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Posts Tagged ‘ecommerce’

https://squareup.com/

Probably the best innovation I have seen since Paypal for doing business. Unfortunately not quite ready for Australia but I am sure it will get here.

This was started by the founder of Twitter and has major backing from Angel investors.

Simple and transparent card fees.

We’re focused on providing the best payment experience in the world, and that includes cost. While taking cash is always free and easy, accepting cards can be confusing and costly. That’s why Square has simple pricing and no hidden fees, monthly charges, or contracts. We’re constantly working with our partners to simplify and lower costs associated with accepting card payments.

Here is another video explaining more.

Now that you’ve decided to move your business online, one of the first things you’ll need is a shopping cart program to process your orders. There are several available options that can make your life as an e-business owner much easier.

Shopping cart applications fall in to two basic categories:

“local” carts that you install on your own Web servers

“third-party carts” that run on a provider’s site.

Both varieties are normally very easy to customize and use.

If you decide to install your own cart, you will have many different software packages from which to choose. Three of the most popular are Miva Merchant, OSCommerce, and Agoracart.

Miva Merchant is a shopping cart that many Web hosting companies include with their hosting packages. If your host doesn’t offer it, you’ll need to pay a licensing fee before you install the cart. Miva offers a variety of different options for small businesses, and their application is very user-friendly.

OSCommerce is a free, open source shopping cart program that boasts many features and a strong development community. It’s easy to install and customize, and, because it’s open source, support and improvements abound.

Agoracart is a simple, free, bare-bones cart technology. If you don’t need a lot of features, this is a great package to install on your site.

If you’d rather not install your own shopping cart, there are many third-party options available. When you set up a third-party shopping cart, all you need to do is place a link on your site for your visitors to enter your store. This link then takes them to your offsite shopping cart.

Microsoft’s Office Live Small Business has one of the most popular third-party shopping carts. For about $25 a month, you can build an online store with up to 10,000 products. Yahoo! offers a similarly robust third-party shopping cart program for about $40 per month.

Storefront.net and 1shoppingcart.com both offer services that include shopping carts as well as advanced tools like email list management, affiliate program integration, and much more.

Can’t decide which cart is best for your business? Try installing the free carts mentioned above, or take advantage of free trial offers from third-party providers. Give each one a test drive until you find the one that works the best for your company and your customers.

While you make your decision, keep in mind that third-party services usually charge a monthly fee, so you could be spending much more than you would if you installed your own cart on your site. With so many competing shopping carts available, your options are virtually endless.

Another alternative: Many times these shopping carts require you to forgo many of the normal functions of a great website and so we have found one called Mals Shopping cart which provides the best of both worlds.

We have used this cart for a mug printing business.

For a sample of what it can do and some advice contact us here.