New to E-Commerce?

When you start looking for ways to build your Web-based store, you'll encounter a variety of options. Make sure you understand what they mean before you waste time going down the wrong track.

Shopping Carts
First, do you already have a Web site that you are happy with? Do you have a small number of items that you are selling? If so, you can consider adding a shopping cart application such as myCart. A shopping cart enables your existing Web site to take orders, and sends those orders to another application for processing. Usually, you will have to add HTML code to your Web site after every product description. (This is often referred to as "bolt-on" software.) The code will create buttons and boxes that will allow your customers to select colors, sizes and quantities, place an order, and check out.

Shopping cart software can either be licensed outright (here), or rented by the month as a hosted application (here). When it is licensed, you pay a one-time fee you will be able to download the software from the Internet. You will then be responsible for making updates & maintaining the software. Updates to your products will be made on your own "local" computer, and then uploaded to your Web server. When shopping cart software is rented by the month, it is installed, hosted, and maintained by ECSnap.com on their Web server. You will pay a monthly fee to use the software. To update product information, you simply log-on to their service and save your changes.

e-Commerce "Solutions"
If you don't already have a Web site, consider using a complete e-commerce, or storefront, such as OneSolution.  The software includes a database so that adding products and updating product information requires no knowledge of HTML. Here, you will have to license the software outright.

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