| If you're planning on opening your own online | | | | |
| store, you should make sure that you learn | | | | - Manage your entire website's look and feel, |
| all about e-commerce, so that you can select | | | | including both the regular pages and the |
| the best online store builder for your | | | | shopping cart pages, from a single |
| business. One big decision you want to make | | | | interfaces, without having to copy changes in |
| early on is whether you want your online | | | | design from one to the other. |
| store to consist only of a shopping cart, or | | | | |
| if you want your online store to be your | | | | - Automatically remove a product featured on |
| entire site, with shopping cart | | | | regular pages of your site when it is no |
| functionalities available to every page. | | | | longer in stock. |
| Let's look at the options. | | | | |
| | | | - Show an updated list of the latest |
| Ecommerce Option One: Complete Online Store | | | | additions to your inventory on the homepage |
| | | | or other non-shopping-cart pages. |
| Software that creates a complete online store | | | | |
| for you, with completely integrated ecommerce | | | | - Display a signup form for users to receive |
| capabilities, is arguably best for new | | | | email announcements of new products, |
| websites, since it will save you the trouble | | | | dynamically generated from your web store. |
| of buying separate content management | | | | |
| software and then integrating it with your | | | | Ecommerce Option Two: Separate Shopping Cart |
| current site. | | | | |
| | | | If you already have a website, transferring |
| Here are some things you can do with a | | | | everything to a new web store system can be |
| completely ecommerce-enabled web store that | | | | daunting. You may want to start your foray |
| you can't do with a traditional website that | | | | into ecommerce with a simple add-on shopping |
| just has a CMS attached: | | | | cart. |
| | | | |
| - Show a "in your shopping cart" list of | | | | But don't limit your possibilities for the |
| selected items to users who add something to | | | | future. You can still employ a full-featured |
| a cart, then continue browsing your site. | | | | web store now and simply use only its |
| Studies have shown that "shopping cart | | | | shopping cart functions. Simply set up the |
| abandonment," in which users add something to | | | | online store to show in a directory or |
| the cart and then forget about it while | | | | subdomain of your existing domain, or host it |
| browsing the site, is greatly reduced when | | | | off-site completely. Then link to the |
| users can see their shopping cart contents in | | | | individual product pages on the web store |
| front of them at all times. | | | | from your existing site. |
| | | | |
| - Feature a different product on your | | | | Users never have to know the shopping cart is |
| homepage each day, rotating based on a | | | | actually a full-featured site with its own |
| dynamic selection from your shopping cart | | | | homepage-they'll never see those pages, and |
| inventory. | | | | in many web store software packages, you can |
| | | | simply disable those pages from every being |
| - Automatically recommend a brand new product | | | | created. |
| to users who are browsing a related page on | | | | |
| your site-without updating the code on that | | | | After all, on the web you don't have to buy a |
| page. | | | | bigger building to expand your store. Why |
| | | | limit your growth with less-fully-featured |
| - Remind returning visitors to your homepage | | | | software? Choose ecommerce software that will |
| of an item they added to a shopping cart on a | | | | grow with your business, and your store can |
| previous visit but did not purchase. | | | | grow as big as you can make it. |