12 Tips Online Shopping Cart For New E-commerce Merchants(part 1)

This information is intended to help merchants avoid common pit falls and save time later trying to correct them. The goal is to make a pleasant shopping experience for potential customers rather than discouraging them and driving them away. Disregarding these basic e-commerce recommendations can be costly in the loss of potential revenue.The items listed here are not listed in order of importance. Each item should be considered in establishing a well run shopping cart.

1) Shopping Cart Responsiveness

Test your potential shopping cart for speed. If it is too slow you could frustrate your customers. Consider another shopping cart program. If you are still in the planning stage, this is the time to make sure the programming works the way you want. If you are looking at a commercial online shopping cart program find existing stores that are using it and try them out. If you have a large number of products the cart may be slower.

2) Visible Contact Information

Include complete physical address and telephone contact information. This can be a seperate page but there should be a link to it on every page. Hiding your identity (whether intentional or not) lowers the confidence level of shoppers. There are also many online shoppers like to select the product in an online shopping cart then phone in the actual order.

3) Visible Privacy Policy

Internet privacy is a big concern among many e-commerce shoppers. Establish a firm privacy policy page, link to it from every page, and abide by it. This is an easy item to miss but it is important to some online shopping cart users and popular news items may make it important to the majority of shoppers on any given day.

4) Visible Return Policy

Having a return policy page provides some comfort to customers that are not familiar with you. You may stand behind your product or service 100% but your potential online shopping cart customer does not know this unless you make it clearly available to them on your site. Let your customers know what to do in case they have experience any problems. Visible return and warranty information helps build confidence in your store.