You have a business, you have a website, and if your site sells products or services of any kind, you have an integrated shopping cart for simple processing and payment. Except business is rarely that simple given how many sales channels the internet can afford us. Different marketplaces, different shops, even different customer bases each bring different challenges that can find solutions in different shopping cart providers.
Let’s cover some benefits, considerations, and even drawbacks to implementing multiple shopping carts for your online business .
Sales Specific Cart
One of the most significant benefits of having multiple shopping is the ability to pick a cart provider based on their best fit for your specific sales channels. If your business has a consumer storefront, but also provides wholesale options, one shopping cart may provide better customer payments and ease of checkout, while another can handle the heavy lift of freight costs and transport. Or your business may only deal in wholesale, with many single location customers, but also sells to large chain providers who require a proper EDI integration. Depending on your business needs, two shopping carts can provide better services specific to the channel need.
Increased Sales and Conversions
Another advantage of using multiple shopping carts is that it can increase the potential profitability and repeat customers for your business. By providing a more personalized shopping experience that is tailored fit to their needs, you reduce the friction to the final sale.
For example, if you sell products at different price points, you could create separate shopping carts for each price range. This way, customers can easily find products that fit their budget and are more likely to make a purchase.
Additionally, in the your effort to expand products and sales, a marketplace may not integrate with your site shopping cart, and you’re required to use a new cart provider.
Better Targeting of Specific Products or Customer Segments
Having multiple shopping carts also allows you to target specific products or customer segments more effectively.
For example, if you sell both physical and digital products, you could create separate shopping carts for each. This approach can help customers more readily find the type of product they’re interested in, without any confusion.
If your business offers different payment or shipping options, you could create separate shopping carts for each to make the checkout process smoother.
Choosing the Right Shopping Carts
Here are some questions to ask as you find the right cart prodiver for your business.
- What types of products do you sell?
- What are the main needs of your customers?
- Do you sell products at different price points?
- Do you offer physical and digital products?
- Do you have different customer segments you want to target?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the cart providers?
Be sure to review the features and functionality of the shopping carts you’re interested in, from WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento, each has its own set of features, benefits, and costs.
Drawbacks of Having Multiple Shopping Carts
While having multiple shopping carts can offer some benefits, there are some potential drawbacks to consider and how it can impact your business.
- Confusion for Customers: Having multiple shopping carts on your website can be confusing for customers, especially if they’re not familiar with your site.
- Increased Complexity: Managing multiple shopping carts is typically be more complex than managing a single cart. You’ll need to keep track of inventory, orders, and customer data across multiple carts, which can be time-consuming and prone to human error..
- Increased Costs: If you’re using a third-party shopping cart provider, having multiple carts also means increased costs.
Managing Inventory with Multiple Shopping Carts
If you’re using multiple shopping carts across your website, marketplaces, and other channels, it’s important to establish a process for how you or an employee will manage the inventory across each channel. Keeping track of inventory levels can be challenging when you’re using multiple carts, especially if you’re selling the same products across different carts.
One approach to managing inventory with multiple shopping carts is to use a centralized inventory management system. This can help you keep track of inventory levels across all of your carts, so you don’t oversell products or run out of stock.
To implement a centralized inventory management system, you’ll need to choose a platform that supports this feature. Many e-commerce platforms offer some level of inventory management tools as part of their core features, but often lack in-depth tools or functions..
In addition to using a centralized inventory management system, it’s important to regularly monitor your inventory levels across all of your shopping carts and catch any issues or discrepancies before they become bigger problems.
Aligning your carts brings order to your sales and inventory
Adding a Multicart Integration
Multiple shopping carts or cart providers opens greater revenue potential, but brings possible issues as already discussed, and is where a Multicart Solution comes into play.
A Multicart solution provides benefits like:
- Managing several shopping carts on different pages or sections of your website.
- Tracking all the carts and cart provider information.
- Streamline the checkout process for customers.
- Updating inventory for all incoming orders, across all channels, in real time.
- Streamlining the sales and shipment process, saving valuable time.
With a Multicart Integration, you can consolidate all of your shopping carts into one central hub, easily manage your inventory, process orders, and track customer behavior. Additionally, it can improve the user experience by providing a unified checkout process that’s simple and easy to use.
Takeaway
Having more than one shopping cart on your website, marketplace, and other channels can be highly successful for your business. By providing a more personalized customer shopping experience, you can improve the user experience, increase sales and conversions, and better target specific products or customer segments. When choosing the right shopping carts, consider the needs of your business and customers, implement a multicart integration to bring them all together, and create a more streamlined process across your sales and inventory.
