ZippyCart: Ecommerce Software Reviewed

Shopping Cart Reviews: 3dcart

• Sell on Facebook
• Mobile Optimized Storefront for mCommerce
• Easy to Customize & Setup - No Code Knowledge Required
• Search Engine Friendly

3dcart provides one of the best ecommerce software solutions in the industry, with an innovative and thorough feature set that helps merchants of any caliber find success selling online. 3dcart recently released 3dcart 3.2, which takes this ecommerce solution to the next level by providing both social commerce and mobile commerce tools for every package level. 3dcart has 5 different packages which vary based on bandwidth and server storage, but all include the same feature set which ensures that all merchants have the same tools at their disposal. Learn what makes 3dcart stand out from the rest by reading the detailed 3dcart review below.

3dcart Review: Shopping Cart Report Card

Shopping Cart Feature	ZippyCart Rating Out of 5
Customer Service
Level of Customization
Search Engine Friendliness
Ease of Setup
Range of Tools Available
Ease of Use for Merchant
Ease of Use for Customer
Final Shopping Cart Score	ZippyScore: 4.5 Out of 5!

3dcart Review: Expert Shopping Cart Review

Infomart 2000 has just released 3dcart 3.2, which is the newest update to their extremely popular and merchant friendly ecommerce software solution. The additional features in the new 3dcart 3.2 update have more merchants moving away from their existing ecommerce solution, in favor of 3dcart. Not only does 3dcart typically have more features than most other leading ecommerce solutions, but often it also has lower pricing on their monthly ecommerce packages than others with comparable or even less features. No matter what your ecommerce needs happen to be as an online merchant, 3dcart should be able to accommodate you with a package scaled to meet them. If you want to test drive 3dcart now, you can head over to the site and start a no strings attached 15 day FREE trial, which does not require a credit card. Merchants who choose to use 3dcart should know that they get all of the same great features regardless of the hosting package they choose to go with. Below we will walk you through the new and improved 3dcart ecommerce solution, and highlight a number of the great features and tools that have been added in the 3.2 release.

3dcart Admin Interface & Setup

The first thing you notice about 3dcart when you jump into the interface, is how simple the flow is to get started with setting up your ecommerce site and adding in products. First you jump into the designing the store, where you can pick among the many quality templates which 3dcart offers up for their merchants. Within the design mode, you will get to work with the design editor toolbar (new in 3dcart 3.2), which makes it very easy to customize your 3dcart powered ecommerce store. While other ecommerce solutions provide a quick edit design mode as well, none are as intuitive and robust as 3dcart's design editor toolbar. Many offer just 3 or 4 tools to edit and tweak your online store, while 3dcart provides a great deal of options to change your storefront design and content right before your eyes. You can adjust the template, screen width, display options, and even use their slick drag and drop editing tool. This allows for a completely custom online store, without having to know how to program any HTML or CSS. However you can go into advanced editing modes, where you can modify the HTML and CSS, so you can achieve an even more unique look to your ecommerce store.

Once the design of an ecommerce store looks good, merchants can then move on in the set up process to add and edit the products they have. This process is straightforward, as the merchant just needs to hit the "Add New" button and then follow the step by step process to add an image and fill in all of the details of that particular product. Once products are created in the system, the next step is to adjust store settings as needed to get everything set up how you like. This includes a variety of options involving products, checkout, top sellers, and your inventory. The next quick step is to build in categories, which will make it easier to modify and tweak your online store, as the bulk of your products will now be able to live under a certain product category. If your switching ecommerce solutions, this setup process is a breeze as you can bulk upload products and categories or do smaller batch product and category imports.

3dcart Search Engine Optimization & Marketing Tools

SEO is a big buzz word in the ecommerce industry, and with great reason. Without proper Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it is unlikely that your storefront will even rank in search engines like Google, which will make it hard to get the customers you need to run a successful online business. Luckily, 3dcart has this taken care of in more ways than one. Merchants have access to edit all of their meta and title tags, create search engine friendly URLs, and add keyword rich content to their online store by creating surrounding HTML pages and HTML product and category content.

While SEO is a buzz word, it is quickly being trumped by its sister medium: SMO, which stands for Social Media Optimization. This means that you are marketing your online store through a variety of social mediums like Facebook and Twitter. While anyone can do this on their own, having all of the SMO tools at your disposal in your ecommerce solution is a huge plus, because it makes things far easier to manage and lets you focus on selling. Because 3dcart knows that SMO is an important aspect of any good marketing campaign, they have included a great deal of new social commerce features in their ecommerce solution. The first new social commerce feature in 3dcart 3.2 is a blog, which is now baked into the admin panel so you can add articles and control all of the settings. This allows you to communicate better with customers and promote your social media presence, as well as discounts and sales which may be running for your ecommerce store. Next you have the ability to make your site more social by adding Facebook Like Buttons or the AddThis social bookmarking button throughout your store. 3dcart also offers you a social commerce widget which you can use at places like your blog, MySpace, or Facebook. If you are big on Twitter and Facebook then the last two features added in 3dcart 3.2 will be sure to impress you and make life much easier. Now merchants can use 3dcart to create their own Facebook Store, which can then live on their Facebook fan page where everyone can browse and shop for products. This is a very unique social commerce feature which very few ecommerce software solution providers offer. Lastly you can control your status updates to Twitter and Facebook, all from within the admin panel. Therefore simplifying your life, because 3dcart has streamlined the process of running an ecommerce store.

Beyond SEO and SMO, 3dcart also provides the more traditional marketing features that are standard in most ecommerce solutions. These include newsletters, email mailing lists, coupon and discount codes, gift certificates, customer groups and accounts, wish lists, affiliate advertising tools, and more.

3dcart Mobile Commerce

Whether you're an iPhone junkie or not, the simple truth is that the world of smart phones is here and will continue to grow. More and more consumers are using their smart phones to shop online, which has created a new form of selling called mobile commerce or mcommerce for short. With hundreds of thousands of mobile apps available to the world, consumers have been trained to compare products and shop for their favorite merchandise with ease on their mobile phone. If your storefront is the same from a smart phone as it is online, then users might have trouble navigating through it with such a small screen. This is where a mobile optimized storefront comes in and 3dcart is one of the first ecommerce platforms out there to provide this feature with their all-in-one ecommerce solution. Now any merchant using 3dcart can also have a mobile optimized storefront and make mcommerce sales in a matter of minutes. Like all other 3dcart features, this comes as part of their basic feature set, which sets them apart from almost all ecommerce solutions on the market. Merchants can also access their 3dcart admin panel from their iPhone and other mobile devices via the 3dm application. This combined with a fully functional mobile optimized storefront will ensure that your online store is ready for the growing future of mcommerce.

3dcart Payments, Shipping, & Order Processing

Now that most of your ecommerce store is set up, there are only a couple major steps left to get the basic store live online. The first of which is to take care of the the online payment methods which you plan to offer at your ecommerce store. This includes your merchant account, PayPal account, and Google Checkout account. 3dcart is a PCI Compliant ecommerce solution, which means that you can easily take credit card orders through your merchant account without being charged a penalty from Visa.

Once you have setup your payment options, you can configure your shipping methods for all carriers, including USPS, UPS, DHL, FedEx, and Canadian Post. This direct integration makes real time shipping rates available for your customers as well as order tracking and printable shipping labels. You can setup shipping and tax rules by location as well. These are the core steps needed to get the basic store live online, and all of this can be done for most ecommerce merchants in just a few hours.

When your ecommerce store is live and selling, you will be able to take advantage of the advanced reporting to get the statistics needed to know what is going on with your orders, products, and customers. All reports are easy to access and even easier to comprehend as they are graphically displayed. Reports can also be exported directly to Excel or printed to share with coworkers or analyze further. You can also tap into a variety of plug-ins which 3dcart makes available, which cover areas like fulfillment, order management, shipping, security/privacy, and statistics.

3dcart Review: Final Conclusions

All in all, the new and improved 3dcart 3.2 release covers all the bases for as little as $19.99 per month. 3dcart has been a popular ecommerce solution for years, but it is clear that with the latest improvements, it will maintain its stronghold and gain many more customers. Merchants in need of a robust ecommerce solution at a low monthly cost should take advantage of all the features that 3dcart 3.2 has to offer so that they can remain competitive and have all the tools needed to manage their online store to success!