The Shopping cart software allows online shopping customers to accumulate a list of items for purchase, described metaphorically as “placing items in the shopping cart” or “add to cart”. Upon checkout, the software typically calculates a total for the order, including shipping and handling (i.e. postage and packing) charges and the associated taxes, as applicable.
Some set-up must be done in the HTML code of the website, and the shopping cart software must be installed on the server which hosts the site, or on the secure server which accepts sensitive ordering information. E-shopping carts are usually implemented using HTTP cookies or query strings. In most server based implementations however, data related to the shopping cart is kept in the session object and is accessed and manipulated on the fly, as the user selects different items from the cart. Later at the process of finalizing the transaction, the information is accessed and an order is generated against the selected item thus clearing the shopping cart. Although the most simple shopping carts strictly allow for an item to be added to a basket to start a checkout process (e.g. the free PayPal shopping cart), most shopping cart software provides additional features that an Internet merchant uses to fully manage an online store. Data (products, categories, discounts, orders, customers, etc.) is normally stored in a database and accessed in real time by the software. Shopping Cart Software is also known as e-commerce software, e-store software, online store software or store front software and online shop.
Shopping cart abandonment
It means customer adds the products to shopping cart and quits without making purchase (payment). It can be due to various reasons.
- You are not displaying the shipping cost and other info on the product page and the customer is going to final page just to know that.
- The hidden information was displayed only at final payment (like shipping charges) and the customer suddenly back off.
- Final checkout is error prone, or confusing, or distracting.
- No proper payment methods
- Customer forgot due to other interruptions.
The final goal should be reduce the drops, minimise the m. Finally the abandonment should be due to only "customer forgot". In that case you can send a remainder mail to customer about the same. Sudden and drastic increase in
shopping cart abandonment indicates some thing is wrong or failed at the checkout process ( say payment gateway is down), and you have to solve the issue with high priority. This can be act as good functional alarm. Please do read out previous post on the
functional alarms. You can read more about shopping cart abandonment here:
Quora article-1,
article-2
B2B products
You can take the help of B2B products as well. But before that you have to sure that It will suit you. If your website code is in PhP then you can choose shopping kart software which is written only in PhP. The software should be able to integrate with the your preferred payment gateway as well. Few of well knows products are
Commerce sciences, Cs-cart, 3dcart, Magento,
X-cart, Opencart, Prestashop,
Zeuscart. You can read more about good products here:
Quora article-1,
article-2
References
Wikipedia Web Marketing article