In one of the forums I’m in, there’s been a lot of discussion on selecting a shopping cart. One point I made seems obvious, but maybe isn’t as obvious as I thought.
The person who was looking into a new cart posted a link to the sales site for the cart she is considering. One thing that jumped out to me immediately was that the Web site had no links to live stores.
In evaluating a shopping cart, I think the first step should be to actually go through the process of buying something from a site using the cart software. When we were selecting a cart, we ruled out a whole LOT of them because after testing, I discovered that I wouldn’t want to buy anything using the cart.
If a cart is too big of a pain to use, people will just leave. As the owner of the site, that’s the last thing you want. So test a cart yourself before you buy. Even a free cart isn’t worth it if no one will buy through it!