Since the last decade, online businesses have been shaping the form of commerce. Behind every successful online business, there always has been excellent shopping cart software. A shopping cart software lets you sell your product, take payments, handle shipping and manage inventory.
Shopping cart software is primarily a tool that provides a seamless customer experience to sell and purchase products online. It also keeps track of numerous product orders, including online inventory, relevant taxes and shipping fees. Some of the best shopping cart software even recommends products that could pique customer interests.
What are the Benefits of Using a Shopping Cart Software?
Having a good shopping cart saves you from the resulting disasters of mismanaging products. In addition to that, here are few more benefits.
Sell products all over the internet
Using a shopping cart software, you can quickly sell your products or services right away from anywhere. An online shopping cart allows you to sell products through the direct checkout process without any delay.
Increases brand identity
Shopping cart software provides you with built-in marketing and sales tools. You can easily promote your products on search engines and social media to increase your brand identity among your potential customers.
Seamless shopping experience
Shopping cart software eases the online shopping experience through its drag and drop features. Customers can drop products into their cart, checkout quickly and even calculate shipping rates. It also helps to upsell products by letting buyers know what else you have to offer.
What To Look For In the Best Shopping Cart Software?
When choosing a shopping cart software out of hundreds of available options, finding a solution that suits you the best can be stressful. Here’s what to consider when you’re looking for the best shopping cart software.
Easy administration
Your e-commerce shopping cart software needs to be simple to administer. Software, emphasizing easy administration, lets you seamlessly control orders, products and earnings from a single dashboard. Choose the software that you can learn and operate effortlessly, intuitively and without core technical expertise.
Analytics and reporting
Analytics and reporting are the keys to master your success. The more you know about your campaign success rate, consumer behavior and site traffic, the more likely you are to succeed.
Website integration
It might be cumbersome to integrate shopping cart software with your existing website or store. Check if the shopping cart software blends seamlessly with your website design. Also, make sure the software integrates with other systems and tools you are using in your business.
Price
Budget is a critical factor for businesses of all sizes. And, depending on the features, a shopping cart software can cost you anywhere between $10 and $500 per month. In some cases, you can cut the cost down by choosing to pay only for the features you need. When choosing the best shopping cart software, make sure it lets you choose only the features you want.
Best Shopping Cart Software
Finding a shopping cart software is not an easy feat. Considering that, here is a prepared list of some of the best shopping cart software available on the market.
Ecwid
Ecwid promises the easiest way to create an online store – all within a few clicks. It seamlessly blends into your existing storefront and doesn’t require you to start over from scratch.
Pros:
- A cost-effective and powerful way to add e-commerce functionally to an existing site
- Sell on any device
- Auto-detects region-based language
- Allows multi-currency sales
Cons:
- Limited features in the free version
- A limited number of add-ons
- POS system limitations.
Pricing: Ecwid offers a free version that is ideal for getting started and testing basic features. It also provides multiple paid plans starting from $15 per month and going up to $99 per month.
Rating: 4.8 stars
Shopify
Shopify is a shopping cart solution that lets you create your online store with a wide range of customizable features. It takes the challenge out of setting up and managing your online business.
Pros:
- Scalable and flexible full-featured platform for any business size
- Code-free
- Fast checkout
- 100+ payment gateways
- Automatic carrier shipping rates
- Abandoned cart recovery
Cons:
- A bit cumbersome when dealing with an extensive product catalog
- Most add-ons are expensive.
Pricing: Shopify pricing cost $29 per month for new businesses, $79 per month for growing companies and $299 per month for companies with 2+ retail stores. It also offers a free 14-day trial.
Rating: 4.3 stars
Square Online
Square Online (formerly Weebly) is a great shopping cart software that allows entrepreneurs and startups to manage almost every aspect of their online business from marketing to sales.
Pros:
- Easy-to-use solution
- Beginner-friendly user interface
- Multi-channel sales
- Marketing automation tools
Cons:
- Not suited for high-volume businesses because of its customization limitation.
Pricing: Square Online comes with a free plan and three paid plans. Its Professional plan costs $12 per month, the Performance plan costs $26 per month and the premium plan is $72 per month.
Rating: 4.2 stars
OpenCart
OpenCart is an open-source shopping cart software that’s completely free to download, upgrade and use. It has all the building blocks needed to build a robust online store. To be ready to take orders, all you have to do is install OpenCart and follow easy setup steps. And, if you have some PHP skills, you have an immense possibility to customize and build the store of your dreams.
Pros:
- Supports an administrator dashboard to overview sales and marketing and manage a multi-store from a single place
Cons:
- Doesn’t offer many out-of-the-box features
- Has a steep learning curve
- Doesn’t have a dedicated support team in place
Pricing: OpenCart is completely free to use. But there are costs associated with add-ons, themes, extensions and SSL certificates.
Rating: 4.3 stars
X-Cart
X-Cart is one of the oldest shopping cart software with 20 years of business experience. With its out-of-the-box features to meet most of your business needs, it rightfully lives up to its reputation. If you’re looking for an enterprise-grade shopping cart, X-Cart can be an excellent option.
Pros:
- Comes with everything needed to design a high-level store
Cons:
- Can be tough to set up and maintain
- Steep learning curve
- Over-complicated pricing and an annual fee for license upgrades
Pricing: X-Cart offers open-source software with everything an SME can ask for. But, if you want advanced features, you might want to look into its paid plans. Its Business option costs $495 for a lifetime license; multi-vendor support will knock back $1,495 and the Ultimate plan will cost $5,995.
Rating: 4.1 stars
Online Business Made Easy
Over the years, e-commerce has become a multi-billion industry. And, there’s an overwhelming number of shopping cart software offering different solutions for online businesses. To avoid infuriating surprises down the road, you must invest in implementing the best-suited shopping cart software today.
