So you’ve got an established business or are looking to get started and want to know if SamCart fits the bill for your needs?
I was in the same position just a few months ago with a new venture and decided to look into SamCart as a serious contender for my shopping cart needs.
This article will detail my findings, what I liked and didn’t like about this tool and ultimately what kind of business SamCart is suitable for.
First up, let’s review just what SamCart is.
In short, SamCart is an online platform that allows business owners to create optimized shopping carts and check-out processes to help improve conversions, sales, and boost revenue.
They claim…
The average SamCart seller makes up to 5X more than the average seller on other platforms
With checkout pages being a major chokepoint when it comes to online sales, SamCart is designed to take the hassle out of building a professional and optimized checkout page in minutes.
I myself was skeptical at first, but it really is one of the quickest ways I have found to get up and running (it took me around 7-minutes for my first page and less than 3-minutes for the variations I used for A/B testing).
Free SamCart Trainings & Resources:
If you’re looking for some free SamCart training and resources from industry experts, the list below will take you to the material which you cannot find via their homepage…enjoy 🙂
- Free 7 Minute SamCart Demo – Learn how you can boost conversions by up to 72% with SamCart.
- 14-Day Free Trial – Start making sales before you pay a dime. Get super fast setup with SamCart today.
SamCart Features
1-Click UpSells
In e-commerce, upsells are a key part of optimizing your sales funnel and creating additional revenue, simply by offering the customer an additional product or service when they checkout.
This can be something of a higher or lower value, however, the beauty lies in the ability to create these upsells quickly and also track the success rate of each upsell so you can perfect your pitch.
Checkout Pages
Checkout pages are the most crucial element of e-commerce stores and online sales. They can literally make or break your business and should be treated accordingly.
The Checkout pages offered by SamCart have been proven to boost sales from existing website traffic. Which is why earlier I stated that you can make you money back on a monthly plan within a matter of days.
Once you’ve found a design you like, you can take advantage of the Sandbox feature, which allows you to fully stress-test your checkout and cart before ‘going live’.
This is a great feature that I have taken advantage of on many occasion and is especially useful when running a paid traffic or email marketing campaign since a broken checkout page could lead to a very costly mistake indeed.
You have an insane amount of control over your SamCart checkout pages, nothing like this is offered with rival products, at least not with the optimization efforts that have gone into making their pages some of the best-designed and best-converting pages you will find.
A/B Split Testing
Once you have an established business and you’re making sales, split testing and CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) are critical to growing your business and can easily be one of the cheapest and quickest ways to increase revenue and conversion rates.
SamCart’s A/B testing feature allows you to easily identify your most profitable products/services and upsells and give them the attention they deserve.
From this you can learn key lessons that can be rolled over to other pages and offers, further growing your business.
Template Library
The SamCart template library gives you access to 18+ pre-designed checkout carts and landing pages that enable you to take advantage of their easy to use builder, to get you set up in no time.
No more messing with code or trying to integrate 3rd party apps and services, these templates work right out of the box and have been designed by expert marketers and designers, with conversion optimization in mind.
Payment Options
One of the first things you do when setting up your shopping cart software is to integrate with your favorite payment processor.
SamCart offers the option of using either PayPal or Stripe, which surprised me as I did expect more options..however, given that they are the two most widely used options, it fits most needs.
In addition, there isn’t an option for those of you that wish to accept Cryptocurrency or smartphone transactions such as Apple or Android Pay etc.
Payment Plans
Payment plans are another great feature that allows you to offer your customers/clients the ability to pay for purchases over a period of time.
This comes in handy for high-end products and services, where the barrier to entry for many prospects is the price and affordability.
By offering a ‘drip-payment’ option, you will increase conversions and gain more customers and sales as a result.
You can offer the customer the ability to pay:
- One Time
- Recurring Weekly
- Recurring Monthly
- Recurring Quarterly
- Recurring Yearly
- Recurring Customer Days
It’s this flexibility that gives SamCart the edge over many other platforms in my opinion.
Coupons & Trial Offers
SamCart state that 65% of shoppers say the availability of coupons finalized their buying decision. I’m sure you can see that this is HUGE.
By taking advantage of the coupon functionality of SamCart, you can offer discounts at whatever rate you choose to entice buyers who are on the fence. As of April-19, you can now send prospects to a page with a Pre-Applied Coupon, which for those of you that do email marketing is an excellent feature to have.
This also works with trial offers, where customers can take advantage of both free and paid-trail offers, which work very well indeed for service-based businesses and online courses.
Recurring Sales & Subscriptions
Recurring revenue is the backbone of many successful e-commerce businesses, embedding this elusive recurring element into your business is a must in order to move away from the month-to-month rollercoaster of sales.
MRR or Monthly Recurring Revenue allows you to rest easy in the knowledge that you have a guaranteed revenue coming in each and every month.
With SamCart you can manage multiple recurring subscription products and levels, making the challenge of MRR a thing of the past.
App Integrations
SamCart can seamlessly integrate with a multitude of other 3rd party apps that as a business owner you are likely to either use currently or have at least come across on your journey.
As an example, you can link your checkout process to apps such as Zapier to automate tasks once an order has been placed or a cart has been abandoned for example.
Infusionsoft for creating funnels and moving customers and prospects through your funnel. There are also plenty of email marketing tools you can hook up to, such as Aweber, ActiveCampaign, MailChimp, and ConvertKit to name a few.
If you run a membership website, SamCart also integrates with a variety of popular software in this area such as WishList Member, Kajabi and MemberMouse.
The ability to integrate SamCart with one or a number of other external applications using their integration engine was one of the key factors that made me choose this tool for my new business.
Support & Knowledgebase
With either paid plans (monthly or annual), you will receive priority support over other members such as trial users etc.
This means help and support is just a click away, meaning you get a solution to your problem in a timely manner, allowing you to get on with operating and growing your business.
What’s more, SamCart has a live chat option that is available from anywhere within your dashboard, making help (from a real person) just a click away.
Need help and support? You’ve got it, with SamCarts extensive knowledgebase.
As a Pro plan member, you get priority support when you need it, and with their Premium plan, you have a dedicated training person who is there to hold your hand through the entire process should you need it.
Most of us, however, may be just as happy to search and read from their wealth of articles covering all aspects of using their software, from getting set up to integrating apps, creating products and offering payment options.
What I liked about their knowledgebase articles was that many of them included a video walkthrough, which really helps to follow the process step-by-step. I like to pause the video as I perform the action required before continuing.
Here’s an example video which shows you how to create your first SamCart product in under 60-seconds.
Reporting System
One of the key aspects of any checkout system for me is the reporting. The quality of a shopping cart SaaS product can be judged directly by is reporting system.
As you can see above, the reporting system from SamCart is visually stunning and extremely useful.
There is nothing about this reporting system I don’t like, it’s fast, it delivers the numbers I want to see and it’s extremely flexible and allows me to analyze my business performance at a glance.
Affiliate Program
There is no faster way to boost sales than to have a team of people promoting your products and sending traffic to your SamCart optimized pages. With the Premium plan, you can integrate a ready-made affiliate platform where bloggers and businesses can sig up and create their own custom affiliate tracking links.
This is exactly how Amazon grew so big…if it’s good enough for Jeff Bezos, it’s good enough for me!
Subscription Saver
With their Premium plan, you have access to the Subscription Saver (Dunning process), which takes the hassle out of the constant drag of chasing up payments, renewing subscriptions and dealing with bounced or missed payments.
A recent study shows that 68% of customers will abandon their shopping cart, which is why the Subscription Saver is designed to help prevent cart-abandonment, automate emails notifications, notify customers when a payment fails or payment details need renewing, etc.
Pixel Tracking
Many of us will use Facebook as part of our online sales process, perhaps using paid traffic to send prospects to a landing page. With Samcart you can pass detailed customer and order data to third-party tracking tools such as Facebook, to help with building customer audiences and look-a-like profiles.
Who is SamCart For?
If you have something to sell online, then SamCart is for you. From physical goods to digital products, to courses, seminars, and events.
The ease of setup makes SAmCart suitable for both beginners to small-medium sized businesses who are looking to streamline their checkout process, increase conversions and boost top-line revenue.
If you offer a range of products, then this web-based tool will allow you to upsell and cross-sell across your product range, moving customers into new funnels and optimizing their experience from the get-go.
Pricing
One question many of us have when choosing software to grow our business is, is SamCart worth the price?
Given that they have done away with their original $19 /month Basic plan and replaced that with a Free Trial option (which in my opinion is a must try), and two simple paid plans, not only is SamCart an affordable option, it gives you more than enough features that you can easily earn back 5x or more the subscription price in a matter of days.
When it comes to pricing options, SamCart has three different plans:
- Free Trial (14-Days)
- Pro ($99 per month)
- Premium ($199 per month)
I will dive deeper into what each plan offers below, however, if you already know what you need, feel free to use the quick links above to jump to that plan.
Free Trial
My recommended approach if you’re still unsure about SamCart and if it’s the right solution for you, is to take advantage of their 14-day free trial.
With this, you can access all of the great features SamCart offers for 2-weeks, put it through its paces and see how it works, all before spending a dime.
In addition, all plans come with the risk-free 30-day money-back guarantee…so you’ve got nothing to lose by taking the trial or one of the plans below for a spin.
Pro Plan
The Pro plan is $99 per month or you can save 25% with the annual plan, which would bring the price to $888 /year or $74 a month.
The Pro plan includes:
- 18+ Checkout Templates – Choose from over 18 templates to speed up your checkout page design and build.
- Unlimited Products – Sell/offer as many products or services as you need, no limits.
- Built-In Credit Card Processing – Use Stripe and PayPal to automate credit card processing and cut down on fees.
- One-Time Payments, Subscriptions, Trials, & Plans – Advanced options to hook buyers in and get them onboard.
- Advanced Reporting – Understand the metrics and numbers that are driving your business forward.
- Cart Abandonment – View abandoned carts and reach out to prospects to rescue the sale.
- Webhooks – Integrate with your favorite apps to make your workflow seamless.
- 1-Click Upsells – Offer an upgrade or option to buy an additional product/service.
- A/B Split Testing – Compare product and checkout pages, upsells and more.
- Priority Support – Fast and responsive support from trained professionals.
Premium Plan
The Premium plan is priced at $199 /month (1,788 /year or $149 /month with the annual subscription).
All features in the Pro plan are included along with a few additional extras:
- The Subscription Saver – Automated solution to help retain subscribers, change payment details, and much more.
- The Affiliate Center – Have others promote your products or services by integrating and affiliate center.
- Dedicated Training & Support – Premium members get a dedicated training area and first-class support when you need it.
Conclusion
I’d like to round off this SamCart review with a look at what we liked and what we didn’t like about this product to help you decide if it’s the right solution for you and your business.
What We Like
- No Set Up Fee – Unlike other platforms, SAmCart doesn’t charge a setup fee to get started.
- 14-Day Free Trial (click here) – Take advantage of this generous offer here to see if it’s a good fit for you.
- Super-Fast Setup – You can create a custom-built and optimized checkout page in under 3-minutes
- Free SSL Certificate – Give your customers the confidence to continue with a transaction over secured HTTPS servers
- Single Page Product & Checkout – Reduce cart-abandonments due to length checkout processes
- A/B Testing – Make changes to your product/checkout page and upsells and see how they perform
What We Don’t Like
- Limited support for payment processors (only Stripe and PayPal offered at the time of writing)
- No Cryptocurrency or Apple Pay functionality
- Would prefer a 30-Day free trial, rather than just the 14-days offered
In summary, I would consider SamCart to be a solid SaaS platform and one of, if not THE easiest shopping cart solution for small business owners.
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