Avoiding hidden costs of shopping carts

Avoiding hidden costs of shopping carts

Purchasing a shopping cart software package online is very easy, but it’s important to understand what you are getting so that you are not fooled by overly attractive packages that will not meet your needs as a business.

How do you avoid getting stung for hidden costs when selecting a shopping cart package? An understanding of what you’ll need to get started, and what you’ll need to grow will help you make an informed decision.

Basic shopping cart website features

At its heart, a shopping cart website allows customers to browse products, view their details, add them to cart and check out, offering real time payment and delivery calculator options where relevant.

Competition in retail is fierce and to be competitive you will not only need a cart that makes buying easy for your customers, you’ll want one that makes the right impression on your customers. Gone are the days when tacky clipart, long-winded text based pages and varying font sizes, formatting and garish colours were the rage. Customers expect clean, clear and professional otherwise they will be buying from your competitors elsewhere.

Great design that stands out is not only important, it’s essential.

Hidden cost #1: What will it cost you to personalise the design of your cart to your business with your colours, your logo, your slideshows, your graphics? Will you need to hire a designer if it’s a DIY cart, or will the provider assist (and at what cost)?

Your competitors are overseas, so compete with them!

With the Australian dollar so high against other major currencies, it’s easy for your potential customers to buy online from somewhere else. And even if Australia lowers the GST threshold on imports so customers are paying more for getting items from overseas, this will not stem the tide. If you want to compete, you need to compete with those companies not just your local competitors in Australia. What do those companies have? Slick websites with professional graphics, good product descriptions and well written policies.  You can’t afford to ignore design, so think about it when you select your shopping cart.

Australian payment methods and shipping

Many carts market themselves in America and Europe, so the majority of payment methods are aimed at sellers living in these countries. Inclusion of a full range of popular Australian payment methods and shipping methods is less frequent. Think about the wide range of selection that Australian businesses have for accepting credit cards for example, and then look to see how many carts support them: St George Hosted Payment Pages (HPP), Westpac Payway, Bendigo Bank via MIGS, NAB Transact, Commweb, ANZ eGate, Suncorp Virtual POS, Camtech, Secure Pay, eWAY, Windcave (previously Payment Express (DPS)), Paymate, PayPal Express, PayPal Pro, Stripe, DirectOne, SC Net iPay, BPAY, Stratpay, and e-path – as well as Australian bank transfer, cash on delivery or payment on account (via PO).  A similar exercise can be performed for shipping providers – especially those Australian providers with live calculators (Fastway, Transdirect, eGo, Smartsend and Australia Post).

Hidden cost #2: How much will it cost to have the Australian payment method or shipping method you need added to your cart (if that’s even possible)? Will you get a live calculator or have to enter your own shipping costs?

Marketing Tools to help you compete

Promotional tools are a big part of a marketer’s arsenal so make sure they are part of your shopping cart too. Can your cart do a 3 for 2 deal? Does it allow you to run category-wide or store-wide discounts? Can you run timed specials? Does it let you offer discount codes? Can you put your customers into VIP customer groups and give them permanent discounts or special prices store-wide? Can your customers buy gift certificates in the store? Can you run your own affiliate programme? Can your cart send data feeds to Australian comparison shopping programmes? Does the cart have search engine friendly (SEO) URLs?

If your store doesn’t have these things they may be able to be added, but what will be the extra costs of this?

Hidden Cost #3: What are the costs of installing add-ons to do things like running an affiliate programme? Is this built in or do you have to pay a third party? If it’s built in, do you have to pay your cart provider extra? Are these costs per month or one-off? Are they reasonable?

Security

Is the cart you’re choosing secure? If you’re accepting Visa or MasterCard for example, you are required to ensure that your business (which includes your shopping cart software) meets the requirements known as “PCI DSS” – which are a set of security standards and business processes required as a minimum for good security. These are mandatory and fines are possible if you don’t adhere to them. Part of these standards is that credit card data is encrypted at the point the card data is collected (using a technology known as “SSL”) and that the hosting environment can pass a quarterly security scan from a recognised security authority. If your hosting provider doesn’t allow you to host your site in a PCI compliant environment, you’re putting your whole business at risk.

Hidden Cost #4: What will it cost to make your website and business PCI DSS security compliant? Does your ecommerce hosting provider take care of the technology side of this for you?

Transaction fees

Hidden Cost #5: Make sure that your shopping cart provider doesn’t take a cut of every sale you make. You pay enough to your gateway provider and will usually pay your shopping cart provider per month for hosting and support – so don’t pay them for the sales you make too – that’s like a tax on your success!

Whatever type of shopping cart option you choose, think about what’s included and what’s not included

Ozcart Ecommerce

Ozcart has been in business since 2006 and is an online, hosted shopping cart that you can use for your current or new online store. We offer so many features for the same low price. In fact, we are addicted to adding new ones to ensure that we remain one of the best choices for a shopping cart. https://ozcart.com

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