Are you starting an online store or considering a shopping cart software switch? There are so many choices, including whether or not to choose a hosted or standalone cart, a best practice open source shopping cart or a paid cart that charges monthly or takes a percentage of sale. And that’s before merchants even consider important features that they need to run their online businesses.
So when it comes to features, which ones are most important? To get started, check out our list of 6 of the best open source shopping cart software category features that your shopping cart software should include.
- Drill-Down Categories
help refine customers’ searches through thousands of products with dynamic choices like Size, Color, Brand, etc. And make sure your shopping cart software doesn’t lead shoppers to dead-end page without products. Your software’s search functionality should work smoothly and pave the way to the checkout.
- Unlimited Categories
allow you to categorize your products any way you like whether you have 10 products, 10 thousand or 100 thousand. Your software should give you the flexibility to make the choices you need to arrange and display your products.
- Unlimited Sub-Categories
give merchants more control to create departments and segment products so customers can easily find what they're looking for.
- Sort Order for Products in Categories
allow you to arrange your products in categories in any order at any time to help shoppers find what they're looking for.
- Automatic Paging
is extremely useful when your categories get large. Your software should automatically break them up into pages for easy viewing and searching.
- Custom Banners
bring your categories and departments to life with unique graphics that set the mood. Only the best open source shopping cart software makes it easy upload banner images so you can swap them regularly.
What other category features are you looking for in an online store? Check out our full feature list to see what makes MerchantTribe one of the best open source shopping cart options in the marketplace or visit our forums to talk with other merchants, developers and designers.
Purchasing online can be a little nerve wracking for some shoppers, especially shoppers who didn’t grow up in the digital age. They may be used to buying items in stores where they can see and touch items and assess the store and store owner. If you’re looking for an online shop builder to start an ecommerce store, Here are 5 of the top fears that online shoppers may have and how to address them.
- You’ll steal their money and won’t ship their product. There are many ways to allay fears that you aren’t a legitimate business. Testimonials help, as well as providing a picture of yourself and your physical location. Listing a mailing address and phone number will help shoppers trust you. It also helps to become a member of a service like the Better Business Bureau. Give shoppers ways to see YOU and not just a random website.
- You’ll sell their information. Who isn’t tired of spam? No one wants more junk clogging up his or her inbox, so make it easy for shoppers to trust you. Specifically tell your customers that you will not sell their information or give it to any third party without their permission.
- Their orders will take forever to ship. Be clear about your shipping policies and give shoppers a variety of choices if possible. Some customers are more price sensitive about shipping than others, while some might need expedited orders. Whatever you say, stick to it. Nothing leaves a bad impression like a late delivery.
- They won’t be able to get help. Depending on the product, customers may need hand holding, may have questions or may have problems. Make it easy for shoppers to reach you for questions either by email, chat or phone. A good FAQ page can reduce the number of questions you have to field. If you products are technical, a support forum can be a good first stop for customers with questions.
- They won’t be able to return their products. Shoppers want to know what their options are if they don’t what they bought. Unlike a brick and mortar store, they can’t just stop by to return an item. Make sure your online shop builder makes it easy to create and display a good return policy. You can use MerchantTribe’s awesome content building options to be up front about your return policies and how shoppers can return items. If a shopper wasn’t happy with your product, but appreciated your customer service, he or is more likely to return and buy something else in the future.
What scares you about online shopping? How do stores gain your trust? Come share in the MerchantTribe forums. Do you need an online shop builder? Download our free open source .net ecommerce software by clicking here.
Are you searching for the best website builder for your online business? Don’t forget that category functionality is extra important for a web store. Your categories organize your store so shoppers can find what they’re looking for. But how do you know what category features are important for your online store to have?
Here are 6 must have category features that you should look for when choosing the best website builder for your online business.
- Custom Icons
display categories and departments in your products grids with custom icons to make it easy for shoppers to identify the categories and products they’re looking for.
- Html Content Before and After Templates
gives merchants the ability to customize category pages with HTML. You should be able to insert flash, product manuals, custom links and more—so you can add content on the fly.
- Html Descriptions
give merchants the options to insert their own HTML in their description of categories. This feature should include the ability to bold words, hyperlinks and images for a totally custom experience.
- Per-Category Meta Tags
help shoppers find your store with search engine friendly meta tags customized for EACH category. Make sure your cart does’t limit you to the same tag for every page in your store, making it difficult for the search engines to find your categories.
- Show Count of Items Inside Category
tells customers how many items are in each category of your store, making searching for items easier and more predictable.
- Automatic Breadcrumb Trails
keep shoppers from getting lost. Show them a clickable history of how they arrived at each category so they can get back to a previous page if they need to.
MerchantTribe has the features you need to run your online store, which makes it one of the best website builder options for ecommerce merchants. Check out our full feature list to see all of them or visit our forums to talk with other merchants, developers and designers. Looking for a custom feature or request? Click here to contact us!
A few days ago we published our first blog entry about product features that a shopping cart builder should include to help online merchants run their online stores. But those aren’t all the features that are useful to ecommerce merchants. Check out these 8 features to see more helpful options for online merchants and find out why they’re so important!
- HTML Descriptions
should allow you to provide one description of your product for the category page and a more detailed description for the product page. This gives you the option to include more content to your website, which is great for SEO and gives you more control.
- Unlimited Images
are important! Product images sell products. Some carts limit the number of images you can upload. Look for a cart that gives you unlimited numbers of images so you can choose how many images you need per product.
- Image Swap When Choices Change (i.e. size/color). This feature automatically shows a new image when a shopper makes a different choice. For instance, your store will show the large red shirt picture when a customer selects the large red option. Look for software that’s AJAX enables so the shopper doesn’t need to click to see the changes.
- Electronic/ Intellectual Goods. If you sell electronic downloads, make sure the shopping cart builder you choose gives you the ability to allow customers to download them and for you to void shipping charges. Even if you don’t sell electronic goods, the ability to offer them can be helpful if you ever want shoppers to be able to access instruction manuals or information that you produce. (Can be great for marketing efforts!)
- Drop Ship from Unlimited Vendors. Make sure that your shopping cart software can
assign each product to a warehouse and automatically figure out the correct shipping cost, even if a customer orders products from different warehouses.
- Size/Weight Fields. Check to make sure that you can enter product size and weight for your products to achieve and accurate shipping cost.
- Manufacturer Field. Make sure your software allows you to assign each product to a manufacturer for drop shipping.
- Vendor Field. Does the shopping cart builder you’re considering allow you to assign each product to a vendor for easy categorization?
Want to discuss shopping cart builder choices and ecommerce tips and tricks? Visit the MerchantTribe forums to talk with other merchants, developers and designers. Need a feature you don’t see on our full feature list. Contact us and let us know!
Building an online business can be tough! As a merchant, you don’t want to worry about the technology you use for your online store. You have enough concerns with sales and marketing, sourcing and maintaining great customer relationships. That’s why it’s important to select a shop builder that meets your needs right from the beginning. To help you get started selecting the right shop builder for your business, here are 7 killer product features that you should look for when you choose your next shopping cart.
- Minimum Quantity
options give you the ability to require customers to order at least a minimum amount of any product. This feature is helpful for customized orders like business cards and calendars.
- Activate/Deactivate
options allows merchants to turn products off temporarily while they update them or before they're ready to go on sale. This option can save merchants and shoppers a lot of confusion and make it easy to make changes to web stores.
- MSRP (list price). Check to see if the shopping cart software you’re considering
displays the suggested retail price for your products if your price is lower. Make sure your shopping cart software gives you the option to automatically calculate the savings and display them to your customers.
- Site Price
Settings allows you to adjust your store price lower than MSRP.
- Site Cost
Settings allow you to set your internal cost to keep track of profitability. Coupons can be set to never go below your cost.
- Tax Exempt Options gives merchants the choice to
easily mark items as tax exempt.
- Tax Class Options make it easy to group products for tax rules. For instance, look for a shop builder that lets you set food products to one set of tax rules and apparel to another.
Ready to get started? Click here to sign up for MerchantTribe’s shop builder software today. Still not sure if our software is right for you? Check out our feature list or contact us with your questions!
Every shopping cart provider says they have the best retail cart for your business. But how can you get past the spin and really figure out if a shopping cart meets your business needs? One of the first steps to choosing a retail cart is evaluating a cart’s feature set to determine if it has the built in tools you require to run and grow your store.
Check out our list 5 gotta have product features for your online store to help you with your decision. And take a look at our full feature list to see all of MerchantTribe’s helpful features for online merchants.
- Related Items
let you easily promote accessory products and add-ons. This can really increase store sales!
- Auto Suggest automatically displays related items. For instance, "customers who bought this also bought." This option can take the work out of choosing related items if you have many products.
- Inventory Tracking By Variants. Many retail carts don’t allow merchants to keep track of inventory for products with size, color, and other variations. Look for shopping cart software that does to make sure you don't have inventory problems! For instance, when you run out of small, red t-shirts, your software should automatically remove it from the store.
- Custom Descriptions, Images, SKUs for Variants. Many shopping carts don’t allow merchants to set different prices, pictures and descriptions for each size, color, or variation of a product. You should look for a shopping cart that does allow you to set these options for maximum flexibility and control over your products.
- Unlimited File Downloads Per-Product. If you offer
downloadable software, product manuals and documents, make sure your retail cart doesn’t curtail your ability to offer electronic downloads. Some ecommerce providers set caps on electronic downloads, which can leave you in a jam when a customer can receive his or her goods.
Do you need a retail cart feature you don’t see on our list? Contact us today! Ready to get started selling? Click here to sign up for an online store and get started immediately.
Security is important to both merchants and customers. No shopper wants his or her information leaked or stolen, and a security breach can be a nightmare situation for storeowners. And merchants certainly don’t want to process fraudulent orders and end up with chargebacks later. So it’s very important when you decide to start an online store to choose a secure shopping cart that takes safety and privacy seriously. Here are five ways that MerchantTribe makes sure your ecommerce site is safe and sound!
- We flag suspicious orders. Some orders are sketchy! MerchantTribe flags these orders for you by noticing odd IP addresses, e-mail, phone numbers, website domains or credit card numbers. This gives you a chance to review these orders before processing so you don’t lose money later.
- We give you lock out options. MerchantTribe allows merchants to lock out users after a set number of failed login attempts and for a certain number of minutes after those failed attempts.
- We take credit card security seriously. Before you start an online store, make sure you use secure shopping cart software that protects credit card information. In addition to fraud screening by credit card, we use high security triple DES encryption to protect credit card information and we never display the full credit card information. MerchantTribe only displays the last four credit card digits to prevent theft. Plus, as required for PCI Compliance, security codes are never stores or displayed. And we optionally clear out credit card numbers from processed orders to reduce the possibility of card number theft.
- MerchantTribe offers both full and shared SSL support. Merchants have the option of using a full SSL certificate to protect private information or can opt to share an SSL certificate.
What else are you looking for in an ecommerce site in terms of security? Let us know in the MerchantTribe forums. Do you need a low cost, secure shopping cart solution? Sign up here to start an online store today!
Spring is a common time of year to clean house. We give our homes a thorough mopping, dusting and get rid of all the old junk that’s outdated and not working. But why limit cleaning to where you live? Spring is also an excellent time to take stock of your online store with some smart e commerce info and compare this year’s performance to last year’s. See what’s working and what’s not—so you can move confidently into the summer sales months.
Here are 5 ways to compare this year’s performance against last year’s on your ecommerce store:
- How much moolah are you making? This is the big one! Is your store bringing in more profits this year compared to last year or have sales slumped off? If so, delve more deeply into when sales have been up and when they’ve been down. Have spikes been associated with any particular promotions or events? Notice what promotions failed so you figure out how to improve them in the coming year.
- Turn up the volume? Making money is the ultimate goal of your e commerce store, so it’s helpful to pay attention to the volume of your sales. It’s certainly possible to sell more but make less. If your volume of sales has been up, but your profit has been down, how can you trim the fat off your store?
- Has your traffic increased? It’s helpful to notice the visibility of your online store. Are you getting more traffic or has it stalled or decreased? If your traffic isn’t going up, now is the time to think about how to find more customers, whether through inbound marketing efforts or ads.
- Are you receiving fewer returns? Returns can be costly. Is your store receiving too many of them? If so, consider revising your return policy or being clearer in your copy and photos so shoppers know exactly what they'll be receiving. If your returns are going down—good job! That’s an important piece of e commerce info you can use to gage how satisfied your customers are with your merchandise and service.
- Are you creating word of mouth buzz? This can be more difficulty to judge, but a quick Google search will let you see who’s talking about your store on the web. You can also search Twitter and see if your customers are active on your Facebook page and pinning you on Pinterest. If you have a blog and/or forums, are shoppers commenting there?
Do you perform a spring cleaning on your e commerce store? How else do you take stock of your ecommerce site’s performance? Let us know what other e commerce info you’re looking for in the MerchantTribe forums.
If you’re just getting into the ecommerce game and looking for commerce software to start your online business, building up your search engine optimization strategies might seem overwhelming. Your ultimate goes is to increase visibility for your store and your products in the search engines. But how do you do that?--By using smart keyword techniques, generating content and finding quality inbound links. The first step is using smart commerce software with built in SEO functionality like MerchantTribe. But where do you go from there?
I’ve collected 4 great articles that every beginner store owner should read when considering search engine optimization for an online store. Let’s get started!
7 Simple SEO Tips for Beginners
This short, but information packed article goes over the basics of your SEO strategy, from getting involved with third parties to encouraging backlinks to thinking beyond Google.
http://www.seohatch.com/7-simple-seo-tips-for-beginners/
6 Powerful SEO Tips for Beginners
This article focuses on specific techniques that store owners can use to make sure their ecommerce sites and pages on their website are search engine friendly.
http://www.blogussion.com/details/seo-beginner-tips/
SEO Tips 101 for Ranking in Google
If you’re visually oriented, this video contains some excellent basic information. It’s over an hour long and goes in depth into the basics of SEO.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBD0JvMHPHA&feature=related
The Geek in Heel’s SEO Tips for Beginners
This article focuses on CONTENT. Creating interesting content and networking is an effective way to get noticed and build an audience for your website. This is true for online commerce sites as well as conventional websites.
http://www.geekinheels.com/2012/01/12/the-geek-in-heelss-seo-tips-for-beginners.html
Notice what all of these articles have in common? They use very descriptive titles that identify the main point. Each article contains the words “SEO tips” in the title. So if someone is searching for “SEO tips” they come up in Google. Don’t forget to create descriptive product titles for your e commerce store!
Do you have any more SEO tips to share with beginner ecommerce merchants? Let us know! Do you need free open source .net commerce software for your online business? Sign up here!
Are you starting an online store and need free online shopping cart software? Or are you looking for a few extra ways to drive sales and add a little excitement to your ecommerce site? You can use MerchantTribe’s open source .net shopping cart software to try a promotion or two to entice shoppers to buy—and buy now—or spread the word about your store.
Here are 10 promotions to try on your web store. Let us know if you use any of these and if they helped!
- A clearance sale. Use this sale to get rid of unwanted items at a discount.
- A spread the word promotion. Ask shoppers to tell a friend or like your store on a social media site for a special offer.
- Get a free gift at a certain spend. If a shopper spends over a certain amount, he or she will receive a free gift.
- Random sales throughout the day, week, month or year. Highlight a certain product randomly to keep customers coming back for more.
- Use product bundles. Shoppers can save money by buying related products to one they’ve already added to their carts. MerchantTribe’s free online shopping cart software has built in auto suggest capabilities to make setting up a promotion like this easy.
- Seasonal sales. Run a new sale for every season and every major or minor holiday. Mother’s Day is overdone, but what about Hug a Penguin Day?
- Free shipping. If you don’t normally use free shipping, a special promotion is a great way to get your feet wet. You can also offer free shipping above a certain amount spent.
- Timed specials. You can offer ultra short burst sales or sales targeted to specific time zone.
- Free store credit. Shoppers can earn a gift card worth store credit for buying now.
- Money off next offer. After shoppers purchase, send them a coupon for money off their next purchase.
What are some promotions and sales you use on your online store? Let us know! If you’re looking for free online shopping cart software with excellent built in promotional tools, click here to sign up for MerchantTribe today!