When you have products or services that don't need the full power of an online shopping cart, Thrivecart can step in to provide a highly efficient, customer-friendly checkout that is both sophisticated and easy to use. Perfect for significant one-off purchases, and particularly good at recurring payments eg. subscriptions, and even split payments. All managed in the one place.
1. Why Thrivecart is a great solution for small businesses and non-profits
Installing, managing and updating a full e-commerce shopping system in your website may be over the top for you. If you’re offering a limited number of significant items or services that are generally purchased by themselves, a quick, smooth, easy checkout experience will boost your sales and reduce ‘abandoned carts’.
In many independent websites, WooCommerce is the software of choice to provide an online store and its checkout facilities. WooCommerce is sophisticated, adaptable, and a great tool - but it usually requires a number of additional components to be added to your website. This means a maintenance overhead & cost, and probably affects how your website is built too (in terms of navigation, layout, design).
But what if you’re aiming to sell one-off items eg. your own book? An online store with 1 product and all the steps required to get it just isn’t suitable. What if you offer services eg. a monthly fee for website management? Again, an online store with a ‘product’ and the associated checkout steps aren’t ideal.
This is the premise and the strength of Thrivecart. It’s a separate online service, and inside your Thrivecart account you define what it is you wish to sell (ie. title, description, price etc), fill out associated details (payment options etc) and end up with a dedicated checkout page. In other words, with one click on a button, or one click on an email link, your customer sees what they’re going to buy, how they can buy it, and the information you need from them to make it happen - a true 1-page checkout.
2. What is Thrivecart?
Thrivecart is “Software as a Service” (Saas) - an online service that you simply use, much like Facebook or Youtube. You purchase an account with Thrivecart, and then have access to its facilities.
It is a very well thought-out and designed system. Each time you create a ‘Product’, you step through a wizard guiding you through what’s needed and what options there are. You can customise the design, add your colours/logos/images, define discount coupons, add options (eg. pay monthly or yearly), add upsells (eg. “upgrade to Pro plan today for 10% discount”), set the payment processor (eg. Stripe, Paypal), and link the sale into other systems such as your email marketing (eg. Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign).
It’s a powerful, flexible system that makes it very easy to produce a 1-page checkout that your customers will find very convenient.
Thrivecart, in particular, has powerful options for creating ongoing subscriptions. This includes things like including an initial setup fee, or maybe an initial free trial period. It can also automatically follow up on failed repeat payments (ie. send emails), and it can automatically send warnings that a subscription is about to renew, and/or invoices after each renewal.
3. How Thrivecart is an affordable software for small businesses?
Right now, Thrivecart is only available as a one-off purchase, for a lifetime deal. It’s not cheap, at US$495 - but then there are no ongoing costs, no commissions.
The key is how much time this service can save you, in terms of;
- setting up items to sell, and the potential upsells
- avoiding admin overhead dealing with payments
- automating your processes
- not having to maintain, manage or backup software
- minimal changes to website
- a quick & simple link to give potential customers
The downside risk is that the service could possibly close down, of course.
4. How to get started with Thrivecart?
To purchase Thrivecart, head over to thrivecart.com and follow the bouncing ball. If you’re that way inclined, feel free to go instead to my affiliate link which will give me a small commission (no effect on what you pay). Either way!
Once you’re in, it’s quite logically laid out. Click on “Products” in the top menu, and create your first product (they’re always in Test mode to start with).
The end result will be a link you can use in emails or in buttons, or an embed you can put into eg. a webpage. Then get selling 😀
Conclusion
It doesn't matter if you're a small or big business, Thrivecart is a good solution when you don't need a full shopping-cart system. It’s smooth, it’s effective, it’s easy. Recommended.
