Shopping Cart Development and Integration

The eCommerce shopping cart is a remarkably simple concept, but there are many nuances that make it very powerful when used on top B2B eCommerce platforms. Fortunately, shopping cart integration is very flexible and offers many options. For instance, we often have clients who want multiple carts and multiple cart types. (They may want to have a cart with sales orders or orders, traditional order items, sales order line items, and/or a cart that’s split out by container or grouping of items.) This is why Clarity offers split shipping and split payment, as well as the ability to visually represent some of these different kinds of item organization.

These are all things that we need to be able to be flexible about while still applying the expected functionality representing an image of the product, possibly with a roll-over to zoom in or see some form of reference to confirm what the item is and ability to click on an item in the cart and see its product details page.

Of course, it’s important to be able to customize the information that's in this default table view that shows the particular title, as well as price and possibly the location where the item is being purchased or picked up. Similarly, it's very important to be able to show any discount sales, customer-specific pricing, quantity, break pricing, price rules, etc.

Shopping carts also handle freight and shipping estimates, getting customer input to be able to get a location so that we can provide that estimate. They also have to consider if there are multiple locations items are being sent to or if there's a certain type of shipping that doesn't have an API for us to get quotes against. Fortunately, Clarity offers APIs that cover nearly every shipping out there, options that go far beyond the typical DHL, USPS, FedEx, and UPS integration.  

The cart is also where you’ll find price changes like coupons, discounts, or gift cards. These can be applied based on customer status or automatically due to a promotion. Sometimes a customer will have a sales team member who applies a discount for them, which necessitates additional sales portal access for client-facing staff. And then similarly we can set up a shopping cart so that a link is sent that sends them to their shopping cart with the items already added by service or support.  

Additionally, there could be a promotion for a particular category of product as well as the ability to auto-apply discounts. Automatic free shipping at a certain price point is also a key feature, as are handling fee charges for oversized or heavy items. We need to show these things in the cart so that the customer can verify that they got the discount that was promised. They also need to be prompted if a promotion will likely run out by the next time they’re on the site. This can seriously reduce abandoned carts. 

Let’s dig into each of these shopping cart aspects a little deeper and find out how each can offer a unique eCommerce solution. 

Obviously, one of the most important aspects of shopping cart development is the flexibility to handle any shipping problems for every kind of eCommerce business model. Here are a few of the most common hurtles that a good shopping cart must surmount. 

Item-Specific Shipping Restrictions 

No matter the eCommerce business model you employ — C2C, B2C, or B2B platform — the shopping cart is going to have to be smart enough to deal with materials that various shippers deem hazardous. If one carrier refuses to ship a specific product because of what it’s made of, then the customer needs to know that they might have to choose a different shipping option. 

Lithium batteries are one of the most common products that require special shipping services. In most cases, these batteries can’t be shipped on a plane. A customer who wants overnight delivery of a product containing such a battery should be informed that overnighting won’t be possible...unless you have a warehouse that’s close enough to deliver without the need for air travel. 

Food is another item that has to be carefully considered when looking at shopping cart development. Shipping time has to be taken into consideration, of course. But will a handling fee be added if the item requires a special cooler or dry ice? When it comes to many perishables, the option to choose a slower shipping method should probably be removed as an option. 

Location-Specific Shipping 

Some items an eCommerce business offers might not be legal to purchase or own in a particular state or country. Prescription drugs are a prime example, and excellent shopping cart development can include IP geolocation software to check the location of a potential customer to see if it’s okay to ship to them. Of course, IP addresses can be falsified, so they can’t be the only verification. But it’s vitally important to have built-in logic workflows within the cart itself, because it's very helpful from a customer experience perspective to let them know as soon as possible during the workflow that they may not be able to purchase the item based on their IP address. They may choose to go back and choose a different item. If they decide to go ahead with the purchase, the shipping address will have the final say on if an item can be shipped. 

Shipping Container Fill-Ups 

One of the most common add-ons Clarity provides are visual representations of their shipping package. This option shows a visual image of the box being filled up so that the customer knows just how much more they can ship without increasing the price. You may be familiar with this type of changing image on Amazon’s grocery service; we do the same exact thing with containers for intermodal shipping. For instance, we have the ability to show a pallet or shipping container as it’s filling up, which can entice a customer to keep buying until the container is full. Of course, all of this has to work seamlessly with every product detail page so that proper weights and dimensions are relayed. 

Analytics

Clarity Ventures offers analytics and tracking that are very advanced so that we can determine what items a visitor adds to their cart, which items they remove, and which items they abandon. This data can be analyzed to see if more than one customer is giving up on a product at the same time; could something be improved to convince them to purchase? Of course, this also provides data so that you can contact the potential customer later and remind them of abandoned carts, or ask them if they’re still interested in a particular item. These reminders can also include coupon codes to use if they decide to return to their cart and purchase.

Certain tracers can also be put in place on the eCommerce website to see who is coming to their site and adding items, even if the users aren't logged in. A business could even contact the potential customer directly — usually via email for B2C eCommerce, but B2B eCommerce might decide to give the potential customer a call directly. 

Online shopping carts must also be flexible in order to satisfy a customer’s wants and needs. Here are a few of the most common order splits and omnichannel shipping options. 

• Multi-warehouse – In nearly every case, customers want the items they ordered as quickly as possible. If you have multiple warehouses, you’ll want to make sure that the shopping cart will choose the one nearest the customer so that they’ll get it quickly. At the same time, a shopping cart has to be smart enough to ship additional inventory from a second warehouse if the first one runs out. 
• Multi-destination – Some customers will want to order items on a single invoice and have those items shipped to multiple locations. The cart should be able to handle this with no problem, and, most importantly, make it an easy process for the customer. 
• Pickup – If a customer is close enough to one of your physical locations, whether that’s a store or a warehouse, the shopping cart must take an omnichannel approach if you allow in-person pickup. 

Clarity shopping carts automatically update the cart whenever a user chooses a different language or a different currency. Carts can immediately update the labels and then translate content that's available within the products. We can also add software to the eCommerce framework to estimate customs and duties based on the API integrations that are available as well as necessary tax information. 

Work with Clarity

Clarity’s shopping cart offerings present a very simple and clean interface, but they also have the advanced capabilities that make sense for a particular business without being overwhelmed during the process. 

Clarity has performed extensive shopping cart development for clients across the world, and we will deliver a top-tier experience for you as well. Do you need shopping cart integration for your NetSuite or QuickBooks shopping cart? We can handle those, as well as any others on the market. 

We’d love to show you what we can do. Get in touch today to learn more about our shopping cart development.