Awarded at Toronto "Ultra Advanced SEO Symposium" Nov. 2005.

Making Shopping Carts Work For Everybody and Anybody Easily and Quickly

The need for a shopping cart is uppermost in the mind of so many smaller businesses because after all that is why such businesses have a website anyway ... to sell products on-line

As mentioned a couple of times I have amazed myself at how easy it now is and how powerful these shopping carts are. This importance has prompted me to write in more detail about how simple it really is so that many more can pick up the confidence to "DIY" and thus enjoy the benefits reaped by selling on-line as I do on my own site http://www.focusgarden.co.za

Before going into a bit more detail let me compare what I recommend should be done (and I now do) to a commercial organisation offering ecommerce website design and operation ... like the SafeShop offering I use for example.

I have used a SafeShop store for more than a year at a cost of R1,600+ per month and with a degree of success that easily justified the investment. This site is http://www.superpumps.co.za

With progress made on a new approach I intend to cancel the SafeShop ecommerce part of this site whilst keeping the domain and hosting with MWeb.

Instead of relying on SafeShop design I will then create my own sales arena using this domain because I have referenced the superpumps.co.za domain in many different places and I do not want to lose these links. One of the bad parts of the contract I signed with SafeShop (did not read the fine print so only myself to blame) was that the domain belonged to MWeb not me. Be warned.

Apart from saving myself R1,500 per month I will be able to utilise my shopping cart linked to as many websites as I want. This leads me to this important comparison point ...

When a shopping cart is integrated into a website as is the case with http://www.superpumps.co.za then you cannot as I understand it have a second website accessing the same web store. This means a new website and new store would have to be created and this would cost presumably another load of money. Even if this was possible I would not do it because of two factors mentioned ... namely the cost and domain ownership issue.

In the case of http://www.focusgarden.co.za the shopping cart is not an integral part of any of my websites ... it is hosted offshore in USA.

The practical implication of this is very significant ... I can create a website selling shoes say and another totally different one selling power tools.

I would NOT want the same website selling these completely different product ranges (for good sound search engine reasons). However I can put both product ranges into the same offshore cart system without any extra costs at all ( I am allowed up to 1,000 products to be hosted in the offshore database for a cost of $19 per month which is about R130 per month).

How Difficult Is It It To Create Your Own Shopping Cart? ... short answer it isn't if you use established leading tools as I am suggesting you consider using

Let me explain the fundamental steps involved and this will hopefully give you the confidence to try it yourself. Obviously I am referring to the system I have contracted to use (click here for free trial Get free 1 month trial shopping cart? ) . Also to give you even more confidence I am going to describe the ADVANCED way to get many products into the shopping cart quickly rather than one at a time. You need to be able to use an Excel Spreadsheet to do this ... if you don't do not despair because you can type all information manually into a template).

The first thing to realise is because the shopping cart is separated from your website it does not matter what system you use to create your own website. You will only be inserting links into your own website once the shopping cart is ready to use and these links will be given to you for cutting and pasting.

You open the website on which the shopping cart is hosted ... get the free trial above.
You will be asked to insert basic company and website information into a simple Wizard including info on returns policy, shipping policy etc etc.
Once basic information is complete you will be required to add product information ... as mentioned above and to reduce manual typing I use an Excel spreadsheet. This takes the form of having your products and information in 6 columns of the spreadsheet. This info will include code, description, price, shipping cost, and appropriate URL
You will need to create a CSV file from this spreadsheet to upload to the offshore data base.
Once uploaded the shopping cart will be automatically created and after a few minutes you will be given a link to each product in your shopping cart.
To buy any product from your own website you would just paste the HTML link into the appropriate spot on your own website.
That's it. Any intermediate steps are incidental and self explanatory. Believe me if I can do it you can..

To take a closer look.

Go to http://www.focusgarden.co.za and pretend to buy something by clicking on any one of price lists shown at right hand column (you can pull out from buying at any time) and you will see the kind of interface you will see if you were to do this yourself for your own situation.

Apart from saving me money every month this shopping cart has increased my sales enormously over last 4 weeks or so because suddenly I had total control over my website design and content.

Payment Gateways

Don't confuse a shopping cart with a payment gateway. To be able to accept credit card payments on-line you need a payment gateway. This is an agreement between you and a bank normally. The bank will charge you for this privilege and also levy charges on purchases made just like an off-line credit card facility. You need to make sure that your shopping cart software interfaces with your chosen payment gateway. The suggested shopping cart system I use gives a long list of payment gateways you can use ... if your chosen one is not on the list it can be submitted for inclusion. facility. You need to make sure that your shopping cart software interfaces with your chosen payment gateway. The suggested shopping cart system I use gives a long list of payment gateways you can use ... if your chosen one is not on the list it can be submitted for inclusion.

We are ethical South African search engine optimization practitioners based in Johannesburg, Gauteng. Internet marketing efforts in South Africa are still in their infancy. Search engine marketing and search engine positioning is built around 3 basic concepts - organic search engine optimization, optimizing for PPC (pay per click) campaigns and site functionality. All three areas must work together to succeed.