Shopping Cart vs. Secure Order Form

From: Jeremy Stetson <oa-only_at_mensimageconsultant.com>
Date: Mon 29 Sep 2003 16:56:50 -0500

Hello,

We've determined that one of the barriers to our making many sales is the
shopping cart part of our site. It requires too many clicks and is
unattractive, complicated, and limited in functionality. The most galling
of the problems is that it does not allow international sales.

We could just purchase a better shopping-cart system and have it installed
on our site, but maybe we should go for something else entirely that is less
costly.

'Marketing on the Internet' discusses the importance of having a good
shopping-cart system, but it does not cover secure order forms. Our
thinking is that it would meet our needs better, since we have a small
budget, don't plan to have users making buying multiple services at a time
(except as add-ons), do not ship goods, and want as few steps possible
towards purchases.

The form would have to enable real-time processing, automatically handle
sales tax, allow coupons and add-ons and international orders....

Since we see very few of the forms in use, the big question is, Do users
trust secure order forms nearly as much as they trust shopping carts? We
already have credibility problems with our aspects of
mensimageconsultant.com .

Additionally, if we were go with that option, what software would it
require, who would set it up (our host we don't trust to do that), and could
we easily modify things ourselves later?

If you suggest we instead choose a shopping cart, then which one?
Quikstore.com, Cart 32, or something else?


Jeremy Stetson
Gentleman's Best Friend Image Consulting Services
http://www.mensimageconsultant.com




Received on Mon Sep 29 2003 - 16:56:50 CDT