Now I would like to hear from my shopping cart readers or who ever visits this blog. What has been your worst experience when shopping online? I am asking for people who do a lot of shopping online especially those who shop on small sites. I personally have had two horror experiences with online merchants.

The first one was when my credit card number was stolen off a site I believed to be secure. Apparently the owner of the store would store his credit card numbers online in a .txt file. A hacker broke in and downloaded his txt file with hundreds of credit card numbers. Only after my credit card was declined did I realize that $4000.00 was just spent on a Plasma TV I was not getting.

The second was when I ordered jewelry for my wife as an anniversary gift. I decided to take a chance and order online from an online company who seemed professional and honest, but not a company I already knew. Needless to say three days later I get a package in the mail with a box that was sealed, but nothing inside the box. The worst part was that the company didn’t believe me, and didn’t feel like giving me my money back. It was kind of heated for a while, but after two months I received a full refund.

Both of the online stores I wrote about did not meet the criteria for shopping cart software no matter how you slice it.

eCommerce solutions are basically pointless unless they have a  payments feature. To the best of my knowledge I have never seen a shopping cart solution that does not accept some sort of payments. The subject of accepting payments online is not the exactly what I am shooting for in this post. However, I do want to mention the different ways people can pay on a website. Most people like to pay with a credit card, however many small mom and pop shops don’t accept credit card payments because they are unable sell enough volume to make it worth while. For these types of stores the option becomes to a) accept checks and money order by mail b) Sign up for a paypal seller’s account C) Do both checks and paypal. As you probably know many people use paypal as a payment method for ebay auctions. What a lot of folks don’t know is that paypal can be used within a shopping cart environment.

WebCart has been programmed to accept almost every payment method imaginable. It’s the webmasters choice on what to turn on or off. However, we at WebCart are most proud of our paypal payment gateway. If you have a paypal account then all that is needed is a paypal email address, and the ability to type it in to WebCart’s administration area. With paypal you open up your online store to millions of potential customers who otherwise would not have been able to purchase from you.

The downside to using paypal is the fee they charge when you receive money. In addition, many people hate paypal, and would never use them. Overall I would say it can’t hurt if signing up for verisign or other credit card services like it are not a current option for you.

Once the decision to purchase a shopping cart solution is made, many people often ask weather they would be able to incorporate their current design in to a shopping cart solution. While I can’t speak for other shopping carts, I can tell you that WebCart has been doing to make it easier then ever for webmasters to add a personal look and feel.

WebCart 11 was engineered with web designers in mind. Let me explain how easy it’s to change the look and feel of your shopping cart. Every page on Web Cart’s shopping cart is made up of three files. These files are header, body, and footer.
The header will usually remain the same through out the site. Think about your current web site. Do you have a navigation bar, logo, headline or anything else you usually keep on top of your page(s)? If the answer is yes, then all you would have to do with WebCart is copy and paste the html from your current website’s top area in to the WebCart header file.

The Body File is always different because found within the body are the text and images that need to be published. Let me give you an example that may help you understand how the body within WebCart works. Navigate to CNN.com and click a news story link, now do the same thing except click on a new story within a new browser window (keeping the first one open). With both windows open you can now notice how the top and bottom look the same, but the middle “the story” has completely different text. WebCart uses the same technology so that all pages look the same though our your site.

The footer, like the header is usually the same. You can create an unlimited number of footer files and use them though out your site, but it is my experience that most webmasters don’t use more then two or three. Inside your footer you usually place some links and a copyright notice since those things don’t change that often footers don’t usually see much action.

The other day I was thinking, what makes one shopping cart better then the other? Take away price and extra features and to the blind eye most shopping carts tend to do the same thing. Of course, price and features are extremely important in a shopping cart, but I believe there is something more important to think about when choosing a shopping cart solution, and that is creditability. Who is standing behind your product? Will they be in business in a couple years from now? What kind of support do they offer?

Let me give you an example using WebCart as a model. The very first version of WebCart came out in 1995 and we have kept up the tradition of offering the best service and support in our industry. This can benefit the consumer in many ways, but I want to bring out my point by addressing a phone call I received last week. I got a call from a very nice woman who told me her current shopping cart solution got hacked, and the company who developed it was long out of business. She explained that she had spent a large sum of money on the customization of her cart and now finds herself with a venerability that only the developers of her software can fix. However, the shopping cart developers who built her cart went out of business. My heart went out to her, because a lot of us know what it’s like to buy a product and then receive no support for it. This is especially, when the product in question is the backbone of a persons bread and butter.

WebCart has a proven track record of support and existence. We have enjoyed 11 years in this industry and our products speak for themselves. With over 20 employees in 3 countries

Photo galleries have gained new popularity because of social networking sites like myspace and friendster. Before I wrote this post I did a simple search in Google for “photo gallery software” and it came up with 75,400,000 results. Therefore, I have no doubts that there is no shortage of software that is willing to create a photo gallery for your website. However, in this short post I will explain why a company might want a photo gallery in the first place, and what makes the WebCart galley unique to your business.

An online store could use a photo gallery for many reasons. I am not going to go though every way a photo gallery can benefit a company, but I do want to focus on one point. Once a new customers come to your site though the search engines or an affiliate link, the burden of creditability falls on the store owner. Obviously, a site should contain all the standard security measures a person would expect from an eCommerce shop. However, giving a new user imagery of how your business functions could result in creditability that can’t be purchased. I usually recommend posting pictures of  previous Christmas parties or even company vacation photos, in order to establish extra creditability with your online customers.

I believe WebCart’s photo gallery is unique because it’s integrated inside your shopping cart. Webmasters don’t have to worry about uploading a new logo or configuring the look of the photo gallery because WebCart  does it for you. In addition with this added module customers can upload their own images of the products they purchase from you which leads to a rich user experience.