart, you can minimize the gap between shopping and buying for your customers to deliver them a seamless shopping experience. If you are stepping into the eCommerce market, you may need to first do your research on the types of shopping cart solutions available in the market to choose the best fit for your business. While this may be true, it is important to remember that a shopping cart is as good as the experience it offers to its users. If your online store website has everything that appeals to your customers but they face problems in making payments or adding products to the shopping cart, you might not be able to see them again. To avoid such an experience, you need to understand the common and important aspects of a fully-functional shopping cart.
Storing Product Information
The most basic feature of a shopping cart is to store product information. Whenever an online customer visits your website to buy products, they will need important product information to make a decision. Having a shopping cart on your online store website allows you to achieve it seamlessly.
Orders and Catalogs
Having a shopping cart opens the doors for your customers to place online orders for products and review product catalogs. This is an important step that lies in between your online customers and their purchases from your store.
Categories and Inventory Management
Another vital role of shopping carts is to maintain a database of products on the basis of their categories (e.g. apparel, electronics, food, etc.) that would otherwise be not possible for you to do on an eCommerce website.
Shopping Cart Benefits for Businesses
To understand how shopping carts can benefit businesses, consider the following advantages:
- Shopping carts maintain and organize the record of online transactions that take place at any day and any time of the week to facilitate business owners with flawless payment tracking.
- With the help of shopping cart integration, you can easily and effectively manage your customers during peak hours without having to keep them waiting for product information and payments.
- A shopping cart enhances the overall functionality of an eCommerce website by offering a range of valuable features including back-end tracking, inventory management, wish lists, coupons, etc.
- Custom shopping cart integration enables businesses to offer a hassle-free shopping experience to a large number of customers at the same time making it a point of attraction for the online target market.
How to Get Shopping Cart for Your Business Website?
If you already have a business website and want to add a shopping cart to it, you can easily do it without having to build a whole new website. All thanks to eCommerce solutions companies offering fully-operative and performance-driven shopping cart integration solutions to fit your business goals. You can share your business goals and details with an eCommerce website design company to get the best solutions to start your online store. There are a lot of eCommerce website design agencies available online to facilitate businesses. However, you may need to do some research and review the services of each company to choose the best agency for your business. You can also find online website builders that offer ready-to-go websites with shopping cart integration as per your need.
It is important to mention that each online business may have varied sets of shopping cart needs. You may need to consult with an eCommerce expert before choosing a particular shopping cart service for your website.
