A solid shopping cart is critical for any online business involved in selling a product. They determine in large part the look of your entire online store. The framework (the coding used, file structure and database setup) on which the system sits determines a lot about its usefulness, and therefore has a major impact on whether or not a store owner is successful at selling his products, whether they are physical wares shipped to customers or digital downloads that don't require shipping.
The Anatomy of a Shopping Cart
Online store owners often find that there are lots of bells and whistles that can be included with a shopping cart. Some of these are helpful. Some are distractions. Looking at the overall role of a shopping cart system, it is understood that there are some core elements that should be included at the very least. Let's look at a few of them.
Store and Administrator Sections
A shopping cart system should have two main sections: a storefront and an administrator backend. The front end of the system, marketed to the world through online advertisements, search engines optimization, and other means, should be an intuitive online store that allows customers to browse and search for products, add them to their shopping cart, and pay for them online. The storefront section of an online shopping cart section collects customer information, such as the customer's name, address, phone number, payment information, and whatever other information is required to process an order.
In addition to the storefront section of a shopping cart system, there is also an administrator backend. The administrator section of the shopping cart system is password protected. It is normally only accessible to the website administrator or employees of the company.
The administrator section of a shopping cart gives store owners the ability to add products for display on their online store and it should provide a mechanism for categorizing the products. The changes made by an administrator in the backend section of the website should automatically be reflected in the public store.
The backend section should also provide a way for store owners to keep track of customers and orders. Orders placed through the storefront should automatically show up in a customers/orders section of the administrator console. The administrator then has the ability to edit orders, change their status, or delete them altogether. Read Full Story
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