Hosted Shopping Cart
One option when setting up a new online shop that should not be overlooked is that of a hosted shopping cart. With a hosted shopping cart you don’t set up your own online shop, instead you pay a monthly fee to a hosted service provider. Once you’ve signed up with the hosted shopping cart of your choice, you simply log in to your account, choose a template for your shop and start adding your products. You can be up and running in no time, with no software to buy or install, and little upfront outlay.
Advantages of a Hosted Shopping Cart
Upfront costs are minimal – no outlay for software and no need to pay a fortune to have your store designed for you.
A hosted shopping cart offers great peace of mind if you are not at all technically inclined – the company provides all the technical know-how and infrastructure and keeps it up-to-date and well maintained.
With a hosted solution, you can frequently be trading on the internet in a matter of minutes with your own easy to use online store, rather than having to spend weeks or even months getting to grips with complex software or waiting for your site to be designed.
Hosted shopping carts are designed with the shop owner in mind and are generally easy to set up and use, whereas a lot of ecommerce software seems to have been written by computer programmers who assume that everyone has their expertise.
Due to the large amount of investment in software that hosted providers are able to make, hosted shopping carts frequently have high end features and facilities that would otherwise be beyond the reach of small businesses. Advanced features such as email marketing, autoresponders , affiliate management, ad tracking, analytics, can be added for little extra cost
The hosting provider will have invested to build-in the highest levels of certified security, including PCI/DSS certification, so you won’t have to worry about technical issues – you can concentrate on selling your products.
Your monthly fees will cover all your main expenses including rental charges for using the software, providing technological infrastructure, and for hosting your website.
The hosting provider is responsible for the smooth functioning of your online store and safeguarding it from any emergency or downtime.
Disadvantages of a Hosted Shopping Cart
You are locked in to a particular company’s system; you cannot move your shop to a different hosting provider. This may never be a problem, but at the end of the day they own the shop, not you – you are in effect renting it, and if a dispute should arise, you may end up losing your online store.
Hosted shopping carts generally have a number of predefined templates for you to choose from to determine the look of your store. Depending on the hosted shopping cart provider you select, you may have a limited number of templates to choose from and customisation of your store may not be straightforward. However, some hosted ecommerce solutions do allow for complete customisation of the design if you so wish, including using the design of your existing website.
You are committed to a monthly fee for the duration of your contract. Many hosting providers also charge a percentage of your sales
Why choose a hosted shopping cart
For many small businesses, a hosted shopping cart may be the best solution, allowing a quick and relatively easy entry into ecommerce. In fact, it is not just small businesses that can benefit, many of the customers of hosted shopping cart providers are larger concerns.
The advantages of lower startup costs, and predictable monthly outgoings, with no worries about security, servers or expensive or time consuming upgrades means that for many businesses, the best route into ecommerce is with a hosted shopping cart.