If your website is to sell products or services online (e.g eShop or eStore / online Sop), it will need some kind of shopping cart to process credit card payments. It can be processed in many ways and depends on the needs and budget.
- PayPal Shopping Cart
The most basic shopping cart uses a payment processing service such as PayPal. PayPal processes Visa, Master Card, American Express, Diners Club, and eChecks, etc. The PayPal shopping cart is easy to set up and use. It is great for the website with a limited budget and selling only a handful of products.
- Web Hosting Shopping Cart
Most web-hosting companies offer some kinds of shopping cart services for the e-Commerce solution. They usually use their own, custom-built applications which allow the website owners to add the products. For this kind of service, the website owners may require to pay for higher hosting rate and a merchant accout to process the credit cards through their shopping cart, as well as pay for a static IP and SSL digital certificate to ensure the security of the online transaction.
- Third-Party Shopping Cart
These kinds of shopping carts look more customized but still reasonably inexpensive. Some are even free e-commerce solution. However, they will require a bit of coding to configure the cart.
- Custom-built Shopping Cart
This option is to have a shopping cart custom built so that it is tailored specifically to the website’s needs. All the e-commerce page layouts can be customized to the products being sold and have the same navigation, look, and feel as the rest of the website. Of course, the cost will be highest and it takes more time to build than other shopping cart solution.