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You have just hung out your electronic shingle for a new online retail outlet. You have already considered the basic structure of your store, and know that you need a good ecommerce shopping cart to encourage business. There are many shopping cart solutions available to Internet stores, and they are even more important than physical carts are for brick-and-mortar retailers. Thus, you need to do your research and take care to pick a cart with the features your customers need.

Aware of these factors, you have prepared a checklist of features you want for your shopping cart. But go over the checklist again from the viewpoint of customer service. Your business can grow if you get not only new customers but also repeat business from existing customers. To have your customers keep buying from you, can your shopping cart software help? Yes, it can, by providing additional services to them.

When an existing customer enters your online store, do you provide an option for him to see his previous purchases? If the shopping cart displays his buying history, it certainly makes shopping easier for the customer in selecting his purchases and more importantly, reminding of some items he would like to buy but has forgotten now.

Does the shopping cart gives an option to display the customer's wish list? He might have prepared a list of products he dreams of buying, which if displayed during his subsequent visits may help him make up his mind. The cart can also display the products he showed interest in but did not put them into the cart during earlier visits. Last but not least, does it display a 'Thank You' note when he checks out?

We all love bargains. It is in the human nature to get more for less. If you happen to have a discount sales on products the customer had bought before, he would certainly like to know about your special offers and your sales will also increase. For these additional services, you just have to visualize yourself as the seller in a 'brick-and-mortar' store, attending to a regular client. Would you not point out to him about discounts or new models available now of products he usually buyed?

Good shopping cart software should help you keep in touch with your customers outside of your website. Transaction details should be sent for information and for customer's record purposes by the means of a confirmatory email. Also, you may wish to send e-newsletters announcing new products, festival or clearance sale, special or combo offers.

One more feature to take into account, especially if you sell niche products, is to join hands with other businesses that are complimentary to your line of trade. For example, if you are selling paper flowers online, you can contact vendors of flower vases, ornamental tables or even origami sites and arrange to mutually display each other's carts on the websites. It is advisable to look at customer service also when deciding on the shopping cart software.