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Electric commerce, or e-commerce, uses the internet or other specialized networking technologies to facilitate the buying and selling of products. This is accomplished when computer scientists and engineers develop components that facilitate online shopping, including shopping cart software, secure payment gateway software, etc. These components, of which shopping cart software has become the most popular, are collectively referred to as online store software and form the backbone of most shopping portals.

The main function of an online shopping cart is to keep track of the items selected by an online buyer and the total amount to be billed for checkout purpose. In a way, it is similar to the billing software used by supermarkets across the world. It is analogous to the trolleys we are so accustomed to using in supermarkets.

After going through the product listings and product descriptions, if any visitor to an online shopping portal decides to purchase a particular item on sale, he/she will mark that item and drag or select that item using the online shopping cart icon shown on the webpage. This icon is displayed at the bottom of each product image, generally below the marked price.

The shopping cart panel displays item selected by the online purchaser , its product code, its price, discount etc. If the customer wants to buy some other products as well he can browse through product listings and add the items he wishes to his shopping cart in addition to the item he has already selected.

The application may looks simple and easy to build. But developing such software demands high technical expertise in various areas such as real time database management, accounts and billing, secure payment gateway etc. It is also important that the team which develops this software does a thorough analysis of the expected customer profile and uses this knowledge to develop "usability" in the software.

Shopping cart software utilizes the concept of cookies in Hypertext Markup Languages (HTML) or else is enabled using query strings. There are two types of shopping cart software available in the market today. The first kind requires a one time payment and unlimited usage upon purchase. The second type of shopping cart software available requires monthly or annual subscription charges and is hosted services.