Good Free Shopping Cart Software Trial To Do List

desmond — Sun, 09 May 2010 10:35:30 +0000

There are many ecommerce solution providers out there who provide good free shopping cart software program trials. The free shopping cart software program trial duration varies from 15 to 30 days. Many, especially newbies, might find 15 days a tad too short to get the feel of a solution so if you need more time to try out all the bells and whistles, just ask for an extension; most good free shopping cart software trial providers would be more than happy to oblige.

So now that you’ve signed up for a 30-day good free shopping cart software trial, what do you need to do? Well, try the easiest stuff first. Here are 5 things you can do in just a matter of minutes with your free shopping cart store software 30-day trial.

Upload Your Store Logo

Chances are, you already have a store logo ready and just can’t wait for it to be uploaded. But if you don’t, no need to worry, you can always upload it later whenever you have your logo ready. Some merchants might choose to create their own logos but most would prefer to employ the expertise of a professional logo designer to give their logo that extra edge. Mind you, those who sign up (for a paid package) with InstanteStore get US$40 credit at Logo-Design-Studio.com or LDS for short. The guys and gals at LDS have been around for ages (in the good sense) and are quite familiar with our template specifications so you might say they have an upper hand when designing for our merchants.

Select A Template

A template includes the masthead or top section, and side sections of a page. InstanteStore offers over 200 choices of free templates which come in different colors and designs. Select one that suits the products you intend to sell. For instance, an online flower shop would probably need a bright colored template with a flowery theme. Alternatively, you can also choose to get LDS to design something unique just for you. For those in a rush, they only take 2 business days to come up with design concepts.

In terms of appearance, you can also choose if you want a full screen template or one with a fixed width. If you’re wondering what the difference is between the two, well it’s simple. If you select a full screen template, the template width will fit the screen dimensions of the user’s browser and the content will also stretch to fit, so page appearance may not be consistent. Many merchants go with the fixed width option in order to maintain a consistent appearance across different screen sizes.

Choose A Page Layout

In order to determine how your products will appear on your store, you need to choose a product page layout. Before you make your selection, we suggest you browse around and take a look at different page layouts on sites which sell similar products. Pay attention to how the products and information are displayed. Layouts that catch your eye or tempt you to click for more information are the ones that work best.

Create Categories

Most merchants would probably have more than one item to sell. It is safe to say that these items in turn would fall into a few categories and in some cases, sub categories. It’s always a good idea to organize your products and logically so that customers can locate what they want easily and quickly. So before adding products to your store, you should have all your categories in place. Creating categories is a simple process with our solution. We suggest you create a couple first just so you have a somewhere to place your products. You can easily create more categories later.

Adding Products

A store isn’t a store without products. Again, we suggest you populate your store with a few products first just so you can see what your store would look like with some products on display. Once you’ve got this process down pat, you can try bulk uploading. This is an easier way to upload a massive number of products with their details as well.

Once you’ve completed these 5 steps, you’d probably be wondering what else can you do now that you have another 29 days and (maybe) 23 hours left on your free shopping cart store software trial. We’ll leave that for another post.Recent Posts:

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Cheap Shopping Cart Software vs Free Shopping Cart Store Software

desmond — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 05:15:05 +0000

Business people are always looking to get stuff at good value. In terms of shopping carts, they prefer affordable and cheap shopping cart software, especially those who are just starting out in ecommerce. Free shopping cart store software would be even better … or would it?

A business is an investment, and sometimes we need to spend just a little to make sure that our business is secure. We can never guarantee how our business will pan out but we need to do everything we can to make sure it has a chance of doing well. One of the ways of doing that is to sign up for a reliable as well as cheap shopping cart software solution from a reputable ecommerce solutions company (us, of course) that is feature-rich and established.

There are a few differences between a cheap shopping cart software solution and a free shopping cart software program, aside from the obvious point that one is free and the other isn’t. There are many free shopping cart store software programs that are feature-packed with almost everything a merchant would need to run an online business. If that is the case, then why would merchants still fork out US$50 a month for a cheap shopping cart software solution?

Free shopping cart programs are usually available as open source software or through companies who offer freely-hosted shopping carts but charge for upgrades and additional features. In most cases for open source shopping carts, users need to be well versed in programming in order to be able to tweak features to their liking. Open source software depends on contributions from programmers who do not get paid for their efforts so unlike with a paid solution, future upgrades are not always guaranteed.

Apart from charging users for updates and patches, free hosting shopping cart providers usually overload their servers with websites to save on cost. This slows down server performance and can lead to downtime. Some companies even place banners on web sites as part of the free hosting agreement.

Support-wise, both sources of free shopping carts are lacking when compared to paid solutions. Users of free solutions will likely have to depend on forums where they’ll need to hope that other users have experienced similar issues to theirs. Solution developers may be on hand to try to provide answers, but free solutions lack dedicated support staff.

To avoid all this hassle, why not invest in a paid shopping cart host and software? For just US$50 a month, users – especially new merchants – will have access to a reliable and cheap shopping cart software solution that’s loaded with features, is secure and is constantly updated (almost always at no additional cost). There’s a time and place for free stuff, but when it comes to your store, a small investment is the right one for your ecommerce success.Recent Posts:

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Ecommerce Shopping Cart Blog by InstanteStore » free shopping cart software program

Good Free Shopping Cart Software Trial To Do List

Cheap Shopping Cart Software vs Free Shopping Cart Store Software