1. Layout – The key to an effective shopping cart is ease of use. A customer must be able to “pile up” all the products that he or she may be interested in and then take a last look at it before check in. Perhaps if a drag and drop layout is feasible, it would make to most sense for a user. The website must also be aesthetically designed so that customers who reach your site are able to find what they want and don’t feel like leaving. This is important because online purchases usually arise out of impulse.

2. SEO – This is what will actually bring customers to your ecommerce website when they search for a product on prominent search engines. Using Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) you will make your site appear more relevant to the typed keywords and will thus appear higher in search results thus attracting more customers.

3. Transactions-The shopping cart must be able to sell in multiple currencies given the fact that there are a large number of overseas customers in the marketplace as well and not everyone is able to think in US dollars. Moreover, your shopping cart software must be integrated with Google, Pay Pal, FedEx etc to ensure that no customer who might be a user of even one of these would feel alien to your website. The software must be able to display the total price of all the products added to the cart and must show the discounts and other coupons being used.

4. Augmented product- This refers to the additional options and features that you would give to a customer that would put you a cut above your competitors. Things like bulk discounts, free shipping, real-time shipping quotes, gift wrapping and messages refunds and store credits would make customers feel that it is more profitable to buy a product from your site than your competitors.

3. Security- This is one aspect that online sellers can’t afford to ignore because the credit card numbers and other sensitive data is being handled and must be handled responsibly. Today there are an ever rising number of users who feel insecure about making online payments and their worries must be put to rest. Making highly secure payment gateways will help keep your customers coming back.

Using the above steps would guide you on how to create an effective shopping cart. Remember that today’s businesses are moving from “customisation” to “customer-isation”. And that is what makes all the difference between you and your competitors!

Firstly as mentioned, you need to decide on the type of business you are going to operate, then try to find a domain name that is associated with the business you have decided upon, this is where some brainstorming is going to have to come in. Write down on a list a number of possible ideas that pop in to your head. Swap the words around and ask friends and family if they make sense to them. Remember your domain name is your business name to the world. It represents both you, along with your business, it is therefore extremely important that you choose your domain name carefully.

Although there are numerous extensions today of a domain name (e.g. .com, .net, and .biz to name only a few), go for a .com as most people think of web addresses that finish with a .com, especially if you are working towards a world wide market. Try to avoid hyphens also, one thing is that some servers don’t like to see them, but more importantly for you is that if someone is typing the web domain in to their address bar in the browser, if they forget one hyphen or accidentally use an underscore then they may just be directed to someone else’s web site, which may turn out to be a competitor or they just get a cannot find the web page error, the out come of which is you just end up loosing that visitor who could have been a potential customer.

If you have been tempted to use a free hosting service that gives you a domain name as an extension of there own hosting service, (e.g. http://thehostingcompany/nowyourname.com or something similar, DON’T do it, you will loose credibility before you even begin.

I have used many companies in the past to register many of my domain names, now take the company I now use for example. Apart from them being one of the cheapest around that I found, they have many other features that you just could not find elsewhere. One really cool feature I found was when you put in the name you have decided upon and you are checking it’s availability, if it’s already been taken, it returns many similar names that you can then ponder upon that you may not have thought of beforehand. It also had the facility to register many domain names all at once.

Once you have made your decision on your domain, when you come to finally registering your domain name, you will be presented with the option of keeping your domain name private, an excellent feature that I recommend and one you should take advantage of.

A private domain registration will keep your information (name, address, email address, etc.) out of the global Internet database, and will prevent a lot of spam from reaching your email box. I certainly wish this had been available when I created my first web site.