Company name
The name of the company producing this software.

Product name
The name of the product. In the case of companies which only produce one product, this will often be the same as the company name.

Sample Sites
A selection of sample sites built using this software.

Price per month
The cost per month for using this software. This is in US dollars.

Setup Cost
Any one off setup costs for using the software.

Disk space
A hosted shopping cart essentially includes web hosting. This reflects the amount of disk space allocated to you. A few might have no limit.

Bandwidth
The amount of data you are allowed to transfer per month. If you have an especially busy site, or lots of very large files (for example, MP3s or very high quality images) then you will need to examine this carefully. Exceeding this amount will usually have a penalty associated with it. While it varies considerably depending on how your site is made, a site getting a few hundred visitors per day can expect to be using roughly 5Gb of bandwidth per month.

Backups
How often (if at all) does the company backup all your content and data for you? If their servers crash, what's the most you could loose?

Included SSL
Depending on how the payment system is configured, you might need a secure certificate. Will you get charged extra for this?

Product Limit
Is there a limit on how many products you can add? In many cases if you outgrow the limit, the company will have a higher (and more expensive) plan you can switch to later to keep growing your shop.

Multi language
Does the software provide the ability to present your content in multiple user selected languages?

Gift certificates
A gift certificate will typically give the purchaser a code which they can give as a gift which can be used towards purchases. Some shopping carts may have an option to send the gift certificate directly to the recipient.

Discount coupons
This allows the vendor to generate coupons for promotional purposes. There is a wide range of features, such as percentage off discounts, fixed amount discounts, discounts only applied to particular products, etc. It is often done with a promotional code. If this is an important feature to you, check the shopping cart has the specific features you want.

Wish list
This allows customers to create a wish list. It’s great for birthdays, weddings, or just for fun. Typically a customer will send a wish list to their friends of family, and in the process, generate free publicity for you.

Customer registrations
This allows customers to register so that when they do a return visit their details are already stored. It may also allow them to manage a wish list, look at their loyalty points, subscribe to newsletters, etc.

Supports digital goods
Digital goods (Stuff available for download – e-books, MP3s, etc) have unique characteristics such as restricted downloads. Does the software support this?

Product options
Does the software allow you to add product options such as allowing the customer to choose from multiple colours, sizes, etc., per item?

Site search
Allows customers to search the site

Search optimization tools
The cart has specific features that make it friendly to search engines such as Google. For example, some search engines don’t like to look too deep into shopping cart type sites for technical reasons. An automatically generated site map can help overcome that. Just because a shopping cart doesn’t have specific search engine features doesn’t mean it’s unfriendly, just that it doesn't have specific features catering for this.

Affiliates program
Affiliates are people who either sell your goods from their site, or direct customers to your site, in exchange for a percentage of a sale. For many businesses, it’s a great way to generate new customers.

Product reviews
This allow your customers to review the products you are selling. It’s common for product review features to allow you to moderate the reviews to block obscene comments, etc.

Newsletters
This allows you to send a bulk email to existing customers, or customers that have specifically signed into a newsletter, allowing you to send either one off or regular emails. This can be a powerful sales generator, allowing you to announce new products, upgrades, etc.

Content management
The ability to create & edit general pages (not product/category) pages without code. Useful if you want to add some articles or general content to your shop.

Design features
You are probably going to want to make the shop look a particular way. Does the site come with some predefined skins/themes you can choose from? Can you make your own from scratch?

Bulk upload
Is there a way to upload a large number of products, typically from a spreadsheet/CSV? Useful when you first start the shop, or if you have a large number of products coming in regularly.

Shipping
This allows the merchant to set shipping costs based on the value or weight of the items ordered. There’s many variations, so please investigate if you have a specific requirement.

Delivery provider lookup
These shippers offer a live lookup service which allows you to calculate shipping costs on the fly based on the customer order. Does the software allow you to do this?

Tax by state
Allows you to calculate tax appropriate to the customers state.

Tax by country
Allows you to calculate tax appropriate to the customers country.

Built in payment gateway
A payment gateway allows you to collect credit cards. Does this software has its own built in gateway? Does it support 3rd party gateways?

Transaction costs
If this shopping cart has its own gateway, what are the transaction costs?

Customer forums
There is a forum or discussion board where customers can discuss issues they are having and share ideas. These forums are often monitored by the developers of the cart and can act as a form of informal support.

Free support
The ability to contact the developers directly and get support at no charge. This may be limited to a time (e.g. the first 3 months), or number of support requests, or may be unlimited.

Paid support
The ability to get paid “premium” support. This general means higher quality, faster support. If you are doing very critical work, such as selling tens of thousands of dollars worth per day, you may want a guaranteed response time for any issues, which will usually mean paid support.

Training supplied
Training material is supplied, usually in the form of a manual or online course.

Traffic reports
Basic traffic information would be page views and unique users (the number of people visiting), more advanced functions include path analysis and conversion tracking.

Sales reports
Reports on sales are available. This could range from a simple orders list to more sophisticated reports such as top selling items, etc.

Search reports
A report on what people are searching for on with the sites search function. This can be valuable data as it can reveal opportunities you didn’t know existed. For example, if you see people searching for a product you don’t sell, there could be a demand for that product.

Low stock reports
A report listing items which are low in stock. You would typically define what you mean by low stock. For example, a top selling item, 20 items might be low stock, but for a slower item, 1 item might be low stock. Check whether low stock is defined site wide or per product if that’s important to you.

Inventory reports
Some shopping carts will manage your inventory for you, while some expect you to manage it yourself. Having the shop manage the inventory may not be desirable if you are also selling through a physical shop and your sales systems are not integrated.