Welcome to the headache of eCommerce. Since starting my business I have been beating my head against the wall searching for a free shopping cart option for my blog. When starting up a small business such as mine, I'm looking for the most cost effective option as possible. While there are many options available I decided to start with comparing Square Up Market and Miiduu Shopping Cart. Keep in mind that this comparison is against free options only.
1. Secure payment processing and fees
This can be compared two different ways depending on your angle here. If you are looking for a more established company for your payment processing needs you may say that Miiduu wins this battle. Miiduu offers payment processing from Paypal to Western Union. There are many options but as your know even these well established options have there issues. This means your processing fees, as well as reciept of funds, may vary depending on which processor your choose to use.
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While Square Up is a new up and coming payment processor, when you consider the reviews of the vender community, Square may win this battle. I, myself, have been using the Register App for payment processing on the go, and have not experienced any problems in over three years. My payments taken via credit cards are deposited to my link bank account the next business day without fail. Accept credit card payments and run your business anywhere it takes you
with Square Register. Process Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American
Express, pay just 2.75% per swipe, and access your funds in 1-2 business
days. No monthly fees, commitments, or surprises.
For the most part, I would say this is a tie.
2. Ease of listing products
I have to say that Square Market wins this hands down. Not only is the website very user friendly, you can set up product listings on the go via the Register Mobile App. I found it only took a matter of a few seconds to set up a listing via the Register app seamless and simple. Listing can be set up complete with picture and pricing. No need to adjust photos, just post and go. You can then sale your items on the go as well using the swipe dongle on your mobile device. Bonus, you can list as many products as you like, no limitations.
The only disadvantage of this option is you cannot enter complete descriptions, however you can immediately post the items to your cart. Even with this minor disadvantage I found the website simple and easy to enter product descriptions. The biggest disadvantage of Square is that they do not offer any SEO solutions with their cart. We'll get into that later.
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Miiduu, while still user friendly to a point, requires an extra step to complete your listing. First you need to adjust the size of your photos to under 2MB prior to uploading to the site. If you are not familiar with photo editing this may be a task just to get your product listed. Miiduu offers categories for your product, just as Square does, however they also offer sub-categories. However, I'm not sure how effective this can be seeing how you can only list 15 items for free. After which you will need to upgrade to a paid membership to list more items. This was a big no-no for me.
3. Appearance
There really is no comparison here. Miiduu offers several templates to choose from to create a shopping experience catered to your style and presentation.
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Square Market which does not give an option of a different template. While it does offer customization and that makes for a nice site, it does have a plain feel to it.
4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Again there is no comparison here. Miiduu does ofter some SEO editing, such as keywords and Google Analytics. However, more SEO options are available with a membership or with the installation of applications.
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Square Market which does not offer any SEO editing at all. I have emailed them in regards to the importance of these measure and was told they are working on this and hopes to implement it in the future.
5. Website Integration
Last but not least, how to apply all of this to your website. Square Market again makes this step so simple. Just copy the embed code and apply to your website. Your full shopping cart is then embedded to your site in one easy step. Your visitor can shop just like any other ecommerce site. Complete with shopping cart updating without leaving the sites page. You can see how it appears here on my blog.
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Miiduu does not have this option that I have found. The only embed codes I have been able to find is on the individual product. Which for me means I need to edit another page, even after setting everything up. Which could mean even more hours of setting up my site. Due to this, I have yet to test this method to see if this option is fully customer friendly. It can link up to your Facebook fan page by placing a shop tab on your Facebook page. However, once the item is clicked on, your customer will be redirected to your Miiduu store, so I cannot consider this much of a bonus.
And the winner is....
Overall, when you consider the set up time and ease of use for the customer, I have to say that Square Market wins for me. I need the most of my time for hand making my soaps and bath bombs. I don't have time to play around with shopping cart that will not draw any more traffic even with the little seo it offers. Also with my business being so mobile, Square kills two birds with one stone when I attend vender events. Square is proving to be the well rounded payment processor I hoped it would be.
If you know of other shopping cart options that is this easy to use? Please let me know in the comments below.
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