The era for first generation of shopping carts is almost over. Where basic purpose for programmers was to design a database solution for netpreneur to deploy his e-business plan with ease. Shopping carts existed to automate most of tasks for this netpreneur while providing a fast and friendly transaction-processing interface to buyers. However lack of advertising funds and conversion ratio analysis of visitors from search engines have shifted emphasis from business automation to 'SEO friendliness' of shopping cart itself. "Inquiries for a custom installation of search engine friendly cart have almost tripled from last year" says Abid Malik, CEO of ebanyan.com, a shopping cart solution provider.

Developers have also addressed this need by coming up with various versions of shopping cart solutions that build search engine optimized catalog of products. Some with solid features and some with just marketing hype. This article will help you differentiate two.

The unfriendliest feature of a typical shopping cart is its url structure. Most of pages are generated on fly through a database query. The url's resulting from these queries have two basic problems. Firstly very popular '?' mystery. Secondly, less talked about loss of heirarchy in shopping cart's catalog.

Not long time ago, I read a comment of a well-known industry observer, where he stated that companies that are not selling through Internet by 2007 will probably become extinct. As dramatic as it might feel, although exaggerated, but there are some truths in it.

Consider this: Although diminishing due to bad economy, average growth of e-commerce is around 25 % per year. 81% of small businesses that have an online presence during last year’s holiday season reached new customers, leading to an increase in sales and profitability according to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive. Thirty percent of small businesses with a web presence and fewer than 20 employees now generate more than 25% of their revenue online claims Gartner research.

If this does not convince you to take your business online, below I pointed out 10 more reasons why you should start doing business online right now.

1. New economy Internet has created a new economy, which by its explosive growth and sheer size already changed our perception of traditional way of doing business. Companies like Amazon and Ebay have successfully created domination on areas, where just few years ago traditional brick-and-mortar companies were kings. However, in order to be successful on net, you don’t have to be a giant like them. Many small and mid-size companies managed to build online businesses quite profitably. In fact, studies show small and mid-size companies will be main growth force of e-commerce in coming years.

2. Internet is a perfect venue for business In order to make a sale you need visitors to come to your shop. On Internet, your shop could be only a click away from your prospective customers. With proper marketing your Internet storefront can have more buyers than you ever can get in a brick and mortar shop. 3. Company’s image Whether you sell products or services online or not, in today’s world you have to have a corporate presence on Internet. Otherwise, as you must have noticed that people simply don’t take your business seriously if you tell them that your company does not have a website. A nice corporate site definitely increases image of a company especially if it has great product or service related content to go with.

4. Provide better customer support

Customer accusation and retention is one of key factors of business value chain. Thanks to Internet technology, business can provide customer support more effectively. This means better customer satisfaction and increase of profitability.