Calculate Shipping & Tax
This is one of the reasons why you have a shopping cart. It's a basic function, but some do it better than others. Make sure you have several options on how to calculate basic shipping charges. Don't forget, some customers will want fast shipping like Fed Ex. Can the cart handle this?
Soft & Hard Goods
This is extremely important for anyone who wants to sell informational products. A hard good is a physical product that has to be shipped to the customer. A soft good is a downloadable product or software type of product. You want the shopping cart to be able to handle both types of products in the same transaction so the customer doesn't have to go through the ordering process twice if ordering one of your widgets and a downloadable E-book at the
How to Pick a Shopping Cart System that Makes You Money same time. Also, when the cart is delivering a downloadable product it should generate a webpage for the download that disappears automatically after a short time so that customer can’t give the link to all his/her friends.
Featured Products
These are products that you can add to the bottom of the shopping cart checkout page that your customers may also be interested in purchasing. A powerful shopping cart will let you add additional items you may want to push to your customers. Adding text such as “people who bought this item also bought these products” or “you may also be interested in . . . “ will give customers additional choices that they may be interested in. This can mean a lot more money for you.
Related Products
A sophisticated shopping cart will automatically make additional product suggestions based on the item they are purchasing. Related products are similar in nature to the main items the customer is purchasing and gives your customer choices that they can quickly add to the cart at check out for a powerful upselling feature.
How to Pick a Shopping Cart System that Makes You Money
Product Descriptions
Make sure your choice of shopping cart will give you the options of making long and short descriptions of your products at checkout. A short description is a title of your product and a long description will give additional details to your customers to influence their buying decision. Make the long description “salesy” to push your products and convince your customers to buy.
These descriptions also help to combat “shopping cart abandonment” because they help keep the customer excited about their purchase i.e. they complete the transaction instead of loading up the cart and leaving.
InventoryA great feature every shopping cart should have is the ability to alert you when your product inventory is getting low. If you happen to run out of a certain product, the cart will give the customer an option to “backorder” the item and gives you a chance to keep selling while restocking your inventory.
How to Pick a Shopping Cart System that Makes You MoneyCustomizable “Continue Shopping” Pages
Where you send your customers after they add a particular item to their shopping cart can mean a big difference in the amount of money they spend with you. Sophisticated shopping carts allow you to customize the “Continue Shopping” button so it takes the customer to a related product of your choice. This one feature can dramatically influence whether the customer simply checks out because it’s too difficult to find related items, or purchases something else because you made it easy.
You should also be able to eliminate the continue shopping button. Why would you want to do that? If you have an expensive item in the cart you may not want people to get distracted by searching around your other less expensive products. They may find something cheaper and delete the expensive product or they may take so long looking at other stuff that they never get around to completing the sale in the cart. THAT HURTS!
Offer ManagementMost lower end shopping carts don’t have the capability to offer discounts for multiple purchases, or to offer “one free when you buy three” or similar special offers. Having this capability can really increase the average amount that someone spends when they shop with you.
Receipt and Confirmation Emails
The shopping cart should be able to send an email confirmation automatically to the customer and also generate a receipt for you to put in the package if you are shipping a product.
Multiple Order and Dropship Email Capability
The shopping cart should be able to email suppliers who ship directly to your customer (dropship). The email sent to the supplier would not have the customer's credit card info.
Web-Based Admin PageIf your shopping cart has a web-based managers' administration page, then you can work on your shopping cart, i.e., add products, change prices, etc., anywhere in the world. You are not stuck at your home base to make these changes.
Encryption
This is the PGP stuff I talked about earlier. Just make sure you have it.
This is a very handy feature that allows you to export the sales data directly from your shopping cart to popular accounting packages like Quickbooks, Quicken and Peachtree.
Associate Program CompatibleAn associate program means that someone else (your
associate/affiliate) can put a link to your products on their website. When someone clicks on the link and visits your website, associate program software tracks the person to your website. If they buy something, you pay your associate a commission for sending them. This basic premise made Amazon.com a billion dollar company. Now millions of small businesses are taking advantage of the same
How to Pick a Shopping Cart System that Makes You Money concept. It’s like having an army of commissioned salespeople working for you AND you don’t pay anyone a nickel unless they sell something.
This one point caused me enormous nightmares. If you plan on having other people sell your products by means of an associate program, try to get a compatible or integrated system right from the start. Otherwise, it could be difficult or impossible to add one later. A really good system will have an associate program built in so everything is compatible.
Upsell ModulesGood shopping cart systems will have the capability of suggesting related products to the shopper based on what they have already bought. This is what I call the “Do you want fries with that?” method of selling.
HERE'S A REAL LIFE SAMPLE OF THE POWER OF HAVING UPSELL CAPABILITY IN YOUR SHOPPING CART SYSTEM
Many years ago around Thanksgiving I conducted a teleseminar called "How to Make Money Speaking at Fundraisers." 60 people signed up at $30.00 each. $1800.00 -- Not too bad for a holiday seminar unless you compare it to the final figures:
When people clicked on "checkout" so they could pay for their seminar, the cart offered them several deals. This is called "upselling" and is normally only offered in the most sophisticated AND expensive shopping carts.
How to Pick a Shopping Cart System that Makes You Money One of the deals offered them 11 other recordings of previous TeleSeminars for $97.00 which was a big savings over buying them one-by-one.
LISTEN TO THIS -- 21 people went for the upsell of $97.00 which gave me an extra $2037.00 for the promotion for a total of $3837.00 for my one hour on the phone. This more than doubled the revenue from just one promotion.
I’m sure you can see this is real power and something you absolutely want in the shopping cart system that helps you run your business! -- and you can have it at your fingertips at a fraction of the cost of custom programmed systems.
Database HandlingCustomer data coming into a shopping system should never have to be retyped and it should be able to be manipulated to increase sales. High end systems will have this built in.
HERE’S ANOTHER REAL LIFE EXAMPLE:Before I had a modern shopping system, we would have to print out the orders and have them typed into ACT database program by an administrative person (complete with all the mistakes, typos and hourly fees I might add).
If I wanted to email these customers, I would have to be a genius to export the data from ACT in comma delimited format and then also be a genius to import the data into an email program so that I could send out the email a half hour later – if I was lucky.
Now, at the touch of a few keys, I can instantly email everyone that buys a particular product and even put their name in it (this isHow to Pick a Shopping Cart System that Makes You Money called mail merge) with no administrative help whatsoever. This is a massive cost savings and errors have been reduced by 90%.
Broadcast Capability
Most shopping carts require you to export your data to another unrelated system where you have to massage the data in order to send emails back to the customer. You just about have to be a database expert to do the manipulations. Good shopping carts have integrated mailing capabilities that can allow customers to be sorted and broadcast to immediately. You should be able to email to all customers or only to ones that bought certain items. You should also be able to broadcast an email to your affiliates right from the system.
Sales tip: Don’t make every contact with a customer a sales pitch. They will most likely ask to be removed from your mailings. Alternate a helpful hint based on what they bought, and a product offering. Just to be on the safe side so they don’t alienate customers, some people do two separate helpful hints to each product offering
Email List Management
If you are starting an electronic newsletter/magazine, a good shopping cart system can manage all the subscribers for you automatically. It will automate the process and give you a form for your website that lets people subscribe and unsubscribe themselves which is a tremendous time and money saver.
Mail Merge Capability
Emails that are personalized normally get a much higher response than generic emails. Most of the time you must do sophisticated export and formatting manipulations on your database and send the results to a separate and expensive mail merge program. Good shopping cart systems integrate the database with an included mail merge program so that reaching your customers in a personalized fashion means only pushing a few buttons.
In the little graphic above you can see the variable
%$firstname$%. I can send out 10 or 10,000 emails and anywhere that variable appears in my message, the person’s first name will be substituted.
Not only can you add the person’s first name whenever you want, you can add all kinds of other variables. If you look at the graphics just below you can see variables for email address, last name, company name, home phone, work phone, address, city, state, zip, fax number, today’s date, tomorrow’s date, affiliate ID and Passwords and all kinds of other stuff. You even have custom variables you can use. All you have to do when writing your email is click on whatever variable you want to include and the cart does the rest.
How to Pick a Shopping Cart System that Makes You Money
Coupons and Discounts
Only the finest most high-end shopping carts are able to do percentage and fixed amount discounts when selling your products. You should be able to create any kind of coupon code you desire. These coupons and discounts can mean a tremendous boost in sales. Having this option can mean a big difference in gross and net income.
Multiple Website Capability
Most shopping carts are only good for one website. You are required to buy a completely separate system for each website you want to develop. This can be ENORMOUSLY EXPENSIVE, time consuming and frustrating. Shopping cart systems that can handle products from multiple websites save tons of money and development time. A side benefit is that completely different
How to Pick a Shopping Cart System that Makes You Money product lines can be sold with the customers from one website never even knowing about the products sold on the other website unless you want them to.
Integrated AutorespondersSequential autoresponders are one of the most powerful sales tools on the Internet today. They send follow-up emails to customers and prospects to keep your sales messages going out automatically. This service is virtually never seen integrated with a shopping cart system. You usually have to contract out with a separate company and somehow get the shopping cart and autoresponder company to work together. Only the most advanced carts would have this function integrated.
Autoresponders can be used to train the customer in the use of your product and/or suggest other products that would likely be of interest. The best part is that after they are set up, the entire process goes on autopilot totally unattended which saves you time and money. A recent survey on ZDNet found that 98 percent of customers would repurchase from a company if they were asked. Autoresponders make sure they get asked when you are too busy to do it yourself.
Another big benefit of autoresponders is that they tend to decrease returns especially on big ticket products. Buyer’s remorse can really increase your return rate. A simple automated series of follow-up emails will let the customer know you aren’t going to disappear now that you have their money. It can also reassure them they made a wise decision in purchasing your product.
How to Pick a Shopping Cart System that Makes You MoneyAd Tracking
Again this is one of the most powerful cost saving and money saving tools available to people selling products and services on the Internet. Again it is rarely found as part of an integrated system. You usually have to contract for this service separately or buy additional software. Integrated ad tracking allows you to tell which of your on line links, or banners is paying off.
Old style non-integrated systems only tell how many people clicked on the link or ad. The most advanced integrated systems not only tell how many people clicked, but also tell how many of those people bought. This keeps you from making tremendous mistakes.
You might think an ad is great because it got many click throughs, so you keep buying the ad over and over. You might also think that another ad is not worth it because it only has half as many click throughs, so you cancel it. Integrated ad tracking could tell you that the ad that is getting all the click throughs is producing only a tiny number of sales and that the ad that got less click throughs is producing a very high percentage of sales. Without this information you would keep the bad ad and cancel the good one. . . . which is not a great way to make money.
Conversion Ratio
This term is the number of website visitors as compared to the number of buyers. To figure it out, simply divide the total number of visitors to your site by the total number of people who bought something. So if 100 people visited your site (or sales page) and one person bought, you would have a conversion ratio of 100:1 or more commonly called 1 Percent.
How to Pick a Shopping Cart System that Makes You Money If you can use your shopping system to raise that figure of people that buy to only 2 people out of 100 or 2 Percent then you have DOUBLED YOUR SALES without even increasing your traffic and the technology did all the work. Simple shopping carts do not have the capability to do this for you, but shopping systems do.
Example:
Let’s say you have a $97.00 product and you have 5000 visitors a month to the sales page for this product and you have a 1Percent conversion ratio like we talked about just above.
You then use the tools a good shopping cart system has to increase your conversion ratio to 2 Percent. Now let’s look at the math.
5000 Visitors x .02 = 100 Sales x $97.00 / sale = $9700.00
Which would you rather have $4850.00 or $9700.00? Maybe $4850 just covers your monthly bills with nothing left over. You didn’t really make any money for all your efforts. Using good tools is how savvy marketers get rich and people who cheap out on free shopping carts stay poor.
Ad RotationThis is a tremendous feature found only in the most expensive high end custom programmed systems. It will really make you a ton of money and keep you from losing a ton of money which you will do if you continue to run ads that aren’t selling for you. This feature allows you to have several advertising pages running at once. The shopping system alternates the ads automatically for you. When you combine this feature with the ad tracking and conversion ratio
How to Pick a Shopping Cart System that Makes You Money features you will get instant feedback on which ad is making you the most money.
Ad 1
Learn how to get paid to speak. Home study course reveals how you can make $5500.00 per speech. Visit
http://www.antion.com/speakervideo.htm
Ad 2
You can get paid for your knowledge. Companies and other organizations will pay you for expert advice. Visit http://www.antion.com/public-speaking.htm for details.
Which ad above makes the most money? You are just guessing if you don’t have the proper tools to track it. Guess wrong and you are paying for an ad that isn’t producing a maximum number of sales. Solid businesses aren’t built on “guessing”. A good shopping cart system will tell you exactly which ad is making you the most money.
Order Form Sell Through
This feature helps you overcome the biggest problem Internet marketers face – people quitting the sale just as they get to the order form page. This is called “Shopping Cart Abandonment”. They either get cold feet, are afraid to put their credit card in the Internet or who knows what else might be stopping them from completing the sale. A good shopping cart lets you put customized text right on the order form page that recaps all the good reasons the customer should complete the sale. Of course, this sell through information is customized depending on what the customer ordered. This is an awesome feature to have and it will get more people to complete the sale which means more money in your pocket. See the example on the next page.
Speaking System I want to increase my speaking skills to the top professional level AND I want to get paid when I speak. I want more high-fee speaking engagements, more prestige, and more financial freedom than I've ever had before … even if I'm starting out part time and with a small budget. And
that I'm going to have to get good on stage and I'm also going to have to learn about the 'Business' of speaking and the Wake 'em Up Video Professional Speaking System will help me do it.
I also understand that I get a whopping $300 discount off the original $1297 price, along with five FREE bonus gifts worth over $1918.75 if I pay cash with order by the deadline:
1. FREE - Six-CD Audio Album Make 'em Laugh: How To Use Humor in Business Presentations ($89.95 Value)(After your order is confirmed, you'll get an electronic receipt within 15 minutes. Be assured that your on-line transaction is 100% secure .) Cavett Robert, the founder of the prestigious National Speakers Association said, 'Tom's educational materials will cut five years off a speaker's learning curve'
Bobby Bowden, Head Coach Florida State University said, 'Wake 'em Up will teach you how to create excitement when you speak to any size group. I use Tom's tips in my own speaking engagements.'
Mark Victor Hansen, Co-Author of the #1 New York Times Best-selling series, Chicken Soup for the Soul said, 'Wake 'em Up teaches you to be irresistible as a presenter.'
Recurring Billing
This is another awesome feature you must have to make big money and to get residual income (income that comes in automatically every month). This feature allows you to offer packages that are billed to your customer every month. You could do a “CD of the Month” promotion, or a monthly coaching package, or monthly vitamins, or just about anything you can think of that you sell on a regular basis. It doesn’t have to me month to month. It could be a larger billing every 90 days or whatever you want to set it at.
This feature is also tremendous for offering finance options on your more expensive products. I use this for my “Wake ‘em Up Video Professional Speaking System”
http://www.antion.com/speakervideo.htm . If someone doesn’t buy it and pay the full price, they get a chance to buy it and make payments. The shopping cart handles all the billing. I make a lot of extra sales this way.
Sales Reports
A good shopping cart system will give you sales reports in a number of different ways so you can choose the one that gives you the information you want. You should be able to switch between reports instantly and have many to choose from. Some common reports are:
Sales by Item – This tells you how much of a particular product you sold and you should be able to put in a date range, i.e. You sold 22 widgets for $418.00 in the five day period from November 20 – 25.
How to Pick a Shopping Cart System that Makes You Money Sales by Client – This report is listing of your clients and how much money they spent. This is handy for identifying big spenders and rewarding them or giving them special thanks and/or incentives.
Sales by Card Type – This report breaks out the amounts of money that come in from different credit cards. This is handy for reconciling your credit card fees each month.
Sales by Ad Campaign – This report tells you exactly how one of your promotions performed.Sales by Affiliate – This report tells you how well your affiliates are selling for you.
If the shopping cart you are considering doesn’t have these kinds of reports, I’d be very reluctant to use it. You will never know how well you are doing or if your promotions are working or not.
AnalyticsA powerful shopping cart will keep track of how many customers back out before they buy. This is called “shopping cart abandonment.” By knowing this information you can adjust your related products and descriptions to keep the customer interested in buying.
QuestionnairesIt’s imperative that you know what your customers are thinking. Asking them is the simplest way to find out . . . well . . . it’s simple if you can get a questionnaire form on your website or in your ezine without three months of trouble figuring out how to do it. A good shopping cart system will make it easy for you to survey
How to Pick a Shopping Cart System that Makes You Money your customers. The hardest part really is just figuring what are the main questions you want to ask.
Pop Up Boxes
In a tiny number of super markets pop up boxes (those little boxes that pop up when you visit or leave a webpage) are annoying and frowned upon. In most other markets, used judiciously, they can tremendously increase sales by recommending other offers if the shopper decided not to purchase the offer on the page they are looking at. Making pop up boxes used to be only for the programmer types. Now, sophisticated shopping systems have wizards that lead you through simple pop up box creation questions with no programming required on your part.
Help with Off Line Shopping
Make sure the shopping cart gives the customer an option to print out the order form so the customer can fax or mail it to you. You should also post your 800 number for customers who want to call in an order. Do whatever it takes to make it easy for them to order.
It will be extremely difficult to get everything on the above list in an inexpensive shopping cart. Go through the list anyway when How to Pick a Shopping Cart System that Makes You Money you are considering a shopping cart system. Pick the cart that has as many features as possible that are important to you.