Types of Shopping Cart Programs

The term "shopping cart" refers mainly to browsing through an online store and selecting more than one product for possible purchase. But many e-commerce programs are better described as "store-building programs," since they provide most or all of the elements needed to sell products online. Some of the better shopping carts include all the order tracking and accounting features that a merchant needs.

E-Commerce ASP (Application Service Provider). The software, data, and webpages from your store are hosted on the e-commerce provider's server. You typically pay a monthly fee, based upon either the number of products or a percentage of sales transactions. Some of these include a built-in payment gateway. Examples are: Yahoo! Store (store.yahoo.com), MerchandiZer (www.merchandizer.com), Bigstep (www.bigstep.com), FreeMerchant (www.freemerchant.com), Mercantec SoftCart (www.mercantec.com).

E-Commerce Software License. The merchant licenses the software from the e-commerce software provider for a flat fee. The application may be hosted by a web hosting service or in-house on the merchant's own server. Examples: ShopSite (www.shopsite.com), Miva Merchant (www.miva.com), Microsoft Commerce Server (www.microsoft.com/commerceserver), Intershop (www.intershop.com). Most of the high-end e-commerce programs are in this category. However, some of these are offered by webhosting providers for a monthly fee, much like an ASP.

Ordering System ASP. Only the shopping cart and secure ordering functions are hosted by the e-commerce provider. HTML code is pasted into standard webpages hosted on the merchant's own website. Most of these do not require a merchant credit card account. Examples: OrderButton (www.orderbutton.com), PayPal (www.paypal.com), CCNow (www.ccnow.com), ClickBank (www.clickbank.com), Americart (www.americart.com).