Payment Processing – Get a cart that offers credit card processing, that accepts checks, COD or other methods of possessing payments, such as Pay Pal.

Webpage Design – Many carts offer rudimentary webpage editors that don’t require you to
know HTML. This is good if you want to update your store or do minor tweaks. But to kick off
your online store, we recommend hiring a pro designer to give your site a swanky edge.

Storefront Design – Many carts come with built-in wizards and templates to help
you create your storefront. Again, pro designer recommended since the stock templates
invariably look cheesy.

Inventory Control – No brainer. Every good cart needs one.

Shipping – Reputable carts come with Shipping Managers which allow you to specify
which service you want to use and how much to charge. The really good carts even
calculate shipping costs in real time by accessing FedEx and UPS databases.

Tax Calculation – You don’t want to be in the IRS’s black book. That’s why
it’s good to have one of these handy-dandy tax calculators to help you stay on
the right side of the law.

Customer Management – Great for returning customers and repeat
business. Allows your regulars to set up an account and recognizes them
when they return, hopefully to click the buy button over and over again.

Marketing Resources – A good cart will provide access to affiliate
programs, search engine optimization tools, and allow you to create
discounts, coupons and gift certificates. It should also provide access
to analytics software so you can generate traffic and sales reports.

Security – It is essential to provide security for online
transactions, as we covered in the earlier article. Never settle
for anything less than 128 bit SSL encryption.

Picking the right shopping cart is an important decision for
any online business because it’s the conduit through which
income flows from your customers into your coffers.

So never settle for second best!