Take same scenario online and imagine you have same simple question to ask someone. Now what? You most likely just abandon shopping cart and leave store because you can't imagine spending that amount of money without knowing whether your sweetie will break out in hives because white gold allergy affects her wrists so badly.

Abandonment of shopping carts online is blamed on everything from fear of using credit cards on web to privacy concerns.

My theory is as follows: If you have any questions about any product or service you are purchasing online, ecommerce sites expect you to either look up answer in their FAQ's (frequently asked questions page) or just search out their 800 number from site somewhere and call them yourself to find out. This can be a ridiculous process on some sites as they simply don't want to be bothered with expensive phone calls and leave their number off of shopping cart pages.

They don't want to devote customer service reps to those fickle shoppers that abandon online shopping carts at rates as high as 90% at some ecommerce sites. I'd propose that most online shoppers abandon those carts because they need to know something that could never be considered for those FAQ pages like term of product guarantees or how long battery life is. If there were a simple way to have your questions answered, I'd like to suggest that those shopping carts would rarely ever be abandoned.

I've found solution and can't believe brilliance of idea behind answer to this thorny question. Customer clicks a button labled "CallButton" and gets a pop-up screen asking for their name and phone number so a representative can call them at their convenience to answer any questions and/or concerns!

So how do you add a shopping cart to your site? There are three different options you can choose from.

1) Link out to a third-party service (hosted)

2) Buy your own software and do it yourself

3) Download a script and configure it to your needs

Let's examine each option separately and pros and cons involved with each:

THIRD PARTY/HOSTED CARTS

Third party cart services are easy to set up; you can be running in a matter of hours. They require no software to buy or install, but usually charge a monthly fee. Most include a secured server and a merchant account option, if you don't have your own. This is a relatively inexpensive solution for small businesses.

1) VCart.com: http://www.vcart.com

Free to try for 30 days then you pay 90.00 for 3 months, 150.00 for 6 months or 1 year for 249.00. Supports 1 to 10,000 products- No CGI to configure and you can use your existing merchant account.

2) FreeMerchant: http://www.FreeMerchant.com

Prices range from 19.99 to 40.00 per month with a 30 day free trial. Build your store using their web based interface.

3) Yahoo Store: http://store.yahoo.com

You can't go wrong with Yahoo's expert reputation. Easy to build your store on their servers using a point and click interface. You can even upload your own images. Cost for up to 100 items is only 100.00 a month. You can also use your existing merchant account or apply for one through them.

4) Marketers Choice: http://gta-tech.com