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Anybody who is doing online business or owns an online store knows the important role that one’s shopping cart solution plays. It is the key factor that makes one’s business especially in terms of making online purchasing easy for the customer’s end. With a lot f shopping cart templates to choose one, each with its one advantages and disadvantages, an online merchant needs to know what kind of shopping cart is ideal for his or her own ecommerce business.
Here are the top qualities of a shopping cart that you can use to check its compatibility with you as a merchant and your business.
The question of maintenance
Are you going to hire somebody to help you maintain your site or are you going to maintain it yourself? How good are your technical skills in terms of website maintenance? How easy is it to maintain the shopping cart software you intend to use? These are but some of the things that you need to ask yourself before you make your choice. Maintenance is a very critical issue in choosing a shopping cart especially if you are planning to expand. One thing about the solution that you choose is that it should allow you to work your way when the thought of expanding your internet marketing comes in.
The question of features
It should not be just any other features. Make sure that the features you check are the features that are of top priority for your business. This means that the shopping cart template you choose should have all the features you need. Be grateful for the extras the come with it but do not be misled. Make sure that your choice does lean on the shopping cart that has very impressive features, instead it should lean on the one that is complete with the features that your online store needs.
The question of support
What do you feel when during crucial times, when you need help the most, nobody is there for you? Well, you would be feeling the same when your shopping cart is going haywire and the technical support or the customer service of your template’s manufacturer or producer is not really responding fast enough or is not responding at all. Check among other users of the shopping cart solution how efficient their support system is in case something wrong happens. The more time you waste waiting for help, the more customer you lose.
Yes, you heard about Google Wave but you have not tried it yet. Well, for one, though you may already have it, you do not have any idea as to how you should use it or whether it could work to your advantage. Well, here is a list the advantages and disadvantages that you could use to help you decide whether it is already high time for you to use this new technology.
In order to better understand what Google Wave, you need to understand the rationale behind its creation. You need to know the answer why it was created in the first place. Well, basically, the technology was developed to give communication a more advanced form where almost all of the commonly used means of message exchange nowadays are collaborated into one system. However, the more important question that needs to be answered is, “What are its advantages and disadvantages?”
| Feature |
Feedback |
Reasons |
| Interface |
Ok |
Its interface is impressive but at the same time it is not difficult to understand because it is similar to the interface used in emails, only that it has some additional elements. It also gives you a recap of how much changes the waves have undergone since the last time you went online, a new feature that a lot of applications and system would surely die to imitate. |
| Participant contribution |
Ok |
It encourages people to contribute to a wave that has already been posted. |
| Collaboration |
Ok |
You can actually see changes unfold before you at the same time your friends incorporate these changes. Google wave offers real-time collaboration in a new and more efficient way than others do. |
| Revisions and rollbacks |
Not okay |
You still need to do revisions manually. |
| Reply hiding |
Not okay |
Replies can be in any form and since Google Wave still does not allow reply hiding, an array of replies might look messy in one wave. |
| Invitation |
Not okay |
It is still limited so the purpose of creating the system has not been fully realized yet. |
| Update notifications |
Not okay |
You don’t get any notifications on waves that you intend to follow may it be in the form of chat, email, and the likes. So if there are a lot of waves flowing in, some would just get lost along the way. |
| Chat |
Not okay |
It is still very unreliable. It’s fast one moment and then slow and hen very slow and back again. |
| Stability |
Not okay |
The population of users affects the stability of the system. Thus, the more people using the technology, the most unstable it gets. |
| Google account requirement |
Not okay |
This is only a problem for customers and users who are not so savvy yet in using the Net. |
| Online users |
Not okay |
Its indication as to who is online is still not that reliable. |
| Mark-up editing |
Not okay |
Source code view is still not available. |
Although there might still be some problems with Google Wave, it does not undermine the power it brings to users. And, people will just have to wait for improvements that could make this technology much, much better.