Is A Shopping Cart Right For You?
by Cynthia Morse
If you sell products online, chances are you use a shopping cart service, such as 1ShoppingCart or Practice Pay Solutions. Shopping carts help to automate the online purchasing process, making business owners’ daily lives much easier. On the other hand, if you only sell services, you may or may not use a shopping cart service. How do you know whether or not you should invest in a shopping cart to help automate your business?
Start with your business, and what you are selling. If you are a coach for example, and you sell only your coaching services in terms of time, you probably don’t need a shopping cart. You can still accept credit cards, as long as you have a merchant account.
If, however, you are a coach that also sells products, such as eBooks and audio programs, how much time do you spend processing orders for those products? A shopping cart can not only help you process orders 24/7, but is completely hands-off. You can sell products while you sleep! This saves you time to do what is more important to you, like coaching your clients.
If you sell products of any kind online, it makes total sense to automate the purchasing process with a shopping cart. The shopping cart interface can be customized for your business, so your customers never even know they are being taken away from your site to process their order.
Having recently completed a training course for setting up and maintaining shopping carts, I understand what is involved, and have already helped some of my clients with this time-consuming process. The setup process is somewhat technical, but there are usually helpful support personnel (or your Virtual Assistant) who can guide you, and help you get your shopping cart up and running in no time.
© 2008 Cynthia Morse, Virtually At Your Service. All rights reserved.
Cynthia Morse, CAP is a Virtual Assistant, and the owner of Virtually At Your Service, http://www.virtuallyatyourservice.biz
She offers top-notch administrative support to small business owners and other busy professionals from her home office, allowing them the time to focus on what they love and do best. Visit her blog, ‘Virtual Biz Connection’, http://virtuallyatyourservice.typepad.com/virtualbizconnection - It’s full of tips, helpful articles and resources for your small business!
