There are two types of shopping, one you can go to the super market and purchase what ever you like. Other is buying or purchasing products online.

Online Shopping Cart:

It is considered to be the heart of e-commerce. It is used to assist people to make online purchases which we call in an American term as “Shopping Cart” or you can see a word “basket” on many websites.

Shopping cart software allows customer to place item in a cart. Software calculates a total for the order including shipping and handling charges with associated tax.

This software provides a mean of capturing client’s payment information, if done through credit card. It provides secure gateway for the security purposes.

Shopping cart software is also known as e-commerce software, e-store software or store front software.

Components of Shopping Cart:

It consists of two components:

· Store Front: It is the area of the web store that is accessed by the visitors to the online shop. Category, product and other pages are dynamically generated by the software.

· Administration: It is accessed by the merchants who manage the online shop.

Payment:

The bills are usually paid via credit card. Some users create their account so that they can pay through other alternative means such as:

· Cash on delivery

· Pay pal

· Debit Card

· Cheque

· Google Checkout

· Bill Me Later

· Money Bookers

· Gift Cards

· Post Money Order

· Wire Transfer

· Different Types of Electronic Money

· Reverse SMS Billing to Mobile Phones

Credit cards are the most popular means for buying or purchasing online products. There are few sites who don’t allow credit cards from other countries. They allow shopping and shipment with in a country. But there are many gift cards websites that allow you to send cards any where around the world.

Delivery of a Product:

You can have the delivery of the product after the payment:

Download: This is the method used incase of digital media such as software, music or images.

Shipping: In this case, the product is shipped to the customer’s address.

Drop Shipping: In this case shipment is made through third party who ships the item directly to the customer, bypassing physical location to save money and time.

That was a brief Introduction to Shopping Carts. We have basically emphasized on e-commerce shopping.