The Best Shopping Cart Solutions for an Online eCommerce Business

Building a website does not automatically provide one with an online business. Whether selling a product or service, the website has to generate income. This means that there is likely a need for an eCommerce solution that works for the business model as well as its needs. Running one’s own web shop or store is not only fun, but when taken seriously could also earn a good supplemental income. Web shops could be easily combined with a day job, and they could even become very successful that they could replace a day job.

With the tough online competition these days, it is fortunate that there are dozens of available eCommerce platforms to run a web store. Furthermore, with so many options, it is difficult to decide which one to use. So, how does one decide which shopping cart solution is right? The key is to start reviewing various shopping carts for an eCommerce business to be able to choose the best one that meets the particular requirements.

Find out more about the following shopping cart solutions to be able to determine which the best is.

1. Shopify. It is one of the most popular online shopping cart tools around. It is popular among small shops since that is the market that Shopify aims to serve. With the shopping cart solution, one could create a site with all the blends and whistles. One of the reasons of the success of the platform is the app store adaption to expand the default webshop. Furthermore, it provides hundreds of applications than any other competitor. It also offers a nice selection of professional themes and an abandoned cart recovery feature. The feature sends a reminder to a customer who did not check out. However, this option is only available upon paying $79 per month or more. The solution also comes with unlimited bandwidth and products. Some of its noteworthy features include the mobile app for accepting payments and store management, easy integration with shipping carriers, drop shipping companies and fulfillment centers, experts help in setting up the store and point-of-sale system for registering payments in the physical shop.
2. BigCommerce. Is the most popular web shopping cart in the top million sites category, meaning that it is popular for small to medium-sized web shops. It began as a software product created by Interspire that is could be installed directly on the site but became popular after morphing into a hosted shopping cart. Although the price is comparable to Shopify, the feature set is slightly higher for each plan. Features such as gift cards, real-time shipping quotes and 24/7 mail/phone/chat support are included in the base plan for $29.95 a month. The wonderful thing about pricing is that there is no need to pay more than $79.95 per month. It comes with all features, unlimited products, storage, and bandwidth as well. Notable features include assisted set-up to boost sales, Google trusted store certification assistance and could easily integrate with Google Shopping, eBay and more.
3. Yahoo Store/Yahoo Small Business eCommerce. Yahoo, of all the hosted shopping carts for small business, has the biggest market share in the top 10,000 sites. This is quite impressive and mainly has to do with the fact that Yahoo was one of the first to offer a web eCommerce solution. Furthermore, it is also a trusted and well-known brand and performs numerous cross-selling on the customers. While it may not look fancy, it does provide an impressive set of feature and comes with a whole number of integration options for shipping carriers, payment providers, back-office systems and inventory control systems. When there is a need to hook up numerous in-house systems, the Yahoo Store is perfect. Furthermore, it also comes with unlimited storage, products, and bandwidth. Noteworthy features include tons of discounts on useful services, recommendations that are based on live insights and twenty percent discount on clicks on the Yahoo ad network.
4. Volusion. The second most used online shopping cart, after Yahoo Store and is popular in all ranges, from the top 10,000 websites to the whole internet. It is the most affordable cart to offer abandoned cart recovery since the feature comes with it begins with a plan of $15 a month. Actually, the plan is all one needs for testing the waters. It is limited to only 100 products allowed but has all the necessary features to begin. The notable features include a built-in deal of the day option, eBay and Amazon integration and have a built-in loyalty program.
5. ShoppingCart. It an all-in-one eCommerce solution with a fully customizable storefront design, up-sell, and auto-responder features and online product catalogs. It also gives autoresponders to follow up on customers and prospects, for instance. There is comprehensive up-sell functionality in place, w which even offers a down-sell if a shopper turns down the upsell offer. The shopping cart solution furthermore has an integrated affiliate program. However, it is a bit pricey and would need a lot of studying to properly use all of the features. But one could squeeze every possible dollar out of the customers literally. Some of the notable features include an option to pay for a required customer support level and a built-in affiliate program has excellent up-sell abilities and numerous ways of follow up with the customer.
6. Wix. In essence, is a free website builder has rapidly gaining popularity and is aggressively funded. What a lot do not realize is that it also provides eCommerce features as part of the premium packages. The Wix eCommerce solution does not impress with its features, but there is enough to get a store up and running. What truly sets it apart is the brilliant visual design interface that could be used to position every element of a website in any color preferred. Particularly when selling a limited number of products, one may want to take the time to create beautiful sales pages more conveniently than any other tool. The notable features include low pricing and easy setup that is perfect for testing the waters, visual editor with template reference and live examples and no transaction fees, just a monthly fee.
7. Magento. A very popular eCommerce platform that offers feature-rich, flexible solutions that address a huge range of business needs, sizes, and budgets. It furthermore has eCommerce solutions for large and fast-growing businesses. The enterprise edition of Magento has all the class features and flexibility for a solution that is tailored to one’s unique needs. It drives more traffic t the shop and converts browsers into buyers and boost web revenue. Some features include hundreds of extensions, flexible consumer experiences and a global network of certified developers and partners.
8. X-Cart Cloud. Is a hosted version of X-Cart Downloadable. It’s an open-source product, and the X-cart team works actively with developers to boost their product. They’re a bit more traditional in pushing updates to the hosted version, which, given the scale they operate on is understandable. Some of the noteworthy features of X-Cart Cloud are Cloud Search, wherein products instantly appear in the search box when typing them in, a point-of-sale module that is included in the Standard Edition, no transaction fees, in which most popular alternatives charge anything from 0.5 to 2.5 percent for every transaction.
9. 3d Cart. One of the lesser-known web eCommerce solutions, yet rich in feature. It even has some features that are specifically built for web designers. With it, one could build, edit, maintain the webshop and collect orders without HTML or programming knowledge easily. It doesn’t charge transaction fees, which always is a big plus. It offers a mobile front-end and a mobile back-end. What is interesting is that it also has a full suite of web store related services, such as Facebook or SEO marketing, which is not common for a shopping dart provider but comes in handy. The pricing though is a bit outdated, while one gets a decent number of features in the starter plan, it’s limited to 4,000 visitors and limited at 100 products. Noteworthy features include tons of shipping options, more than the competition, a useful feature for web designers, such as the option to sell re-branded stores, numerous features even in the starter plan.
10. PinnacleCart. The main product is a hosted shopping cart with an extensive partner program that has to variations. One is a re-branded version under one’s own name of the product, wherein one only does the marketing. However, one could also opt for a downloadable version which could be hosted on one’s servers. There would still be license fees, but one could have full control. It has some interesting features, such as easy integration with Doba or ShipWire. Some great features are free migration from basically any other cart, professional partner program, automated Intuit QuickBooks synchronization.
11. Etsy. For those who want to sell vintage items, craft supplies or handcraft goods and want to tap into millions of buyers, then Etsy is the best option. The solution makes it easy to list certain products in a manner that appeals to the target audience. One is connected automatically to their highly visited marketplace, while still having the place within the website. There are plenty of ways to present the brand and the products and truly make it unique. Although it may not give the freedom of the other providers, there is a solid offering to get started. Noticeable features include 30 million users to access, lots of opportunities to establish the brand and professional design with numerous social interactions.
12. Web.com. Makes online sales easy, it is fully customizable, secure and safe with numerous special features for simplifying sales online management. A shopping cart is a professional tool that offers everything one needs to start and run an eCommerce shop on the web. The notable features include a built-in set-up wizard, great designs, and email marketing and analytics.
13. CS-Cart. A ready-to-use PHP and MySQL based software for web stores with open access to the source code. It is designed for easy use along with flexibility. It is furthermore equipped with the latest eCommerce innovations built into a highly modifiable and configurable sales and promotion engine. It is a great platform for medium-sized businesses. It has over 70 payment gateways, on-page checkout, and built-in affiliate program.
14. WordPress eStore. Is a lightweight shopping cart plug-in that integrates with membership and affiliate plug-ins to provide advanced features. It’s a very popular eCommerce plug-in that allows selling digital and non-digital products. Some of the great features include an elegant product display, no monthly fees, and detailed training videos as well as support.
15. King Cart. Is considered a turn-key solution to eCommerce needs. It enables customers to see prices in the currencies of different countries and figure the sales tax in all states as well as provinces automatically. Some of the features of the cart include a built-in inventory tracking, gift certificates, and coupons support and custom features that could be added easily.
16. ZenCart. Is a user-friendly, free, open source shopping cart software.
    The site design program is being developed by a group of same-minded programmers, store owners, designers and consultants that think that eCommerce web design can and should be done differently. A few of its numerous features include works on the popular MySQL and PHP technologies, easily keep products catalog updated and enables customers to shop 24/7.

The above-mentioned shopping cart solutions are just among the hundreds available in the market. Clearly, the competition is fierce when it comes to usability, features as well as pricing. However, all these are very different tools, even if some have much in common. Fortunately, one could try them all for free, depending really on what one wants to achieve.

SUMMARIES:

Creating a website does not automatically offer one with an online business. Whether selling a service or product, the site should generate income. This means that there is a need for an eCommerce solution or a shopping cart platform that works for the business model and its needs as well. With today’s touch online competition; it is fortunate that there are numerous eCommerce platforms available for running a webshop. Moreover, with various options, it is hard to decide on which one to use. That is why it is very important to determine the specific needs of an eCommerce shop first. Consult a professional web development company for achieving desired results.