Shopping Cart

In choosing which shopping cart module is best for you, consider that there is no hard cut-off at 75 items. Rather it is merely a matter of choosing the methods that are most practical for your situation. The small-store module requires a more manual approach for defining items and laying out store product pages, which is not a problem for stores carrying only a small number of items. The large-store module offers a degree of automation that is necessary for stores that carry a large number of items.

Either module supports real-time shipping cost look-up via UPS online for either domestic or international shipping. Either module sends an automatic update to the customer via email on the day the order is shipped. Tracking information is included in the email if you use a shipping service which offers package tracking. This automatic email answers order status inquiries preemptively, increasing customer satisfaction and decreasing calls to to your customer service staff. With either module, you can define promos, like online "coupons", to offer percentage discounts on specific products.

With either module, you can have the shopping cart configured to send a notification email to your shipping staff whenever an order for tangible goods is placed. Your shipping staff should check a secured area of the web site at least 3 times a week for orders to be shipped, and enter a waybill number on shipping each order. With either module, your customer service staff is provided with a friendly interface enabling them to check status of orders and cancel orders not yet shipped. With either module, you or your staff can directly create/edit/delete items in your online store without contacting us, although the method of doing so will depend on which module you select. You may need to contact us for training, configuration, and/or importing a database containing the initial store population. (Database import function pertains to large-store module only.) Hourly charges apply for such services.

Either module requires that your web hosting provider supports MySQL. Each unique product must have a unique part number. Variations such as color or size require a different part number for each variant. Each item for sale in your online store must be defined with enlargement image, unique part number, short description, long description, price, shipping weight in pounds, and category. The enlargement image can be up to 300px high x 400px wide, up to 45K bytes file size. Images should be either square or wider than tall. Images that are taller than wide will not display well due to page layout. Thumbnail image is automatically created from your enlargement image, so need not be provided seperately. Category required for large-store module only. Our shopping cart modules provide you with the tools for defining these items in your store.

Either shopping cart module accepts payments via major credit cards and processes such payments in real time. If you do not already have an SSL certificate and payment processing account, you will need them in order to accept credit card payments in your online store. Please let us know if you do not already have these services, as we can probably help you get better rates, which will mean significant savings down the road. We support the following payment processing service providers:

Payment Processing Service Providers
Provider	Per month rate	Per trans rate	Recommended for
ProPay	Lowest	Highest	Stores just getting established
Linkpoint	Moderate	Moderate	Stores with moderate sales volume
Authorize.Net	Highest	Lowest	Stores with higher sales volume

While you are setting up your account with a payment processing service provider, either shopping cart module enables you to temporarily accept payments via PayPal and money order. This is not recommended for long-term because accepting payments via PayPal and money order will result in significantly lower order-completion rates.