You can use traditional methods for products such as direct mail, catalogs and advertising sales. However, if you have a great online presence, the whole world is your market at a fraction of the cost of most traditional methods. Easy to sell to this worldwide market, you have a great shopping system.
Choosing a shopping cart system is perhaps the most important decision you’ll make in your online marketing career.
This is because you will be stuck with the decision for a long time.
If you buy into a system that is not sufficient, it can cost you money – big money – not because it will maximize the amount of money spent by each visitor.
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of off-the-shelf, free and alternative products out there fighting for your money, time or both. And most of them are junk.
Not suffer like I did. I learned the hard way. When I started on the internet I could not find a decent shopping cart program, so I took one that was strongly recommended by my ISP (I now know the only reason they suggested it was because it gives them the most money. She knew t care if it was not the best for me or not). What a headache! The system would do nothing but take the order, but you had a doctorate in computer science to work to have it.
Here are 22 questions you absolutely must infallibly anyone trying to sell you a cart to ask. If you do not hear positive answers to most of these questions, put your wallet in your back pocket and evaluate the next option. Do not get stuck with a crappy shopping cart, even if they give it to you free.
If you’re a bad cart, get rid of. I know it hurts, because you may have spent much time and money getting it, but a poor cost many thousands of dollars by waiting to replace him rather than later sooner.
Oh, and one more thing: if you hear an answer to your cart programmer of the questions by saying: “Well, we can do,” running away even faster, because you will get stuck with a large custom programming bill with no guarantees that the cart is the way you work expected.
Each question is very important when it comes to having a quality shopping cart system that more money gets the same number visitors.
1. Will calculate shipping and tax?
2. Does it handle specialized shipping like FedEx and UPS?
3. Will automatically deliver hard goods and soft goods (e-books and other digital products) in the same transaction?
4. Provides customizable “Return to shopping” pages without custom programming? This is important so your customers to the product that most likely they will buy. Standard carts simply return to the main catalog customers, forcing them to search for related products. This is both annoying and time consuming. Any delays in finding what they want could mean a lost sale, when they finally throw their hands in disgust and go to your competitor site.
5. Provides customizable “Thank You” ‘s based on what the customer just bought? These are pages where savvy marketers put affiliate links and other items that relate specifically to the interests of the customer. When a customer clicks one of these links and buys something from someone else, you get a commission.
6. Does the receipt and confirmation e-mails automatically? The customer will immediately know that the order went through. If he or she is uncertain, you’re going to have wasted many emails and phone calls to area customers know everything OK.
7. Is it possible multiple order and dropship e-mails? In many cases, different people in your organization and / or outside your company needs a contract notice. Again, do not want to have to do manually.
8. Does it have a web-based administration page so you can work to your cart from any computer that has Internet access?
9. Is it even encryption technology and a secure server? Many companies make a fortune by sucking you in with a cheap or free car and then make money on selling you an overpriced safe server.
10. Provides easy transfer to your accounting package? You want to import and export data easily between the car and what programs you need this to customer and sales data information.
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11. She has her own associate / affiliate program or is it easily compatible with other major brands of associated software? An affiliate program allows other people to promote and sell your products on their websites. You do not pay unless they sell something. When I tried to get an employee / affiliate program to work with my old car, it took me six months of downtime and untold amounts of money lost because it would not work. The Associate Program people blame the cart people and vice versa. But in the end I was left holding the bag.
12. Does the integrated up-sell modules? The possibility of more products to customers who purchase me a small fortune every month. We call it, “Do you want fries with that?” If you do not have this option, you will leave many thousands of dollars on the table of people who would have spent more if your cart just gave them the chance.
13. Does it have an integrated sales and prospect database? In the old days I would have to print out orders and enter them into ACT or other database program. A good shopping cart system eliminates all this hassle and potential for errors and gives you instant access to your sales reports and clients.
14. Did the broadcast e-mail capabilities? Good shopping cart systems are able to directly manipulate your customer database and send emails to a segment or subsegment of your clients and handle unlimited e-mail magazines. Again, in the old days I would be genius enough to pick out segments of the database, export them to a file, import it into an e-mail program and then one hour later send the darn e-mail. Now all this happens in a few seconds.
15. Has mail merge capabilities? The e-mails sent are personalized to the recipients in a number of ways. Their names can be popped in the subject line and in different parts of the body of the email. You can merge “what they bought,” when they bought, “where they live, or just about anything that will make them feel that the email was just for them. Almost all studies show that merge get a much higher response than simply e-emitted mail.
16. It can handle coupons and other discounts? You can deal with Joe Blow from its website that everyone gets an automatic discount – either a percentage or dollar amount. This makes Joe look great to visitors and make more sales for you. Here’s a secret: Joe is your partner and make money on the sale too, so he has a great incentive to keep your discounts and coupons for visitors. Good shopping cart systems can automate all this and also handle any quantity discounts you offer.
17. Can it work for multiple websites at no extra cost? When I started I had a separate (and expensive) to get license for each location and a separate merchant account too. Not only was this a great deal of cost, the hassle of installing each time you wanted a new site to go up was enormous. Modern cars can sell bras on one site to another and Bibles, and nobody knows the difference. The carts run on their own servers, so no expensive installation and set-up is immediate.
18. Does it have unlimited and fully integrated “sequential” autoresponders? This is one of the most powerful when it comes to Internet marketing. This feature automatically tracks back and forth to your customers and prospects to their customer care and to sell them more products and services. You can even offer free or paid e-mail courses, and each part of the course is delivered automatically.
19. Does the ad tracking tied into actual sales? Simple ad tracking can be held on the ‘Net, but it’s pretty much worthless unless it is linked to actual sales. This is called the “conversion ratio.” Your cart system should be able to tell you how many people clicked on a promotion and how many people bought. This is the only way you can determine if an ad paid off. Good carts will also automatically split test one of your sales pages against another and tell you which page sells more. You keep the page that sells more and get rid of the page that sells less.
20. Has a pop-up box builder? Although many people hate popup boxes, they work. I use them wisely to all types of offers to do, and I got the sales figures to prove they get more money from the same number of people. If you know how to use them well, no one gets upset.
21. Does it have a printable order form off-line? Believe it or not, many people are still afraid to put their credit card numbers to a website. I still get a lot of fax orders and telephone orders. If you want to maximize your sales, your cart to take such orders easily.
22. Is to offer free training? You need to train the basic use of your cart and determining your online sales strategy, so the amount of money spent by each customer.
to maximize
You may not understand what all the above questions mean right now, but I can assure you they are important in introducing more money into your bank account. If you want to know more about this subject, you can download a free e-book, How to Get a shopping cart system that makes money on e-commerce shopping carts.
Tom Antoine is a success story in Internet marketing. He can show you how he makes a fortune promoting products and services online. For more information and a list of great resources, go to Internet Marketing Solutions.