Hosted Shopping Cart - Do You Know What's More Important Than Features When Picking Your Online Cart

The most important thing when picking your hosted eCommerce shopping cart is not the features (yes they are important - but not the most important). The most important consideration is the partner hosting your shopping cart.

This might sound a bit crazy or maybe even trite. However, based on my experience with a range of business small to large, a key factor in determining the success of a project are your team members. The same is true when picking a piece of software that will be critical to the success of your business.

Would you trust your personal savings to just anyone. No, you have a relationship with a bank and I am willing to bet one with a good reputation. In fact, if you have significant assets, I am sure you have a personal relationship with your banker.

The same can be said for your eCommerce software. Do you really want to trust just anyone with the critical infrastructure for your business? No, you want a long term relationship with whomever provides your solution. When evaluating different hosted shopping cart solutions, I encourage you to add several questions about how they treat customers to your checklist:

How do you provide suggestions for improvements to the platform
How do you contact someone with simple questions
What are the hours for live support
How well are you issues addressed
Is it possible to speak with someone live without any hassles (this is important when you are frazzled about using a new feature and are under a time crunch)
How responsive is the partner to your questions
Do they provide specific answers or general read the manual responses
What do other customers say about the potential partner

You can get a pretty good sense about a company by talking with them. Yes, I understand you might not want to talk with someone. But trust me, if they are a quality partner, they should be easy to talk with. An easy way to tell if they are personable is: would you want to have a 3 hour flight with the person you are speaking with. If you are getting the real scoop from them, this should be an easy question to answer. Often times the person you are talking with is interested just enough to answer your questions, make the sale and move on. Be careful with this type of conversation.

You are looking for someone with

a real understanding of the needs in the shopping cart space
a genuine caring for the success of your business
a proven history of high customer satisfaction

While features are very important, they are not everything. Once you have narrowed the field down based on functionality, be sure to add a partner test. If you have a partner who is not responsive to your needs, your business will suffer. Your customers will notice issues and you will be powerless to provide a good resolution to their issues if you can not talk with your shopping cart provider in a meaningful, frank and open manner.