What Makes Internet Marketing Easy?...

The Ultimate Shopping Cart System

If you're like most people that are thinking about starting an e-commerce web site, you're probably struggling with understanding just how to put your products online, accept credit cards, keep control over the content, automate most of the mundane tasks involved with running a site -- all for a price that you can afford. 

I purchased literally thousands of dollars on books and home study courses from self-made e-commerce millionaires.  By studying this material, it became evident that several common strategies were essential in the creation of a successful e-commerce web site:
  • acceptance of credit cards
  • e-mail marketing of prospects/customers
  • effective use of autoresponders
  • affiliate program
  • completely automating your business

I quickly found out that trying to implement all those cool internet marketing strategies, that I felt were essential in the creation of a successful online business in the real world, was no easy task.  In fact, at times it seemed impossible.  

It became apparent that the shopping cart system was the heart of an e-commerce web site.  The shopping cart system would need to support the  integration of all of those neat marketing tools otherwise manual intervention would end up being the glue to tie everything together.  In studying up on the differences between shopping cart systems, I decided early on to use the services of a stand alone Application Service Provider.   I just didn’t like the idea of having my shopping cart software tied up with my web hosting company.  

There were two main reasons for this decision.  One, the costs web-hosting companies charged to set you up with an e-commerce package was high.  Quite often, they also charged extra fees for bandwidth usage on a “commercial” web site.  Second, I was afraid that the web hosting company would go out of business and consequently – put me out of business.   I’ve seen this happen time and time again and not by just small companies but by large, seemingly well-established, fortune 1000 companies.

I felt that by selecting a Shopping Cart Application Service Provider (ASP), I could use any web-hosting company interchangeably!  If the web-hosting company I was using went out of business, I could set up my web site at another web host without worrying about transferring the products that I set up in my shopping cart system to another one.

Searching for the "Perfect" Shopping Cart System

I’ve read through the consumer reviews and manuals of very many shopping cart systems.  I’ve found some that were very good and some that just provided you with the bare minimum.  I wanted to make sure that the cart provided:

  • CONTROL: Offered a level of customization needed to make changes and adjustments without too much difficulty.
  • SECURITY: Ensured that the customer always entered credit card information over a secure server (SSL connection). This can happen either in the payment gateway (which is always secure) or in the shopping cart (which means that the cart needed to be hosted on a secure server).
  • FLEXIBILITY: The cart must not only be compatible with a business's current merchant account and payment gateway; it also needed to be flexible enough to accommodate other programs that a business may wish to use in the future. For example, if you have an affiliate program (or are thinking about starting one) you'll want to ensure that your affiliate tracking solution is going to be compatible with your shopping cart.
  • COMPLETE SOLUTION: Several ASP carts that claimed to offer total package solutions, actually outsourced different aspects of their cart to other companies.  For example, different vendors contracted by the ASP or ISP could operate the cart, merchant account, and payment gateway.  In a situation like this, if anything goes wrong and you need questions answered, you could find yourself getting the run-around.

 

Now, keeping the base criteria in mind, I was still left with quite a few  Shopping Cart Application Service Providers.  Of course all of them offered the shopping cart basics:

  •  A SHOPPING CART that tracks products selected for purchase by your customers and calculates the total purchase price, including tax and shipping costs.

  • A MAINTENANCE SYSTEM that allows you to easily add new products, remove old ones, adjust prices, and set up special offers.

  • An ORDER-RETRIEVAL SYSTEM that provides you with all the information you need to fulfill orders (i.e. name, mailing address, product ordered, etc.).

 

However, I was also looking for the shopping cart system to provide features such as:

  • Storage of customer information

  • Revenue tracking

  •  Inventory management

  • Advertising capabilities

  • Control Over Looks And Operation

  • Browser-based Maintenance

  •  Security

  • Flexibility

  • Extraction of Customer List for e-mail purposes

 

The Ultimate Shopping Cart System

I was extremely fortunate to find what I consider to be an Internet Marketer's dream come true!  Not only did I find a shopping cart system that allowed me to extract my customer list, it also actually had a mechanism to send out the e-mail itself!  In fact, it had the tools needed to integrate ALL of the following strategies in the shopping cart system itself:

  • E-mail Marketing

  • Autoresponders

  • Online Newsletter

  • Online Form / Survey

  • Electronic Product Delivery

  • Advertisement (Ad) Tracking

  • Affiliate Program (Cookie-based Tracking)

 

Imagine being able to integrate your e-mail campaign to a segregated “prospect”, “customer” or “affiliate” list all from the shopping cart system itself.

 

Extremely Cost Effective

Since this shopping cart system also performs the tasks that are normally performed by other service providers,  it allows for the avoidance of those charges.  Great savings can be obtained by not being charged for a list server, autoresponder system and an electronic delivery system making this shopping cart system one of the best deals on the Internet!

  

In order to obtain more details and to sign up for “the” shopping cart system that provides all of these tools click on the button below: