What Is A ‘Shopping Cart’

A ‘Shopping Cart’ is software that offers the online customer the convenience of collecting the items they want to purchase in one location.

After they have browsed through the online merchant’s store, they may or may not want to delete some items before checking out and making payment.

This is very much like the physical ‘shopping cart’ you will find at the super markets around the world. You walk around ‘browsing’ through the isles and adding things you want to purchase to the cart. Then when you check out and make payments at the counter you may decide you do not want some of the items, you just leave them at the counter and pay for the rest.

An online merchant account will have a similar ‘shopping cart’ you can use while browsing for goods online. You add the items to the shopping cart by clicking on an ‘Add to Cart” button. Then you can delete items from the cart if you want to.

As you proceed with your online shopping at the portal the ‘shopping cart’ software will automatically add up the amount you have to pay, this way you can keep a track of your budget.

When you are done, you must choose to pay for the goods in the shopping cart. This is a payment link on the portal that when clicked will take you to the payment gateway.

This gateway will offer you many payment choices such as, paying by credit card, online bank transfer, debit card or some other online payment processor such as PayPal etc.

When you choose one of these the online merchant payment software will guide you through the entire process and then returns you to the portal from where you can download the goods you have bought or the portal will issue you a receipt and mail the physical goods to your address.