When a customer completes an online order, the process is far from over. In fact, it marks the beginning of a multi-stage workflow where many events can occur before the order cycle is closed.

Orders may move through different statuses such as back orders, discontinued items, damaged or missing parts, exchanges, cancellations, partial refunds, additional charges, lost shipments, chargebacks, or reverse logistics. Each of these steps must be tracked accurately to ensure customer satisfaction and profitability.

Without a proper shopping cart and back-office system, businesses are forced to track these events manually—often on paper or spreadsheets. Managing even 10 orders per day without the right tools quickly becomes inefficient and error-prone.

Tips for Selecting an E-commerce / Shopping Cart Solution

Building an e-commerce website involves many decisions, and choosing the right shopping cart software is one of the most important. While business owners may focus on products and payments, customers care deeply about the quality of the shopping experience—and the cart plays a major role in that.

With so many options available, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Before making a decision, consider the following key points.

Point 1: Understand What Shopping Carts Can Do

From the customer’s perspective, a shopping cart allows users to select products, adjust quantities, calculate taxes and shipping, and complete checkout. Behind the scenes, however, a powerful shopping cart can do much more.

• Generate reports on customer behavior and purchases
• Track abandoned carts and failed transactions
• Integrate design templates with your website
• Connect with external services for order processing and notifications
• Create sales, coupons, gift certificates, and promotions
• Support cross-selling, product sets, and bundles
• Process batch orders and drop-shipping
• Track multiple order statuses throughout the lifecycle

Shopping carts generally fall into two categories: hosted and self-hosted (including open-source solutions). Open-source carts like Magento, OpenCart, ZenCart, and osCommerce are free but often require significant technical expertise and ongoing maintenance.

Commercial shopping cart solutions may involve higher upfront or monthly costs, but they typically include built-in features, technical support, documentation, and hosting—saving time and reducing risk as your business grows.

Point 2: Customization and Flexibility

Before choosing a cart, evaluate how easy it is to customize the design, add features, or install extensions. Many businesses using open-source carts spend more time managing software issues than growing their business.

Customization without proper documentation often leads to higher development costs, as developers must reverse-engineer the system to make changes.

Point 3: Support and Reliability

Your shopping cart is critical to your business operations. Consider whether technical support is included, how fast issues are resolved, and whether help is available when problems arise.

Relying solely on community forums for support may mean waiting hours—or longer—for answers. For mission-critical systems, reliable support can make all the difference.

Point 4: Built-In Marketing Features

A modern shopping cart should support your marketing efforts. Features like SEO-friendly URLs, promotions, cross-selling, bulk discounts, and product calculators can directly impact sales and conversions.

Anyone serious about selling online should evaluate their shopping cart as carefully as their hosting provider. In e-commerce, you truly get what you pay for.