I’ve got a good friend who says, “if it’s free, it’s for me”. When you think of ecommerce shopping cart software solutions, this is a serious challenge. Naturally, when it comes to free items, your natural inclination is to check it out. However, the free osCommerce shopping cart may be more of a hassle than a bargain. The main reason being that people launching online web stores like women’s clothing stores - forget to factor in TWO elements to their costs: software (non-human) and labor. Just because the software may be free, does not mean it is free because it still costs someone the time - and money - to install and integrate the software.

The biggest advantage to the osCommerce cart is obviously that it is free to download. It is essentially a multi-featured online sales and payment engine available for free. Because it is free, many people are willing to put up with the trouble to download it and get the osCommerce cart running on their computer. When you install it, you get all of the basic requirements needed for use with ecommerce.

In order for your free osCommerce to work properly, it is recommended that your machine can run PHP and has access to a typical LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) setup. It is possible to run on a WAMP, which replaces Linux with Windows, but the trouble makes it almost not worth it. If you have a web hosting provider that you use, it is likely that you have all of the requirements. However, it is better to be safe than sorry, so contact your support rep to assure yourself.

Before you turn around, hours have gone by just installing the platform. Then you have to start CONFIGURING it. Then you have to start integrating your design and content with their system. We could almost guarantee in a side by side comparison that it will take minimally 30-40 hours to get an osCommerce store running. Whereas with our WebCart Shopping Cart platform you could be up and running in a few hours. You could also pay one of our offshore content masters $500 or so to take your web design and integrate it completely with our cart system.

The shopping cart software that you obtain for your ecommerce business may forecast the success of your online store. The smarter your shopping cart is set up and the easier it is to use and to navigate as an end user, the more sales you can expect. Here are 5 contentious issues you need to be aware of before purchasing any shopping cart software.

1. Will it calculate shipping and tax for each state and what about outside the USA? What about taxes per city? And can you have different shipping options like mixing UPS or Fedex.

2. Can you configure where a user goes once they click add to cart on shopping pages? A fantastic way to profit extensively from your ecommerce business is through follow-on sales. Many standard shopping carts send purchasers back to the home page after they make a purchase rather than tryinh to upsell them related products that they are most likely to purchase if the offers were made more easily.

3. Does the purchaser receive a confirmation email automatically?
After purchasing something from your ecommerce business, customers want to know that their purchase was completed. Better shopping cart software on the market offers this option confirming to customers immediately that the purchase went through.

4. Does it have a web-based online administration page via Firefox or Internet Explorer?
This is vital because it will allow you to work on your cart from any PC that has Web access. There is nothing more annoying (though we hesitate to use this word) then being prevented from making adjustments to your shopping cart just because you are not near your computer or you need FTP access.

5. Are there integrated upsale modules to increase revenues?
The more products you sell the more money you are going to make. Not every person that makes a purchase will buy something when you offer additional related products. However, there are many times that you can make additional sales by upselling your customers. This feature in some shopping cart software can make you a lot of money.