Category

Platforms & Apps

Our coverage of platforms and apps includes innovations and updates to shopping carts, content management systems, mobile shopping, digital-product selling, headless commerce, social media, and much more.

  • Platforms & Apps

    Cart Of The Week: Shopify

    August 13, 2008 •

    Practical eCommerce counts over 300 different shopping cart platforms. This includes licensed carts, hosted carts and open-source carts. In this, our new "Cart of the Week" feature, we’ll profile a specific shopping cart and ask personnel of that cart about its strengths and weaknesses....

  • Platforms & Apps

    Shopping Cart Functionality Can Increase Sales

    June 25, 2008 •

    The tenet of customer service in the online shopping process is simple: the more you engage potential customers, and provide links relevant to their needs, the more they’ll buy and the longer they’ll remain a customer. As it turns out, the solution to that challenge may be as simple as ...

  • Platforms & Apps

    Third-Party Integrations Make Shopping Carts Easier To Use

    June 23, 2008 •

    By day Sean Dupuis is a courier for FedEx. By night, he sends out packages of his own: boxes of boots and moccasins and sheepskin bags for his bustling website business called Sheepskin and Things. Stretched thin, he’s able to get it all done because his shopping cart and its third-part...

  • Platforms & Apps

    Shopping Carts And Search Engines

    June 18, 2008 •

    When searching for “educational toys” on Google, at No. 5 on the list you’ll find BrainwavesToys.com—up from No. 78 a year ago. Michael Stebbins, co-founder of the business, employed a series of search engine optimization (SEO) strategies within his cart to achieve this result. “A lot ...

  • Platforms & Apps

    Magento Shopping Cart And 20,000 Friends

    June 18, 2008 •

    Roy Rubin held the cyber equivalent of a barn raising and had several thousand of his closest friends over for the event. Of course, everyone actually stayed home and did the work from their own little cubicles, kitchen tables, laptops on airplanes and Blackberrys on bar tops. That’s ho...

  • Platforms & Apps

    Field Test: Shopping Carts, Part Three Of Three

    May 28, 2008 •

    In Field Test, Practical eCommerce has gathered twelve seasoned ecommerce merchants and asked each of them the same questions around a given topic. This month’s topic is shopping carts. The participating ecommerce merchants are: Dave Norris, House of Antique Hardware; Justin Hertz, Mut...

  • Michael Valiant Platforms & Apps

    Debate: Hosted Shopping Carts ‘Perfect For Most Entrepreneurs’

    August 27, 2007 •

    1ShoppingCart is a hosted shopping cart with thousands of small business customers. Michael Valiant, 1ShoppingCart's product management and marketing specialist, offers his views on hosted cart solutions. PeC: Why should an ecommerce business consider a hosted shopping cart, versus pu...

  • Platforms & Apps

    Debate: Licensed Carts Offer Flexibility and Portability

    August 27, 2007 •

    ProductCart is a licensed shopping cart used by thousands of ecommerce merchants. We asked its CEO, Massimo Arrigoni, whether licensed shopping-cart software is better for smaller businesses than hosted cart solutions. PeC: Why should an ecommerce business consider a licensed shopping...

  • Platforms & Apps

    What Do You Dislike About Your Shopping Cart?

    April 18, 2007 •

    Readers weigh in on what they would like to see improved with their carts. 1ShoppingCart "We offer live UPS shipping rates, but for some reason 1ShoppingCart is only set up for commercial rates. It should default to residential rates. I would guess there are five residential buyers ...

  • Platforms & Apps

    Shopping Cart Checklist

    September 1, 2006 •

    We’ve assembled a checklist to help you narrow your shopping cart requirements. The checklist is divided into six areas: function, shipping issues, payment processing, support, technical considerations and report generation. Function Is there a limit to the number of categories or pr...

  • Platforms & Apps

    Hosted Shopping Cart Solutions

    September 1, 2006 •

    PeC: How would you describe the merits of a hosted solution compared to various software solutions that are in the marketplace? Krakovsky: I think it starts with the fundamental premise that people start businesses to sell products and services to customers, not necessarily deal wit...

  • Platforms & Apps

    Getting to the Heart of the Cart

    September 1, 2006 •

    If you came to this article hoping we’d tell you exactly which shopping cart you should choose for your business, you will be disappointed. We don’t know. However, thanks to the expertise of a pair of industry veterans, the process of choosing a shopping cart is about to get easier for...

  • Platforms & Apps

    Shopping Cart Software Solutions

    September 1, 2006 •

    PeC: What are some distinctive characteristics of shopping carts that you might share with a new ecommerce business? Randolph: I’d say everything has a place. Yahoo! Stores has over 150,000 merchants now so, without a doubt, the hosted solution has a place in the marketplace. There a...

  • Platforms & Apps

    Shopping Carts: Features to Consider

    April 1, 2006 •

    A shopping cart system should be able to accommodate a business’ needs, rather than requiring the business to adjust goals and strategies to match the capabilities of the shopping cart. We've put together a template of sorts that you can use to help decide on a shopping cart system base...

  • osCommerce logo Platforms & Apps

    osCommerce Founder: Open Source Encourages Collaboration

    January 1, 2006 •

    Harald Ponce de Leon had an idea to create an online shopping cart system that would serve as a guide to other ecommerce developers. That was in 2000. In order to attract interest, he released his cart, then called the Exchange Project, under a free, open-source license. Nearly six year...

  • Stephanie Leffler photo Platforms & Apps

    Stephanie Leffler, CEO of MonsterCommerce

    November 1, 2005 •

    Stephanie Leffler says anybody who thinks a successful ecommerce business is about putting up a website in five minutes and counting the money in their pajamas is in for a rude awakening. To her, ecommerce is a real business that requires every bit the investment of time, energy and mon...

  • Platforms & Apps

    Blog Platforms: Choose One that Fits Your Need

    October 1, 2005 •

    You have bitten the bullet and decided to add a blog to your ecommerce site and make it a part of your marketing mix. You made the strategic decision of why you want to blog, determined what your core message will be and the audience you wish to target. Now, you have to make some tactic...

  • Platforms & Apps

    How To Choose A Shopping Cart

    September 1, 2005 •

    Good business is about good decisions. Good decisions are ones made after serious research and data gathering. One of the decisions that must be made by ecommerce people is choosing the right shopping cart for their business. The problem is there is a lot to choose from. Mark Baartse, ...

  • Platforms & Apps

    How Does Shopping Cart Software Work?

    January 15, 2004 •

    Just what is a shopping cart? It's a term that has come to mean either an online ordering system (separate from your regular website). Usually these supply HTML code for "order buttons" that you can paste into pages on your regular website.

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