Best Shopping Cart – Which one?

Let me give you a piece of advice.

If you haven’t thought about it yet – you probably should.

It makes up around 50% of the enquiries we get each week. All tied to the same story.

You know what business you’re interested in getting into, if you aren’t in one already. You have some idea of the products you’re going to sell. You may even have some idea about your website design and may even have decided on a merchant account.

But what about all the “behind the scenes” technology that actually turns your raw ideas into a viable, efficient profit machine?

Here are a few paraphrased questions, versions of which we get weekly…

• What affiliate software should I be using?
• Can you recommend a shopping cart that works with x merchant account?
• How do I make the actual order form that gets the sale?
• Is there a way of storing all my customer’s details in a database so I can contact them again later?
• What is the safest way to make my ebook available for download to my customers, yet have it protected from those who haven’t paid?
• Is it possible to arrange to have a different commission level to what I give my normal affiliates as a way to reward and encourage my top referrers?

Having tried out all sorts of methods, companies and software to do the above, I’m glad to be able to tell you about the solution that is capable of doing all of the above quickly and easily, with no technical know-how necessary, and with just about any merchant account provider you choose – including our old favourites like 2CheckOut.

When I started out I used so many different pieces of software – affiliate tracking scripts, ebook delivery solutions, another to run my newsletter, yet another for emailing my affiliates to keep them up to date with the latest happenings on my site and marketing experiments, another for emailing a polite “thank you” email when a customer had made a purchase from my site, another for creating popup adverts to get more newsletter subscribers and so on.

I must have had a dozen different bits of software running behind the scenes to make my simple, ebook sales site work efficiently and professionally and just as importantly, to me at least, requiring as little hands-on contact as possible.

That way I could spend time growing my business rather than just running it.

If you spend your whole life just running your business you’ll never encounter the exponential growth possible.

And even if you aren’t interested in growth, I’d still rather be sitting at the beach than sat in my office behind a computer!

And remember that all this “behind the scenes” software was only to run one simple ebook sales site. Apart from the affiliate training section which had a number of pages to maximise my affiliates’ success, the rest fo the site comprised of about 5 pages. A sales page. A contact us page. A download page. An affiliate signup page. And a newsletter signup page. That’s it.

I shudder to think what it would have been like if I’d decided to set up a far more complex site selling multiple products!

Whilst I used some seriously good software, having tried out lots of alternatives there were two more problems I kept encountering…

Firstly, with so many essential pieces of software chugging along “under the bonnet”, getting them all working together smoothly to get the desired response was a nightmare at times. More than once I had to ditch a piece of software and search for an alternative because whilst it did it’s job admirably, it simply refused to work in combination with the other pieces of software running on my server.

Secondly, many of the most powerful and useful bits of “under the bonnet” software require one to modify the programming code specifically for your website, then upload it to your server.

That is to say, it is not “use straight out of the box” software – it’s more like you buy a general template that you then need to modify before use.

This usually requires technical savvy and I had to teach myself several computer languages, such as CGI, Perl, MySQL, PHP and JavaScript to a reasonable level of understanding to be able to make the necessary changes without which the software would have been useless.

I do not enjoy doing this sort of thing as I am not proficient in it – and CGI in particular still causes me headaches to this day!

As a result, I’m thoroughly relieved to be able to say that I’ve recently found, and tested, what seems to me to be the most complete, easy to use piece of “under the bonnet” software I’ve personally ever seen. Just as impressively, it manages to do everything we have mentioned so far – all built into one software package – and with no programming skills necessary (phew!).

As it is such a great piece of software that, no exaduration, all but the absolute biggest internet businesses would be wise to use, because it does just about everything you could possible want, and because it works with just about any credit card processing company, we spend quite a bit of time each week recommending it to people who email us.

I thought, therefore, I’d cover it here on the site at last, to save you some time.

Literally – all you need is a website hosting account, a merchant account and this software and you’ll be in business. It’s as simple as that.

So let’s take a proper look, so you can see why it’s going to be so helpful to you…

Firstly, check out our article about how to set up affiliate programs which you’ll find here. In it I discuss setting up an affiliate program, and mention how useful this software can be to you. Don’t worry – the link will open in another browser window so you won’t lose your place here.

Next, take a look at all the other features you’ll get:

• Built-in 1 or 2 tier affiliate software that can host unlimited affiliates, unlimited products and unlimited commission rates
• A digital product delivery system that provides a unique area for each customer to download your product as soon as they’ve paid, which automatically stops functioning after 24 hours to prevent product theft if the customer gives the website address to others
• Unlimited smart autoresponders to keep in contact with customers, leads, newsletter subscribers, affiliates, suppliers etc.
• Full ad-tracking facility to test and tweak your advertising and ensure you’re squuezing every last drop of profit out of your advertising budget
• Automatic creation of product order pages
• Built-in shopping cart should you sell more than one product
• Ability to upload a database of all your commissions owed to PayPal so you can instantly transfer the funds owed to your affiliates worldwide, eliminating the expensive and time intensive process of writing and posting checks to affiliates

In short I’m really excited about this software – and I hope you too are starting to see the power of it.

Here’s what one user, Lee Benson, had to say about the software:

“Believe me, after processing tens of thousands of orders online, I can safely say that selling products, recruiting affiliates and automating your Internet ventures doesn’t get any easier than using QPP!

To find out everything you need to know to make an informed decision, why not visit their site now.

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