One of the hardest things about doing business online is that technology changes with blinding speed. Whatever the industry standard was yesterday will be outdated by the end of the week. Business owners with full plates often find it impossible to keep up, especially as far as their shopping cart software is concerned.
Of course, you can always stick with tried and true coding methods and proven security implementations, but even these won’t guarantee widespread usability. The most important goal of any website or e-commerce portal is to disseminate information to consumers. Only once you’ve done that will people buy your products or make inquiries. When it comes to your shopping cart, ensuring that people can use it easily and efficiently is essential.
Poor Compatibility Eliminates Trust
What happens when your shopping cart software doesn’t work with all browsers? From your end, everything seems fine, but say a customer is just about to buy something from your digital store using their cell phone. They’ve entered in all their info, but when they go to click the pay button, the screen blanks out and the form resets without the information they entered. It may not actually have gone anywhere dangerous, but to the consumer, your firm has just become a liability. Would you shop at an online store with these sort of problems? Probably not.
Of course, this is an extreme example, but when you’re dealing with sensitive information like credit card numbers and personally identifying information it really doesn’t take much to stop consumers in their tracks. If your shopping cart isn’t ready to perform perfectly in all browsers, you’ll lose valuable sales.
Bad Carts Make Things More Difficult
Another simpler issue is that of display technology. There are many different ways to create the same webpage or shopping cart using computer code. Of course, these similarities usually stop at appearances, but sometimes they don’t even get that far to begin with. Depending on how your cart software was created, it may not display correctly on different devices.
This seems like a minor problem because most consumers will still click the “Buy” button even if they have to scroll down a lot to find it. The main issue is that eventually they’ll realize that one of your competitors offers the same products on another e-commerce site that actually works properly with their particular cellphone or tablet. At that point, you can say goodbye to that customer, even if they were one of your biggest fans beforehand.
What Makes Good Shopping Cart Software Stand Out?
One of the best indicators of a great shopping cart package is that the people who make it will have tested it a whole lot. Just like with any industrial product or office software package, repetitive testing is the only way to figure out how a shopping cart will operate in different circumstances.
Most reputable e-commerce software companies even go so far as to indicate which browsers and operating systems their products are compatible with. Many also keep their professional clients informed about well-known problems and compatibility issues with particular browsers. Checking out user support forums is a good way to get the low-down in advance. Of course, before you get that far into things, you’ll probably want to look into basic features like mobile administration capabilities and automatic business report generation. No two shopping cart software packages are alike and it’s critical to find one that meets your needs before you settle down with it.
