Shopping cart or shopping basket is type of software, which is almost essential in electronic commerce. With the help of this software, internet users who are purchasing items online can select a list of products. This is called ‘adding items to the shopping cart’, in reference to physical shopping carts. Before finalizing the purchase, the software calculates the total price of all items including shipping, postage, package charges, and taxes. Shopping cart implementation is generally done through query strings or HTTP cookies. The shopping cart is installed on the website hosting server or the secure server which handles the information regarding ordering. Some shopping carts will simply the user to add an item, for example the PayPal shopping cart. However, most shopping carts come with features that will help an online merchant to manage his shopping website in all aspects. a database will hold all necessary data like- products, discounts, categories etc. the data will be accessed by the software in real-time.

There are two main types of shopping cart - Licensed software and hosted. Licensed shopping carts are downloaded from the internet and then installed on the server. Buyers pay a one-time fee. Since the buyer has a license, he can use the software on any server meeting requirements. Licensed applications can be edited and customized. Hosted shopping carts are not downloaded. It is used with the help of a hosted service provider. Generally, the user pays a monthly or annual fee to avail the service. It comes with limited customization but the vendor regularly keeps the software updated. Many software companies have come out with shopping cart software. It is important to go through the list of features before buying software whether licensed or hosted. Some of the key features are web administration, management of shipping charges, real-time access, payments, user-friendly web interface, reports of shopping cart, language support. Some additional features are as follows- Customer Support system, free software updates, templates for designing, product editor, pages for contents, Min cart feature.

As it is with any business, without people purchasing products or services, you will not be able to make money. However, the reality is not every visitor to your shopping cart online store will buy something.. To increase purchase you need to attract more traffic to your store. The most effective way to do that is employing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques. SEO is an internet marketing strategy. it is about optimizing your site so that it is placed in the search engine result pages of search engines like Google. . This can be done using relevant keywords in the site content, HTML title, Meta Description and Keywords. Another important way is building link that will lead to your website from article directories, blogs, social networking sites, etc. it is better to have as many links as possible. But to make sure get traffic from those links, internet users have to be attracted towards clicking the links. This can be achieved by placing good, quality content with the links. with the proper use of SEO, you can surely have a successful Shopping cart.