Mrs.Fine asked:


I love to camp, but my poor old tent has worn out and it is time to purchase a new one. There are alot more features available now, and I want to know which ones are worth the extra money, and which ones just add more weight to my gear. It was a little overwhelming shopping at the Bass Pro shop last weekend.

Also, where is the best place to find a good deal on these tents? I only have a family of four, so an extra large tent is not needed. Just one that is relativley simple to set up.

Thanks for your input!

GREGORIO

OldManGloom00 asked:

Mark is doing the joint shop solo, but Jez wants to go to a party.

DEWITT

Moonlight177 asked:


My son will be 1 at the end of the month. My husband seems to think it is the right time for him to be able to sit in the shopping cart seat. I have still been keeping him in his car seat. It just didn’t even cross my mind to put him directly in the shopping cart yet (mostly because I hope he takes a nap while I shop! LOL) When did you start putting your little one in the cart?

GINO

Greta asked:


I usually start after Thanksgiving…I do my first round of Christmas shopping on Black Friday so I can get some good bargains. lol.

How about you?

ANDREA

Online Shopping asked:


As the 21st century progresses, more and more people prefer buying online. There has been no better time for those that sell advertising and for online merchants. However, online shopping could be a bit of a nightmare for inexperience online buyers. After all, you as an online shopper would not have the ability to talk with the other clients of a company that is selling the products you are interested in. This would mean that you have to rely on the information provided by the seller’s website and their advertising.

Given this, how would you be able to protect yourself from being a victim of fraudulent advertising? How would you verify the accuracy of the information you have? A lot of online stores have their own brick and mortar stores. If they are a company doing legitimate business, you should be able to verify the reputation that they have with the complaint agencies that also deal with the regular local stores. You could also check their reputation through the company that handles their advertising - a lot of reputable advertisers would not agree to place advertisements for those companies that they believe to be fraudulent as they would be risking their reputation as well.

One more technique to avoid being scammed as you buy online would be choosing to deal with those retailers who have been doing business for a while. You could usually get this piece of information on the company’s FAQs or “About Us” page. Also, their website also has a copyright date, which is typically the date when the website was launched. If you do choose to do business with a retailer who has not been in the industry that long, make sure that you practice caution.

Lastly, make sure that you are not easily swayed by flashy advertisements. Learning to distinguish the advertisements that give correct product information and the ones that are pure fluff would be able to make your online shopping experience much more pleasant.



AMBROSE

Rakhi Chowdhary asked:


Shopping Carts Solutions an integrated shopping solution, a new way that lets your customers to make orders, purchase online, manage shipping…

Today every growing business tries to be customer centric and I am very sure that business entropy will increase if your customer retention rate goes low. In this article I will discuss all about shopping cart and shopping cart software solution. With plethora of internet, staying at the top of your field has become arduous and it takes a lot to remain or reach at the top position. Looking back at the decade of shopping, there were no online store and customers had to walk to the store, spend time there browsing through the catalogue, deciding products, and then the product was passed into the shopping cart (trolley), order was placed and finally checkout and payment processes were carried. Then everything was manual, all entries were made manually and pricing were calculated on hands. In present scenario - With online shopping cart you can shop from your home or your office; just need internet connection and all yours processing finalized in a minute. This online storefront with integrated shopping solution provides a platform for selecting and purchasing your favorite products.

Shopping Carts is selecting products online for purchasing. Ecommerce is complete online store for shopping where from placing orders, tracking orders and managing account all are maintained.

The interface of online stores are designed for users and it is really easy to browse, collect, place orders and make payment but behind the curtain the scene is sophisticated, it needs round the clock maintenance for smooth functioning of your ecommerce store. The current study says that abandonment rate of shopping cart ranges from 25% to 75%. Being a SEO executive and strategist I have analyzed lots of ecommerce websites, studied its web analytics funnel visualization report, it shows that most of the visitors exit at the initial step (after Login or Registration), these visitors drop out at proceeding steps, and very small percentage reach the final checkout. I would say that funnel conversion rate is very low for these ecommerce websites / shopping carts if the funnel steps are not properly set.

I would like to share what all I have inculcated through my experience, reasons for shopping cart abandonment are:

High Shipping Cost: This can be inversely managed by increasing product cost and reducing shipping cost.

Security and Privacy Problem: Providing very transparent privacy statement and high level security for payment gateway.

Lot of essentialities and billing formalities: Non essential information should be not be made mandatory, other formalities can be filled at the after checkout.

Poor Navigation: Your shopping store should respond quickly, check that your site does not take enough loading time. Search should be simple and checkout process should not be very lengthy. Clients should be notified after payment is done and visitors who wish can easily navigate back to make more shopping without time wastage.

Remember, your ecommerce website should be simple so that it entices your customers to come again for shopping. All the shopping cart segments should be integrated and should be streamlined for its smooth running. Elements of consideration are: a ecommerce shopping cart (storefront with shopping cart), a merchant account, a database server (this stores all information about customer and all your storefront products and services), a web server (hosts your website and provides all information about your product at the web browser’s request), a catalogue, legacy system, control inventory, reporting tool and secure payment gateway. Hosting of your online storefront or ecommerce website is of first consideration. Depending on your storefront hosting you choose shopping cart software, all depends on the software and your website hosting compatibility.

There are different shopping cart software available for your storefront from which you can choose. Either you can Buy a shopping cart software product, or join a service (template service build your store).

Choosing shopping cart software is the key business requirement for online shopping business solutions.

Every ecommerce site has its shopping cart and thus needs a merchant account and payment gateway. I believe these two are basic necessities of any online store for allowing credit card payment. Let be brief the main points that you should know before proceeding to shopping carts.

Merchant Account: This allows to process credit card information. Different types of merchant accounts are available to suit your business needs. Most popular merchant accounts include wireless, telecheck, mail order or phone, e-commerce. Ecommerce is the fastest growing transaction segment.

Payment Gateway: payment gateway processes this credit card and shipping information and real time information over a secure network connection.

A company that validates your credit card information in real time is electronic gateway or payment gateway. Few most widely accepted gateways are: Paypal (Globally), Verisign (Globally), 2Checkout (Globally), WorldPay (Gloablly), Authorize.Net (US), CyberSource (US), Moneris (CA), Protx (UK), EWay (AU); some others are Chronopay, Westpac, BluePay, viaKLIX, eMatters, plugnpay, eway, goemerchant.com, skipjack, MiraPay, netaxept, DirectOne, nab, NETBANX, Network Merchants, Nochex, DeltaPAY, eProcessing Network, protx, egateway, SECPay, paymate, Gotmerchant, ANZ, beanstream, Payjunction, TECHNOCASH, MiraPay, GoDaddy.

Payment gateway main motive is to provide secure channel for credit card information transfer. Basically the credit card information is encrypted and sent to respective bank for verification, these are of highest priority, no detail is stored in between.

You may be having now in mind how to create your merchant account and have your payment gateway??? Not mandatory to have one’s own, you may use merchant service providers’ shopping cart solutions for your ecommerce websites.

Type of Gateways:

Currently there are 3 main gateway interfaces available:

COM based gateway interface: Most of the COM based gateway company requires installing the DLL software on your hosting server, and also checks for your SSL certificate.

XML Transport gateway interface: XML Transport gateway companies do not require DLL installation but checks for you SLL certification instead uses Windows server installed facilities.

Form based gateway interface: This is most common gateway as does not require any software installation, very few companies ask for SSL certification.

The main advantage is that COM and XML gateways are integrated with your store and thus no redirection to external server but the drawback also lies that since the transfer is over the internet to payment gateway makes this less reliable.

Types of Shopping Cart

Merchant Service Shopping Carts

Have you set up a new business, do not have merchant account and payment gateway??? Still looking…. There are merchant services shopping carts available for new businesses with very less queries at the initial stage. Once you start your business at the initial stage there are very less orders that increases gradually, so merchant will get you licensed . It proceeds somewhat like this: it collects and stores your client’s information and takes you to its payment gateway and merchant account.

The main problem is the fee that gateway company charges. Apart from the set up fee, transaction cost is also high making the over all gateway an expensive one. Another major drawback is that client’s credit card statements will contain merchant service not your company name. There is admin login section for all sort of updation – add, delete, edit, and manage products and other information. The HTML code generated by the cart is inserted in the respected pages, once the visitor clicks on the link (button), visitor is redirected to merchant site where visitor needs to enter card detail and personal details.

Hosted Shopping Carts

Small and medium sized businesses need not worry!! Yes, they can have hosted shopping cart for those not having enough resource to go with integrated shopping cart solutions for their ecommerce websites. The hosted shopping cart solution has an administration area for entering product information. The generated HTML information code is inserted into the product page. The website visitor is redirected to another site to fill a form with information that is CC to the website. There are certain carts that provide configurable user interface so that it looks as corporate website.

The most important point to be noted is that in hosted shopping cart solutions the website owner uses ones own payment gateway and merchant account; this provides your client with credit card detail with your company title not the title of merchant service. For increasing sale this shopping cart service becomes cheaper, this may be fixed transaction charge for higher sales compared to per transaction.

Fully Integrated Shopping Carts

Fully integrated (Trunkey - a comprehensive shopping cart solution provided by one provider) shopping cart provides completely configurable user interface and other interesting features. This needs some programming knowledge so that you can better manage and handle its modules and use the extra features provided. Provider of On the ecommerce provider server the software data and web pages are hosted. Examples: Yahoo Store, Bigstep, Merchandizer, etc. these include form based built in payment gateway.

Which shopping cart to go with?? Points to ponder – Costing: The investment you put in, hosting

Shopping cart software is the common online storefront business solution. There are myriad e-commerce solutions available with varying features, design, security so that you can customize based on your requirements and specifications. With open source software solutions, osCommerce shopping cart solution there are slew of customizable shopping cart solutions available. The open source ecommerce software products are available that are very easy to setup, configure, administration. So before going with a particular solution Payment gateway or shopping cart just be clear about your requirements. There is another storefront solution, Watson shopping cart system (developed in Switzerland) is a new shopping cart or trolley that has unique database and uses audio advertising system of the internet for online shopping.



ALONSO

MrMichigan asked:


I know there are a lot of shopping carts out there. Here is the deal.

1) I already have a web site and a host.

2) I have a paypal account. I am going to use paypal to accept credit cards.

I just need a low cost shopping cart software that has shipping options, taxes, old / new product prices, unlimited products and looks good and not cheap looking.

I do not know html. I use Frontpage 2003 to build my web site. I just need a shopping cart software that will have a nice looking format already setup to add my products.

Note: I am not offering files to download. I am selling Herbailfe products. If you are aware of someone already having a shopping cart setup for these products and willing to hook me up, then please let me know.

GINO

Sandra Prior asked:


Net shopping has really taken off in the last couple of years and there’s a vast amount of goods and services available in the digital megamall. Even so, more skeptical Net users are wary and need convincing of the advantages of shopping online.

After all, most people have a perfectly good mall just a short drive away and you can get most of the things you need there. As for saving money, there are always the seasonal sales. But the fact is, these are the exact reasons for shopping on the Internet. It’s convenient, the choice is amazing, and you can save loads of money.

As with anything though, you have to be aware of the potential pitfalls. The Net offers access to a whole new world of shopping and opens up the free market to individuals as never before. On the other hand, this is unfamiliar territory for most people. You are outside your normal field of reference and you need all sorts of new information, such as how your rights are affected when you buy from abroad, how to separate a good shop from a con job and what security measures protect you from fraud.

Getting Started

The Net brings the mall to your home, but it’s a mall unlike any other you’ve seen – one open to the whole world and with almost no limitations. Sure, you can shop for all the things you would buy on a normal Saturday afternoon trudge around town. If it’s familiar names you’re looking for, you’ll find them online as increasing numbers of players start waking up to the fact that Net shopping is here to stay, and have started offering an online service to their customers.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg as far as Net shopping is concerned. The real benefits come when you get a bit more adventurous and start to explore. You can save money by buying from Internet-only retailers that don’t have the expensive overheads of shopfront premises and pass the savings on to their customers; buy from stores overseas and benefit from their lower prices; and find unusual or hard-to-come-by items at the click of a button. Shopping will never be the same again.

With such a wealth of choice available, you will never need help to get started. For most purposes, a good jumping-off point is one of the many shopping directories that have sprung up all over the Net recently. These provide links to selected shops and save you a lot of browsing if you’re looking for anything vaguely mainstream.

Some of these sites are extremely useful and will help you enormously when you start shopping online. Others are frankly rubbish, so be selective. Look for a site that’s clearly set out with well-defined shopping categories, a profile of each shop with details of any disadvantages to shopping there, and ideally some sort of scoring system so you know where to go.

Shop with Confidence

The biggest concern most people have when they start shopping on the Net is whether it’s secure. Many people are reluctant to send their credit card details off into the ether for fear of them being intercepted and used fraudulently by others to run up enormous bills.  This is an understandable worry, but it’s largely unfounded. Shopping on the Net is as safe as, if not safer than, mail order or telephone shopping, or even paying by credit card in a restaurant. Basically, whenever you give someone your credit card details or let the card out of your sight, you are at risk of fraud. The good news with Net shopping, however, is that there are lots of ways to protect yourself and minimize the risks.

Here comes the science bit; you’re protected in many cases by the kindly technology elves. On shopping sites you will often see assurances that information is transmitted using SSL (Secure Socket layer), a technology used to encrypt all information being sent to and received from a specific Web page or pages. Most mainstream shopping sites use this secure connection when you send your payment details over the Internet. Any information transmitted in this secure way is encrypted for the duration of the transfer. In the unlikely event that it is intercepted en route, it will be absolutely no use to anyone. The retailer decodes the message once it has arrived in order to take payment, but nobody else has access to your details along the way.



GABRIEL