985 – Switching Shopping Carts: Tom talks Modern Carts Part 1

SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

Tom Antion returns from a short break to kick off a three-part series on modern shopping cart systems. After his longtime provider (KickStartCart) shut down, he spent hundreds of hours evaluating 44 different shopping carts and ultimately chose Kartra as the best option. This episode focuses on essential features every modern shopping cart should have.
Key Points:
• No server installation required – Cloud-based, easy setup.
• Built-in email marketing – Broadcasts and autoresponders.
• Mobile responsive design – Pages look great on all devices.
• Affiliate management system – Allow others to promote your products.
• Page builder and funnel system – Includes templates and pre-built campaigns.
• Multi-site integration – Can connect to existing external websites.
• Coupons, tracking, split testing – Boosts sales and marketing effectiveness.
• Upsells, bumps, and recurring billing – Increases revenue and supports memberships.
• Online course and membership tools – No need for third-party platforms.
• Webinar hosting – Eliminates the cost of external tools like GoToWebinar.
• Media management – Secure hosting for videos, images, documents.
• Text broadcasting support – Requires an external SMS provider but very effective.
• AI-powered copywriting – Helps generate promotional content quickly.
• Squeeze page and thank-you page generators – Fast and professional page creation.
• Built-in help desks and calendars – Improves customer support and scheduling.
• Tagging and automation features – Allows behavior-based responses and cart abandonment recovery.
Resources Mentioned:
• Free shopping cart webinar: screwthecommute.com/kscswitch
• Free automation eBook
• Tom's mentor program: greatinternetmarketingtraining.com
• His accredited internet marketing school: IMTCVA.org
• Kartra link with trial and discount: screwthecommute.com/kartra

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Episode 985 – Modern Carts Part 1
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 985 of Screw the Commute podcast. Had to take a little hiatus because of the topic we're going to talk about this week, which is modern shopping carts. A lot of you know that after 24 years of representing one shopping cart with my private label KickStartCart, they decided to poop out and quit. So I've been scrambling hundreds of hours trying to get caught up to speed, evaluating other carts and all the things you should have in a modern shopping cart system. So that's what we're going to talk about in three parts this week. So part one is going to be a lot of the features you should have. Part two is going to be the automation things that should be included. And part three will be the money saving things that you can get rid of other paying for outside services if it's all integrated into one. And I'll just tell you up front that after evaluating 44 carts, I chose Kartra. If you want to get a free trial and a discount, you can go to screwthecommute.com/Kartra and sign up. But anyway, today we're going to talk about features. Now, before we get into that, make sure you get a copy of my automation book.

[00:01:43] It's free and check out my mentor program at greatinternetmarketingtraining.com. One more thing. If you're really into this and you think I either need a shopping cart or I really need to upgrade, or I'm not happy with the one I have, I have a whole webinar. It's free and you can sign up for it at screwthecommute.com/kscswitch. And you just click the access to this this giant training course I have and go to the webinar section and you can watch it. It's about an hour long, but it goes into depth and gives you lots of marketing tips and so forth. All right. So let's get into some of the features that I used, uh, as a critique of all these other shopping carts. And I wanted to get them in one cart that was reasonably priced. And that's one of the criteria. It had to be reasonably priced. Okay. So one of the first things is you should not have to install this on a server. A lot of these ones they give you for free only work on one website. And you have to be a total nutcase geek to, uh, to figure it out and put it, install it on a server and operate it. So that was a that knocked out like 6 or 7 of the carts that I looked at. Okay. It should have broadcast email and auto responders included.

[00:03:12] It has to all be integrated. It should be responsive. That means all the things it produces need to look good on cell phones, tablets, laptops, desktops. The whole bit should have an affiliate program so other people can sell your stuff for you, and you only pay them if you if if they make a sale. Uh, it should have a page builder. The modern ones have a page builder. And I'll go into that more in depth on part three when I say the things you can save money on. So page builder included is a great thing. Has a funnel system in it. You know, that's another thing that you have to buy uh, usually externally. So that's included in this kind of stuff has over. Uh, well, I'm talking about Kartra, but your thing should have page templates like Kartra has over 500 page templates that they they provide you. So all you have to do is with, I don't know, the minimum of training like 15 minutes. You can be making gorgeous pages. And another criteria was that you you weren't stuck with using just the stuff in the cart, like a lot of you and myself included, has loads and loads of other websites, so it had to be able to connect to all these other websites so you don't have to lose all the work you've done building websites outside, although you can, and a good one of these good carts, you can build a whole website right in the cart, right? So so very versatile there.

[00:04:48] It should have coupons. So people love a sale. So you should be able to customize coupons. It should have tracking and split testing. So you see what's working and what isn't. And that's how people get rich as split testing to run things against each other, to make sure that you got the one that gets the most response. It should have upsells and bumps and upsell is offering a product after they buy one product, another product. And a bump is like the same thing, but it's just a little box in there that all they have to do is click a checkbox and it adds it to their order. So that's a lot of extra money for you should have recurring billing. This made me a fortune over the years where I can give finance options to people they can pay membership sites weekly, monthly, all that kind of stuff. So that should be included. Should be able to create online courses and memberships right in your cart. Again, that gets rid of pay. And for another thing, like I said, I'll do a whole session. Session three on money saving stuff. Let's see a really good one like Kartra has webinars right included. So that saved me 700 bucks getting rid of go to webinar, and I had the grandfathered $700 price.

[00:06:04] It's thousands and thousands for a regular go to webinar account for a lot of people say, so I got rid of that. Should have a media center that can handle videos, images, documents, all kinds of stuff right in there securely. And then also, uh, again, a savings, uh, was a thing that you can add enhancements like calls to action to your videos and, and overlays and social media sharing right on your videos, which I had to pay hundreds of dollars for that as an outside service in the past. It should have the capability of text broadcast. Now, text broadcast is something where you do need an outside service and it's you pay per text. I mean, it can be dirt cheap. Text broadcasting is powerful if it's right for you, because most people open text within three minutes and like a 90% open rate, you know? So it's, uh, it's powerful. It should have AI built in to help you write your emails and your promotional copy for your pages and everything. Right inside. And if it's a really good, good program, it already knows. You fill in a bunch of stuff about your customers and your services and products. So it already knows that. So you don't have to write massive prompts for each section that you want to write some copy for. It should have a squeeze page generator as part of your templates.

[00:07:34] Like I said, the Kartra has over 500 templates for thank you pages and sales pages, long sales pages, short video sales pages, the whole bit. It should have help desks. In other words, not where you're asking the shopping cart company for help. Yes, that's pretty much standard. This is where you can create help desk for yourself, multiple ones for your own products and services. Is. It's like frequently asked questions and the whole area for that to help your customers 24 over seven. Now, I hate online calendars, but a good shopping cart system will have them included, in fact, multiple ones for different things going on. So online calendars is a is an important feature. Uh, let's see, I think I told you about funnel funnels. I'm trying to say I got so many things. Oh, campaigns. A campaign for, let's say you have a specific product like my pro speaking book. Well, a campaign is all the the elements that goes into that. The emails, the pages, the the sales page, the thank you page, the videos, the pricing, the automation, you know, the split testing, all of that is part of that promotion. What's all in what we call a campaign. And you can build each piece of that yourself. However, Kartra has provided hundreds of pre-built campaigns that you can just import in, and it has all the connections and the pages and everything put together, and you just edit each piece with your information so you don't have to be a super geek to put one of these together fast.

[00:09:17] See, so there's all kinds of things that, you know, modern day shopping cart systems should do for you. And I probably missed a few here, but the idea is you have to start thinking in those terms because your competitors are having all those kinds of things in their shopping cart. And if you look old and and don't have these, you won't make as much money just on the front end, but you won't have as much automation, for instance. Another thing it had to have a modern shopping cart was tags and lists, where automatically, if somebody does something, does A, the shopping cart system is going to do something B for them. Like if they click on a certain link, they're going to go down one path. If they don't click on a link in your email, they're going to go down another path and it's going to tag them. And also shopping cart abandonment tagging. This is I'm sure you've witnessed this where you put something in the cart and then you start getting emails that says, hey, you forgot to buy this thing. Well, that makes them a lot of money, even if you didn't go ahead and purchase, people do. And so shopping cart abandonment tagging is an important feature to have.

[00:10:32] See. So so anyway, watch for part two where we're going to talk about the automation more in depth on these automation things I was just talking about. And then in part three I'll talk about all these different programs you can get rid of and save a lot of money. So that's that's important. Saving money is just as important as making money. Okay. I always say, you know, if you spend 5000 on a website that you could have built yourself for 150 bucks and they both look the same. Well, you got to make like $4,850 just to get back to being broke. Okay, so so we don't want you to do that. Okay. So that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Check out my mentor program. GreatinternetmarketingTraining.com. And also my school IMTCVA.org is one of the best legacy gifts you could ever give a young person. It's a skill that's in high demand, so check that out. But also check the webinar out at screwthecommute.com/kscswitch. We'll have that in the show notes for you. And then access this big course that I built for free. And then go to the webinar section. Of course, look around at all the other stuff too. If you want to see more in depth on how all this stuff works. All right, that's my story. I'm sticking to it. We'll catch you all in the next episode. See you later.