Monday, August 25, 2008

Increased Sales With A New Shopping Cart

By Kirt Christensen


Two years ago I created my website so I could sell rare books online. I thought it was going to be very easy: I just had to put my website online and people would stand in line to take the books out of my hands. But things were not that easy and this is a recount of what I had to find out the hard way.

I thought to myself "How can I have such low sales, when I had such a great website and a good selling strategy?". I wondered what I could do to increase my sales. If I used my shopping cart would that help me? Finally, I began to research shopping cart software to figure out how I could fix my problem.

One thing I learned was to know what you are doing before you take the first step. It is not as simple as just choosing the first software you find. You need to research and study the different options out there so you get the one that best suites your needs.

Still, how can I use my shopping cart to beef up my online sales? Well, I discovered that sometimes I would buy an item out of impulse on some stores. After some digging, I found out it is called impulse buying and it is on Internet as well. When you have an item that the buyer wants, you have to let them know what other things previous buyers bought.

Another way to help impulse buying is by giving out coupons for multiple items. It is great when you sell one thing, but if you can get them to buy two or more that is even better! Volume buy is another option you can have, by adding a forum where your buyers can decide on an item they want to buy in volume is a great option.

Another way the shopping cart may help to increase you sales is by creating a well designed affiliate program. It will help you to promote your product for a very low or even null expenditure. A decent shopping cart may also: take care of signup process, provide statistics, check payments, etc.

A not so trivial thing to take into account is how informative is your website. Do you have thumbnail images f the products? If you have to ship an item, does the buyer have all the information? (Fees, estimate delivery time, etc).

Asking professional help is never bad either. If you still do not know how your shopping cart can help increase sales, asking a professional will not hurt.

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