Heard it in the Forum: Carts, Shipping, Digital Downloads
By Vangie
Beal Today we're putting the spotlight on our readers and some of the
current e-commerce trends that they have been talking about in our discussion forum. Lately, shipping, shopping carts
and digital downloads are the hot topics. To save you time, we've highlighted
several recent threads that provide valuable insight for the small online
business. And, don't be shy. Feel free to add your own comments, as we've added
quick links to each forum thread so you can join in on the discussion.
E-Commerce Storefronts and Shopping Carts: Shopping Cart Help
Forum user Scriptee is the owner of a mail-order online
bookstore, in Melbourne, Australia and is currently looking to upgrade the Web
site to include a shopping cart. Like many merchants who want to start selling
online, they just don't know where to start.
There are paid carts, free carts, different software platforms and much more
to consider. Our knowledgeable forum members were on-hand to offer some advice
to Scriptee.
Cinnamon9691 says: "There are many types of shopping
carts out there. One time fee, free, monthly, and just about everything in
between. I work for a shopping cart development company and I would recommend
asking yourself these questions:
- What is my monthly budget for a shopping cart? This will included paying a
programmer/developer to maintain the cart, hosting costs, merchant transaction
fees and monthly hosting costs.
- How much support do you need? Think about if there's an issue with your
shopping cart. What level of support service are you comfortable with: e-mail
only, forum only, weekday phone or 24/7 support. How imperative is it to get
your cart back up and running?
- What are the features you will need? Make a list and start visiting shopping
cart Web sites to compare your needed features to feature lists. If you can't
find your features, start making Google searches on the features that you need
or try contacting the cart company to check available feature sets. This is a
good litmus test for their service also. "
Cinnamon9691 also recommends that Scriptee spend some time looking
through some of the popular shopping cart forums, MonsterCommerce, osCommerce,
Zen Cart, CubeCart, Modular Merchant, Squirrelcart and Volusion. Once you
register, you can ask people already using that particular software for
advice.
Forum member and moderator roban says: "It really depends
how much work you personally are willing to put into the project. Anyone can
learn enough HTML and PHP to customize his or her own cart and some are less
complicated than others. I use CubeCart for mine, having tried Zen and OSC. I
settled on CubeCart mainly because the support forum was more responsive."
Inventory Management and Shipping: Shipping Discounts
For online
businesses, shipping costs are a huge issue because they can take a big bite out
of your profits. Forum member WDA currently has a shipping volume of about 400
per month and asks our forum readers what kind of volume you need to get
discounts, and also wanted to know about different options for
shipping.
Topout says you can request a UPS salesperson to get the
finer details, but chances are if you're doing a lot of air or oversize
shipment, you can probably get a discount. "Even if they won't offer discounts
yet, UPS has excellent integration support, which they will offer, and the time
savings realized by increasing your integration can be great. You can also often
get scales, label printers, etc. to use when shipping via UPS."
Forum
member and moderator TipPro suggests that one can increase his or her
shipping volume by "having all your vendors ship to you using your shipping
account, plus it is cheaper."
Lalburez uses a service called
OvernightMedia.com to help with shipping costs, and says the company is saving
15 percent on shipping costs because its willing to include a one-page print
advertisement in their packages. "OvernightMedia keeps track of all your recent
shipments and keeps track of all your frequently used addresses, shipping
history and reporting date information. You don't have to be a corporation to
use them."
E-Commerce Issues: Photo / Document Download Site
The sale of
digital goods online remains a hot topic among Web shop owners. Forum member
datoney is looking for a way to "... setup a Web site where customers can
look at a sample of a photograph that I have, and then purchases it, and be
forwarded to a download site that would let them download the real
image."
Forum member Corey Bryant suggests PayLoadz since they
support downloading and PayPal. (Read our PayLoadz review here for more information.)
But since datoney owns the site's server, it's not quite the right fit.
Corey Bryant then says "Almost all carts support some type of downloadable
option. There is a download controller for osCommerce. Modular merchant has a
digital delivery download. I guess it would depend on what language you are
going to want to use. If you are on Windows, ASP or .NET would probably be
better. On *NIX, PHP would usually be better."
Moderator
cinnamon9691 agrees and says that since datoney owns their server,
a good place to start looking might also be hotscripts.com, where you can search
on the criteria that matches your needs and see reviews and details of any
service.
The Small Business & E-Commerce discussion
forums offer advice on online marketing issues, security tips,
Web site design elements and general discussion related to current trends and
practices.
Fellow small-business owners can network and share tips, tricks and advice.
You can use the forums for knowledge gathering or create a free member account
to take part in the discussions and ask your own questions.
About the Author Vangie Beal is a regular contributor to
ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia. |
