Ecommerce: Custom Shopping Cart vs. Paypal

Cost
One of the main deciding factors between using Paypal and a Custom Shopping Cart is going to be the number of items for sale. With few items, it is more economical to simply use Paypal (they charge a small fee per transaction, and setup is free). A shopping cart will require the purchase of the cart engine ($299-$???) and an SSL certificate ($149) which must be renewed yearly.

Management
The advantage with a shopping cart is that if you have lots of items it can (literally) manage those easier, were-as using Paypal (each item by hand) would be tedious and inefficient. When we create an online store for a client we ask, "do you want to manage your products, pricing, shipping, discounts, inventory, image posting, and most importantly, how many products will you ultimately be selling?" These basics pieces of info are absolutely vital to developing a proper online shopping cart experience.

Look
A shopping cart is typically more advantageous because it's easier to keep a consistent graphic look by designing it to look like the parent website; thus, it looks more professional. However, there is a lot of time spent on the front-end doing the custom styling to match the parent website. When using Paypal, the user clicks a button which will redirect the user to a Paypal purchase window (leaving the parent website) where they will select the amount of the product they want, and proceed with checking out. Yet, a shopping cart is self-contained in that all the information and confirmations are handled within the parent website.

Examples
For a visual, we refer you to the Murfreesboro Symphony Orchestra and Secure Product Sales (MSO uses Paypal, and SPS uses a custom Shopping cart).
SPS: http://www.secureproductsales.com/
MSO: http://www.murfreesborosymphony.com/tickets/

Happy Online Shopping!
—Josh Morrison, Senior Web Designer, Navigation Advertising

Stay the Course

With the myriad of tactical options available to promote products today, and more options appearing almost daily, it is hard to know what will and will not be effective. That's why we spend a considerable amount of time developing a strategy to plan out who we're reaching for, the tactics that need to be utilized, why each tactic is the best use of our client's dollar and how we tweak the message so it all fits together. Like a puzzle, the individual components may not fit our needs, but as you add the pieces together you find that the solution is in the symbiosis of those tactics.

Take for example Home Buyer University, an offering of Ole South Properties, Tennessee's largest independent home builder. A cooperative print, direct mail and email campaign brought nearly 70 Murfreesboro home buyers to this free class on preparing to buy your first home. Ten attended the first class and the second was cancelled due to inclement weather, but only then did the fourth component of the strategy come into play: word of mouth. Navigation started the buzz with marketing and allowed the chatter to reverberate through the community. Our follow up advertising served as reinforcement to entice those who had "heard" of the class to act and sign up. By the third and fourth class, participants filled the presentation until it was standing room only.

So successful, the four class "semester" has been extended to every six weeks throughout 2008, and being offered to a wider geography of potential home buyers.

This success story is one of many that can be attributed to smart planning, consistent messaging and repetition. And once again it proves that mature brands who are willing to stay the course and continue to promote during slow economic times will prevail with consumers when they reengage in commerce.

Welcome!

Welcome to our first official blog entry. One of the greatest tasks is to make these entries not sound like press releases. After developing thousands of promotional tasks for clients over the past 14 years we tend to think in a certain way, but we'll do our best to just communicate about our industry, community, families, experiences and projects. We enjoy our position as Murfreesboro and Rutheford County's premiere advertising and marketing company. We look forward to serving our community by helping our client's put their "best foot forward" through effective advertising, marketing and public relations. We understand that when businesses and individuals are successful they have the funds necessary to pay employees, provide for their families, eat at Toots, or buy a home from Ole South Properties. This blog will provide interesting information about the world of advertising, marketing, public relations, website development, print design and video production. At Navigation Advertising we practice The Art of Persuasion. http://www.navigationadvertising.com