A Checklist Of Important Features In ECommerce Software

If you are starting your first eCommerce business, you don’t want to find out the hard way just how important good shopping cart software is for your business. Without certain features, you can easily lose control of your inventory or provide poor customer service, to name only two potential problems. All of this can be prevented by choosing good software from the beginning. The following is a checklist of the most important features you need to look for when shopping for the right software.

The Ability To Automate Your Inventory:

When an order is placed, the software needs to automatically adjust your inventory. If the quantity reaches zero, it should not be possible to sell any of that particular item. You should never be in a situation where you are taking orders for something you do not have in stock. This means order cancellations and irate customers. Secondly, you should have the option to be alerted when inventory levels reach a certain level. This gives you a chance to reorder and avoid shortages.

Customer Notifications Should Be Automated:

After an order is placed, an order confirmation email should be sent by the software letting your customer know your company received the order and payment was made. If there was a problem processing the payment, an email should also be sent to the customer giving them a chance to change their method of payment or attempt to pay again with the same card. After the shipment has been made, a shipping confirmation should automatically be sent containing the method of shipping and any details such as a tracking number. The better this type of order processing is automated, the less questions and problems your customer will have.

Easily Respond To Customer Order Inquiries:

Customers will still have plenty of questions, even with automated responses. This is when having good order tracking functions becomes essential. There are a number of issues that a customer might have. Examples include confusing vendors; they never ordered from you. They thought they ordered the item, but never did. The item has not arrived, and they are simply impatient. The list is a long one. Suffice to say, if you can quickly find the order in question, you will be able to respond quickly to your customer.

The Ability To Update Inventory Quickly:

You may want to add a new product to your inventory. This should not be a complicated process. The software should not only allow you to do this in a simple fashion, but you should be able to upload the new inventory description and have it integrated with your website and ready to sell with one click of the mouse. New images and other information should be easy to add to existing products as well.

The checklist above only scratches the surface of what you need for good shopping cart ecommerce software. You will quickly find that the more work you can automate with your new online business, the more successful you will be. There are a few good programs you can use for your business. The software found at 1shoppingcart.com is a good example.