One of the benefits of owning a website is the opportunity to sell things. At the same time, though, the problem with selling things is trying to keep everything organized and make sure it is easy for your potential customers to go from wanting to buy the item to getting the item. Adding a shopping cart to your website is a great way of automating this process.
The first step in adding a shopping cart to your site is to determine which shopping cart you want. Some are very basic and others are very detailed. With that in mind, for a very simple and straight forward process, the one to choose is the PayPal shopping cart. This allows you to collect credit cards from customers and have it all work through the PayPal system. This way, you don’t have to worry about collecting receipts and dealing with fees to the credit card companies.
The first step is to create the button that you want. You can use one of PayPal’s basic buttons or create your own button. Whatever your choice, choose the button you want to use. Determine the cost of the item. This should include any shipping as well as sales tax. Be sure to know the rules for sales tax in your state.
With the different images on your site of the different items, put the Add to Cart button next to it. You are given HTML code, so it’s as simple as pasting it in a different table. Add a “View Cart” button at the bottom/top of your page so that people can view what they have in it already. When they click it, they will be taken to a shopping cart where they can see exactly how much everything is going to be for them.
Once they check out, the customer will be able to designate how to pay you–funds on their PayPal or through a credit card–and then they will pick a shipping address. Finally, all of this information is sent to you along with an automatic payment straight to your PayPal. You can then send them the item.
This is just one way of adding a shopping cart to your website and it is the most basic. If you have funding, you can hire someone to create a custom one. However, this works for most small sites that are looking to sell a few goods. And since PayPal handles all the credit card fees, it cuts down on the work you have to do as the merchant.
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