We are presuming that you will be selling your goods online, but you may also employ an "old-fashioned" paper catalogue for presenting your range of products to your customer. In the latter case there are all kinds of other issues you will have to deal with, most especially the production and updating of the catalogue. One problem with paper catalogues is that it is much harder to keep them up-to-date than online catalogues. However, this can be turned to your advantage by giving you a pretext to send extra publicity material to your customers.
There is of course a large amount to learn about producing paper catalogues and I have to admit that I have no experience in this field whatsoever, but there many experts in this field not to mention at least two excellent specialised Magazines - MultiChannel (which was formally Catalogue today) and Catalogue & E-business - both by subscription. We shall now look at how you produce your online catalogue - your shopping cart.
We have introduced the issue of building your shopping cart prior to the issue of building your website, because it is so important to start thinking about this before you go ahead and build your website. The primary objective of your website must be to present and sell your goods. It is possible to build a website, and then tack on a webshop at a later date, but it is far better to start with thinking about your webshop first. Just as you need to start thinking about how your customers are going to pay for the goods before you think about anything else, you need to think about how your shop is going to work and what it is going to look like, before you think about building your website. However, there are a vast array of issues about building your website which you do need to think about very carefully in conjunction with how your webshop is going to function and these are to be found in the section on building your website.
When you enter a shopping cart to make an online purchase, you may not realise that you may not be on the site that you first visited - unless you inspect the URL (website address) in the menu bar at the top, carefully. Then, when you go to make your payment, you may find that you are on yet another website! Using a shopping cart is indeed an obscure process for many online customers!
There are many shopping cart systems now available for building your cart, and your web designer will probably also be able to build one for you. Shopping cart systems often involve you uploading your shopping cart web pages to a special website provided by the shopping cart company, or even building your pages online using a "content management system" (CMS). These websites, in turn, link through to a "secure server" where the financial transaction is completed - the one area which gives greatest concern to online customers. TOPS © uses a CMS system with an (optional) shopping cart
Actinic are one of the best known shopping cart companies with their 'Rolls Royce' facility - which some people might find just a bit overwhelming if they are not very confident on the IT front. However, there are many alternatives - there are now numerous shopping cart software companies within the UK.
Before you begin to build your shopping cart you should consider the issues on the next page.....