Product Review: Americart

Americart Shopping Cart Service
Americart
12613 Raven Ridge Rd.
Raleigh, NC 27614

americart@cartserver.com
http://www.americart.com

Americart, a veteran e-commerce provider, is a true shopping cart program as opposed to a store-building system. That is, it handles the product ordering functions for your online business -- shopping cart, order form, and credit card authorization using a secure order form hosted on Americart's site --- but doesn't replace the webpages on your regular website.

Because set-up requires knowledge of HTML code, this isn't designed for complete novices. On the other hand, it is one of the most flexible low-cost solutions available, at $249 per year with no set-up fee (must be purchased at least three months at a time). Unlike systems such as CCNow and ClickBank, an Americart approach requires serious merchants to possess a merchant account to process credit card transactions. You also need a payment gateway if you choose to do for real-time charge authorization.

Product Order Buttons

Basic shopping cart functions are designed in two main ways: (1) with a product database on the shopping cart site (such as CCNow), or (2) the product name, pricing, SKU, and options all coded into the HTML residing under the "Place in Cart" button on the merchant's website (Americart and PayPal). The downside of this approach is that an evil trickster could conceivably modify the webpage to lower the price, and then make a purchase without paying full price. I've found that this is rather rare. Fortunately, Americart allows the merchant to specify domains from which order buttons may originate orders, thus eliminating that security problem.

The beauty of Americart is its great flexibility. You can sell nearly any kind of product with Americart since HTML forms can be configured in a wide variety of ways. The basic HTML code is:

<form action="http://www.cartserver.com/sc/cart.cgi" method=POST>
<input type=hidden name=item value="a-1358^widgetb^Wacky Widget B^6.32^1">
<input type=image border=0 name=add src="addtocart.gif" width=154 height=46>
</form>

This is what it looks like on a webpage:

You could build a webpage describing your product and showing photographs displaying its features, and then include the order button at the end. When a customer clicks on the button (try it -- it works), he is taken to a shopping cart page and presented with two choices -- "continue shopping" (the cart can be configured to return you to the page you were on previously) or "check out now".

Here are the various fields that can be programmed into an order button on your webpage:

Flexibility

The possibilities are many, including:

• Simple order button for one product
• Drop-down menu of different products
• Drop-down menu with product options (Options can change the price total, too.)
• Tables with one line for each product (good for parts or commodities that don't need much explanation)
• Order form on your site with with a single product.(There's a way to display the page securely using Americart's digital certificate)
• Different widths and lengths of product, each affecting the price (good for carpet and fabrics)
• Multiple items in a package that are ordered with one click but show up as separate items in the shopping cart
• Membership discounts
• Digital product sales that take the purchaser to a webpage URL on your site for download after the sale
• Selling in fixed lot sizes
• Price breaks at 3 or 6 items selected from a list

The Americart website shows examples of how to set up the HTML for each of these, but you or your website designer will still need to do the HTML coding. I don't recommend Americart for novice HTML coders, but if you are patient, study the examples, and take your time, you'll be able to figure it out.

Cart and Order Form

The shopping cart page and order form can be customized with the merchant's own graphics, so that many customers won't even be aware that they have left the merchant's site to make payment. Customers can change quantities of products at checkout if they like. The merchant can set a minimum order amount to keep transaction totals high enough so they don't lose the merchant money. International merchants can set the desired currency symbol and unit of weight.

Tax

The cart configuration screen enables the merchant to set up tax for one state or country. The tax rate can be calculated on either the subtotal or the order with shipping, depending upon applicable state law. A more complex configuration system enables multiple states, counties, or countries.

Shipping

The shipping options allow for a variety of approaches. Merchants can set up shipping tables based on weight, price, quantity, etc. for a variety of shippers. US merchants can select automatic figuring of UPS, FedEx, and USPS (US and non-US destinations) for various levels of delivery service. In addition, you can set a minimum and maximum shipping charge, or designate free shipping for orders over a certain price or quantity threshold. The variety of shipping options is truly spectacular, and easy to set up.

Payment

Americart allows merchants to accept payment by credit card, electronic check (US customers only), PayPal, as well as faxed check, COD, etc. Merchants with their own equipment to enter credit cards offline can use that. A merchant could use Americart with PayPal WebAccept for receiving payments for very low cost -- no set-up fees.

However, merchants who do much business will need to obtain a merchant account and a payment gateway for real-time credit card processing. Payment gateways are pre-installed, making for very easy set-up, though merchants will need to open an account with the payment gateway company. Payment gateways include: LinkPoint (CardService International), Authorize.net, VeriSign PayFlow Pro, and iBill. Merchants can also use Check Online (Authorize.net) and PayByCheck (i-Check). Since I already had a VeriSign account, all I had to do was enter my username and password and the set-up was complete.

Order Retrieval

Order retrieval is available by two methods. (1) E-mail. When the customer completes the order, an e-mail is sent to both the customer and merchant containing the entire message, but omitting the last six digits of the customer's credit card number. If the merchant needs the credit card number, he can go to a secure web interface to capture the last six digits by order number. This is a simple approach that will work in most situations very well. Non-computer savvy merchants can also receive orders via FAXSAV, if they like (requiring a separate account). (2) Download. Merchants can also download CSV order files if they elect to do so.

Other Features

Americart includes a number of other features -- the ability to use an affiliate program through Shareasale, Commission Junction, AffiliateShop, and others. In fact, Americart includes a basic built-in affiliate system that its merchants can use that works with a 7-day expiring cookie (www.cartserver.com/americart/faq-af.html).

Optionally, the program can place a cookie on the customer's browser on his first order, so when he comes again, name and address are already filled out for him. If need be, the program provides for the customer being forced to go to an "important information" page where he must state his agreement to a policy or indicate his state for tax purposes before proceeding.

There is a fairly complex database upload feature and product search feature for Americart, but the average user won't use this approach.

The company also allows its merchants to use a simple forms-to-email program hosted on the Americart site which will provide an important customer contact tool for merchants who don't have this feature available on their own website.

Third Party Management Tools

All in all, Americart has a nifty system, but it lacks important features that merchants will quickly miss: (1) a way to generate product pages on their site with all the proper coding of order buttons, and (2) order management -- keeping track of orders, backorders, and shipping. Third party companies have designed two important desktop add-ons.

Webpage Creators. Generating webpages from a database can automate an otherwise tedious process. A couple of these are Ecom Assembler Catalog Builder (www.stoneedge.com/americar.htm) from Stone Edge Technologies, Inc. and Xtreme Shop (www.iqservices.com/xshop_americart.html) by IQ services.

Order Management. Order Manager from Stone Edge Technologies (www.stoneedge.com/OrdManAmericart.htm) is an excellent program (also available for ShopSite stores). Using this program, Americart orders are downloaded and imported into Order Manager for fulfillment. (Reviewed in Web Commerce Today, 7/15/00, www.wilsonweb.com/reviews/se-ordermanager.htm).

Assessment

I don't recommend Americart for stores with hundreds of products -- there are much better systems for managing stores of this size. Nor do I recommend it for HTML novices; this is not an easy-to-set-up system, though once set up it works quite well. "We have our target market," says owner Wayne Cohoe. "HTML designers and merchants who want to tinker with and build their own site exactly the way they want."

As I see it, for small stores with a small number of products, Americart is attractive, since it is extremely adaptable in the kinds of products that can be ordered using this system. Americart provides a system that a merchant can grow with. Initially, it can be used with PayPal WebAccept, keeping up-front costs at a minimum. Later a merchant account and payment gateway can be added as the order volume increases.

The lack of a any system to handle order management is a serious gap; any merchant must solve the order management problem -- preferably not by manually typing data from e-mail orders into QuickBooks. Cohoe responds, "We deliberately do not market store creation tools because many of our website designer clients have their own way of dealing with this, and we don't want to compete with them." I strongly recommend that if you use Americart you also plan to purchase Stone Edge Order Manager for Americart.

Some small, do-it-yourself merchants with only a few products may well find that Americart meets their needs better than any other solution.