Small Business Blog

Payvment is quietly attempting to revolutionize online shopping with a new take on the shopping cart. The Web-based cart is pitched on two main features: easy installation and the ability to reduce cart abandonment. Those two features alone can snag the attention of any online retailer, but Payvment still has much work to do before it’s ready to compete globally.

The good

Cost. The Payvment cart is free to use. While there are other free shopping cart scripts out there, none install with a single snippet of code. This aspect of the Payvment solution is likely to appeal to smaller online merchants who don’t have an in-house or on-call webmaster.

Facebook integration. Payvment makes a Facebook storefront app, which can be integrated with its Web-based shopping cart. With the Facebook app, merchants can quickly install a storefront on their Facebook page; this provides maximum visibility for the products and an easy shopping experience for potential customers. The Facebook storefront can also be used on a standalone basis, which may appeal to online retailers who already have another cart system installed on their site.

Design-friendly. The cart can be installed to an existing Web site without making major changes to the site’s design. Visually speaking, the primary changes would be the addition of “add to cart” buttons next to the products. The shopping cart itself remains hidden until a customer clicks on an “add to cart” button; at that point, a pop-up appears to show the customer what items are in the cart. The customer can click a check-out button on the pop-up whenever he’s ready to complete the transaction. (continue reading…)