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Shopping Cart Features: The Best 8 Types

A shopping cart program may contain different types of features that you could not find in other software.

Different strokes for different folks—and when it comes to a shopping cart software, there will always be at least one that fits your business to a T. This could be because of the features they contain.

Nevertheless there are certain kinds of functions that you hope are included in your chosen shopping cart program. For some great ideas of these, refer to the list below:

1. Standard Features. The standard features are the ones that are considered basic and very essential for your online shop. These could include an inventory management system, where you can take note of out-of-stock items and back order. You can also upload images and add descriptions to your products. Moreover, you will have the ability to create categories, modify the settings or the layout of the page, and add media files to further improve the aesthetic value of your shopping cart.

2. Parent-child Features. This is a more comprehensive kind of function, which is still helpful especially if you’re carrying wide varieties of similar items. With this shopping cart feature, customers can choose products according to their preference—in terms of color, size, or material, to name a few. Furthermore, customers will also be given an idea if the specific product is still available or currently out of stock.

3. E-coupons and Gift Certificate Features. There are various marketing ploys that you can use to entice customers to buy products from you. However, nothing really beats giving away freebies, coupons, and discounts to them. A shopping cart software can allow you to create gift certificates and e-coupons, which you can give to customers who may have qualified to get them. They could be those whose purchases have reached the desired amount to avail of the promo. In line with this, a shopping cart program can have Report Generation function, which allows you to produce sales statistics and purchasing habits of every customer you have.

4. Advanced Search Feature. An advanced search feature is just as important as your product catalog. Usually, online shoppers don’t have a lot of time to check every category found in your product page. They make use of the advanced search function of your shopping cart to filter the items and display only those that will match the set criteria.

5. E-mail Notification Feature. This shopping cart feature allows you to instantly send updates, announcements, and other news to your customers, who are registered to your online shopping website. It is very useful if you’re doing article marketing, or when you want to notify them of any deductions and debits from their accounts because of their purchases.

6. Pricing Features. These shopping cart program functions permit you to set the price on your products, offer discounts for bulk orders, or determine payment processing schemes. Another special sub-feature of pricing function will be the upselling and the cross-selling. Upselling will allow you to show related products to the one your customer may have just bought. The latter, meanwhile, displays those items that may have belonged to other categories but are still related to the sold product.