2011 3dcart Review

• Sell on Facebook
• Mobile Optimized Storefront for mCommerce
• Easy to Customize & Setup - No Code Knowledge Required
• Search Engine Friendly

3dcart provides one of the best ecommerce software solutions in the industry, with an innovative and thorough feature set that helps merchants of any caliber find success selling online. In the spring of 2010, 3dcart released 3dcart 3.2, which takes this ecommerce solution to the next level by providing both social commerce and mobile commerce tools for every package level. 3dcart has 5 different packages which vary based on bandwidth and server storage, but all include the same feature set which ensures that all merchants have the same tools at their disposal. Learn what makes 3dcart stand out from the rest by reading the detailed 3dcart review below.

2011 3dcart Review: Shopping Cart Report Card

Shopping Cart Feature	ZippyScore (out of 5.00)	Shopping Cart Feature	ZippyScore (out of 5.00)
Overall Value (15%)	4.51	Customer Service (15%)	4.35
Level of Customization (15%)	4.42	Ease of Use (15%)	4.61
Search Engine Friendliness (10%)	4.38	Range of Tools Available (10%)	4.51
Depth of Reporting Tools (5%)	4.41	Social Media / Social Commerce Integration (5%)	4.62
Mobile Commerce Integration (5%)	4.41	Free Trial Features (5%)	4.50

Overall ZippyScore: 4.47 out of 5.00

2011 3dcart Review: Expert Shopping Cart Review

Infomart 2000 had some major updates in 2010 for 3dcart, which is their extremely popular and merchant friendly ecommerce software solution. The additional features now included in this hosted shopping cart have more merchants moving away from their existing ecommerce solution, in favor of 3dcart. New features include drag and drop design mode, a blogging tool that lets merchants put a blog on their online store, social media tools, and more. This abundance of tools has earned 3dcart the number 2 position on ZippyCart's top 10 list of ecommerce solutions for 2011. This means that they are a Platinum Winner on ZippyCart, in addition to winning a number of Zippys (yearly awards honoring excellence in a specific ecommerce niche). Zippys won by 3dcart include:

1. Best Social Media Tools: First Place
2. Most Innovative: Third Place
3. Most Extensive Storefront Tools: Third Place
4. Best Customer Service: Second Place
5. Best Overall Marketing Tools: Third Place

Not only does 3dcart typically have more features than most other leading ecommerce solutions, but often it also has lower pricing on their monthly ecommerce packages than others with comparable or even less features. No matter what your ecommerce needs happen to be as an online merchant, 3dcart should be able to accommodate you with a package scaled to meet them. If you want to test drive 3dcart now, you can head over to the site and start a no strings attached 15 day FREE trial, which does not require a credit card. Merchants who choose to use 3dcart should know that they get all of the same great features regardless of the hosting package they choose to go with. This is a plus for merchants, as they do not have to worry about paying extra money to 3dcart just to get certain features. Below we will walk you through the 3dcart ecommerce solution and all of the latest and greatest features and software improvements. However in 2011, 3dcart is sure to come out with another big release to ensure that their merchants have the best features and tools for their online store, so in many ways, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

3dcart Admin Interface & Setup

Like most hosted shopping carts, all store management takes place through an online administration panel that is accessible via any browser with a username and password of your choosing. The first thing you notice about 3dcart when you jump into the interface, is how simple the flow is to get started with setting up your ecommerce site and adding in products. You begin by designing your online store. In this section, you can pick among the many quality templates which 3dcart offers up for their merchants. Within the design mode, you will get to work with the design editor toolbar (this is one of the newer features in 3dcart), which makes it very easy to customize your 3dcart powered ecommerce store. While other ecommerce solutions provide a quick edit design mode as well, none seem to be as intuitive and robust as 3dcart's design editor toolbar. Many ecommerce solutions only offer 3 or 4 tools to edit and tweak your online store, while 3dcart provides a great deal of options to change your storefront design and content right before your eyes. You can easily adjust the template, screen width, display options, and even use their slick drag and drop editing tool. This allows for a merchant to create a completely custom online store, without having to know how to program any HTML or CSS. Therefore 3dcart makes a great ecommerce software solution for a first time merchant who wants to open up their own online store and start selling. Similarly, 3dcart is a great option for a seasoned merchant, who would rather focus their energies on selling and take less time setting up and designing their storefront. And of course, you do have the option of going into advanced editing modes, where you can modify the HTML and CSS, so you can achieve an even more unique look for your ecommerce store.

Once the design of your ecommerce store is complete, merchants can then move on in the set up process to add and edit the products they have. This process is straightforward, as the merchant just needs to hit the "Add New" button and then follow the step by step process to add an image and fill in all of the details of that particular product. Once products are created in the system, the next step is to adjust store settings as needed to get everything set up how you like. This includes a variety of options involving products, checkout, top sellers, and your inventory. The next quick step is to build in categories, which will make it easier to modify and tweak your online store, as the bulk of your products will now be able to live under a certain product category. If you plan on switching ecommerce solutions to come to 3dcart, then you will be happy to know that this setup process is a breeze as you can bulk upload products and categories or do smaller batch product and category imports.

3dcart Search Engine Optimization & Marketing Tools

SEO is a big buzz word in the ecommerce industry, and with great reason. Without proper Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it is unlikely that your storefront will even rank in search engines like Google, which will make it hard to get the customers you need to run a successful online business. Luckily, 3dcart has this taken care of in more ways than one. Merchants have access to edit all of their meta and title tags, create search engine friendly URLs, and add keyword rich content to their online store by creating surrounding HTML pages and HTML product and category content. 3dcart also includes a blogging platform for their merchants to setup and run an online blog. This allows merchants to continually infuse their online store with fresh and unique content, which search engines take into consideration when ranking a website. Overall, these SEO tools are a big help for those merchants who rely on SEO, and do not have big budgets to spend on PPC advertising to try and drive customer to their online store.

While SEO is a buzz word, it is quickly being trumped by its sister medium: SMO, which stands for Social Media Optimization. This means that you are marketing your online store through a variety of social mediums like Facebook and Twitter. While anyone can do this on their own, having all of the SMO tools at your disposal in your ecommerce solution is a huge plus, because it makes things far easier to manage and lets you focus on selling. 3dcart knows that SMO is an important aspect of any good marketing campaign, and this is why they have included a great deal of new social commerce features in their ecommerce solution. The first new social commerce feature that 3dcart released in 2010 was their blogging tool, which is now baked into the admin panel so you can add articles and control all of the settings. This allows you to communicate better with customers and promote your social media presence, as well as discounts and sales which may be running for your ecommerce store. Next you have the ability to make your site more social by adding Facebook Like Buttons or the AddThis social bookmarking button throughout your store. 3dcart also offers you a social commerce widget which you can use at places like your blog, MySpace, or Facebook. If you are big on Twitter and Facebook then the last two features offered with 3dcart will be sure to impress you and make life much easier. Now merchants can use 3dcart to create their own Facebook Store, which can then live on their Facebook fan page where everyone can browse and shop for products. This is a very unique social commerce feature which very few ecommerce software solution providers offer. Lastly you can control your status updates to Twitter and Facebook, all from within the admin panel. Therefore simplifying your life, because 3dcart has streamlined the process of running an ecommerce store, so you can spend more time on making it successful.

Beyond SEO and SMO, 3dcart also provides the more traditional marketing features that are standard in most ecommerce solutions. These include newsletters, email mailing lists, coupon and discount codes, gift certificates, customer groups and accounts, wish lists, affiliate advertising tools, and more. All of which will help merchants to create a well rounded marketing plan that will allow them to attract people to their online store, browse their products, and ultimately add an item to their shopping cart to make a purchase.

3dcart & Mobile Commerce

Whether you're an iPhone junkie or not, the simple truth is that the world of smart phones is here and will continue to grow. More and more consumers are using their smart phones to shop online, which has created a new form of selling called mobile commerce or mcommerce for short. With hundreds of thousands of mobile apps available to the world, consumers have been trained to compare products and shop for their favorite merchandise with ease on their mobile phone. If your storefront looks the same on a smart phone as it does online, then users might have trouble navigating through it with such a small screen. This is where a mobile optimized storefront comes in and 3dcart was one of the first ecommerce platforms out there to provide this feature with their all-in-one ecommerce solution. Now any merchant using 3dcart can also have a mobile optimized storefront and make mcommerce sales in a matter of minutes. This is a smart way to expand the reach of an online store, and attract customers who enjoy using their mobile phones to shop. Like all other 3dcart features, this comes as part of their basic feature set, which helps to set them apart from almost all ecommerce solutions on the market. Merchants can also access their 3dcart admin panel from their iPhone and other mobile devices via the 3dm application. This combined with a fully functional mobile optimized storefront will ensure that your online store is ready for the growing future of mcommerce.

In 2011, mobile commerce will continue to become more common, and merchants who use 3dcart will be able to position themselves to to take advantage of the growing popularity of mcommerce.

3dcart Payments, Shipping, & Order Processing

Once most of your ecommerce store is set up, there are only a couple major steps left to get the basic store live online. The first of which is to take care of the the online payment methods that you plan to offer at your online store. This includes your merchant account, PayPal account, and Google Checkout account. 3dcart is a PCI Compliant ecommerce solution, which means that you can easily take credit card orders through your merchant account without being charged a penalty from Visa.

Once you have setup your payment options, you can configure your shipping methods for all carriers, including USPS, UPS, DHL, FedEx, and Canadian Post. This direct integration makes real time shipping rates available for your customers as well as order tracking and printable shipping labels. You can setup shipping and tax rules by location as well. These are the core steps needed to get the basic store live online, and all of this can be done for most ecommerce merchants in just a few hours. However merchants can then come back and further refine things to ensure that everything is set up in an optimal way.

When your ecommerce store is live and you start selling, you will be able to take advantage of the advanced reporting, which will give you the statistics needed to know what is going on with your orders, products, and customers. All reports are easy to access and even easier to comprehend as they are graphically displayed. Reports can also be exported directly to Excel or printed to share with coworkers and analyze further. You can also tap into a variety of plug-ins that 3dcart makes available, which cover areas like fulfillment, order management, shipping, security/privacy, and statistics. Staying on top of all the metrics of your online store is critical to the continued success of any ecommerce business, as these metrics will allow you to constantly tweak and refine things so that you can increase your sales and hopefully profits.

3dcart Customer Support

Over the course of 2010, 3dcart put a lot of energy into improving their already solid customer support for their merchants. Customer support is very important to merchants who use hosted ecommerce solutions, as they like to know that they can get help if they have any issues with their online store. 3dcart offers their merchants U.S. based, in house, support 24/7/365, with merchants having the option to create a ticket, call in for help, or even chat with the 3dcart team live online. In addition 3dcart has a very active blog and a forum where they love to interact with their merchants, and you can even find some of the head honchos at 3dcart, like Gonzalo or Jimmy, jumping in to chat with merchants. Additionally 3dcart has active Facebook and Twitter accounts which are other mediums in which their merchants like to reach out and interact with them. When ZippyCart secret shopped 3dcart, we found a knowledgeable support staff that was able to quickly turnaround answers and assistance when requested. Overall merchants are quite pleased with the customer support that they receive from 3dcart, but if you want to experience it first hand, then test drive the solution with their 15 day FREE trial and chat with their customer support team.

3dcart Review: Final Conclusions

All in all, 3dcart and their recent updates to the ecommerce software solution allow merchants to have all their bases covered for as little as $19.99 per month. However they have a variety of different hosted ecommerce software packages available that can suit the needs of different types and sizes of merchants. They also tend to run various promotions throughout the year, so merchants should head over to 3dcart to see if there are any deals on the hosted ecommerce solution. 3dcart has been a popular top ranked ecommerce solution on ZippyCart for a few years, but it is clear that with the improvements from 2010 and those in the works for 2011, that it will maintain its stronghold and gain many more customers. Merchants in need of a robust ecommerce solution at a low monthly cost should take advantage of all the features that 3dcart has to offer so that they can remain competitive and have the tools needed to manage their online store to success! The best way to know for sure that 3dcart is the right ecommerce software for your needs is to test drive the solution with their 15 day FREE trial, which does not require a credit card.