Carts: 25 Nifty Features for Under $25/mth

In reviewing shopping carts for the Guide, I found a heap of nifty, useful features that I didn’t expect to see in affordable carts.

I was also surprised that shopping carts can have multiple plans—like Basic, Business, and Pro—that differ by the number of products or bandwidth, yet have all the same features. So even if we get in on the ground floor with the cheapest plan, we can have the same extras as if we’d paid for the penthouse.

For example, here’s a double handful of non-essential (but darned cool!) features we can find in shopping carts that cost less than $25/mth. Two things to note if you go looking for these: 1) You probably won’t find them all in one shopping cart, and 2) Even free shopping carts have some—

1. “Stamp” customer’s name and email address on each page of a PDF before they download
2. Allow customers to set their own price
3. Cross-sell related products (i.e., If you like X, you may also like Y or Z)
4. Unlimited photos for each product
5. Custom reports and graphs
6. Gift note printing
7. An executive dashboard
8. A built-in affiliate management system
9. Built-in email/newsletter marketing
10. Real-time shipping rates
11. Real-time package tracking
12. A built-in currency converter
13. Live 24×7 phone support
14. Built-in email messaging or email hosting included
15. Get new order notifications by text message
16. Use an RSS feed to monitor incoming orders
17. No setup fees or transaction fees
18. Customer wishlists and/or gift registry
19. Submit products to appear in Google Product Search results
20. Store design templates and themes
21. Support for drop-shipping
22. Gift certificates
23. Send sales to your QuickBooks with “Web Connector”
24. Upload a large product catalog all at once
25. A Facebook application for selling products from your FB account

So.

Some of these might be over-the-top for what you’re doing right now, but maybe look for these odd little bits when you’re shopping for a shopping cart? As your business grows, little extras like these can make a big difference (at no extra cost).

Photo credit: clevercupcakes

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