Shopping Cart Software

Content Management systems allow users to easily expand and upgrade their websites. Online store owners wishing to make things easier for their customer must have a shopping cart plug in. While Google Checkout provides one of the most widely recognized shopping cart systems on the web, the search engine giant charges a website owner a small fee each time a customer uses the Google checkout service.

Assuming that a person is using Joomla, one of the most popular content management systems for website, there are a number of plugins that a webmaster can buy or sometimes use for free for e-commerce applications. The most popular shopping cart plug in for the Joomla CMS is a program called VirtueMart. The popularity of this extension stems, in part, from the software‘s ability to let its user add unlimited categories. While few commercial website owners will ever need unlimited categories of items, it does give the webmaster plenty of room to expand his on-site inventory.

While VirtueMart is popular shopping cart plugin for Joomla, it is not the most customizable Joomla system. If the webmaster wants greater freedom to modify his site or to make his shopping cart fit in with existing themes, he may choose the Tienda plug-in. An added feature of the plug-in is its administrator interface, which makes the task of managing sales a simple process.

A user who just started a commercial website and wants to start making sales quickly may find that neither of these options suits his needs. If he simply needs to take money and wants to use Paypal, Simple Caddy serves this purpose well. Simple Caddy does not have the power offered by the options listed above.

If a webmaster does not wish to use Joomla, a number of vendors offer pieces of code that can be integrated with any website. The plugins work for those who do not have knowledge of various scripting languages or the application programmer interfaces for the many different ways of accepting payments over the Internet.