I've spent the last 2 days working on the shopping cart for StoreSuite. Basically there will be 2 different ways you can present the shopping cart to people buying products on your site (you can switch between options on the settings page):

When they add a product to their cart they will be presented with a suggested list of other products which they may also be interested in. Chris explains the database theory behind this method in this post.

If you choose this option, a list of suggested products is extracted from the database based on which other products people who purchased this product also purchased in the same transaction in the past.

Confusing? If so, consider this. John sells DVD's online. James comes to John's online DVD shop (powered by StoreSuite) and buys 3 DVD's: The Simpsons Season 9, Heroes Season 1 and The Karate Kid.

When Steve visits John's online DVD store and adds Heroes Season 1 to his shopping cart, he will be presented with a list of "You May Also Like..." product recommendations that contains The Simpsons Season 9 and The Karate Kid. Of course the more orders you have in your store, the more accurate the recommendations will be.

If your store is just new and you have product suggestions enabled but have only a few orders in the system, the list of recommended products will be pulled from the popular (highest rated) products on the site.

If there are no past orders and no products have been reviewed (thus there are no highest rated products) then the customer will simply see the normally shopping cart, which I'm building today and tomorrow.

Here's how the "You May Also Like..." screen looks (notice the mini cart on the right):



A lot of eCommerce applications don't make any considerations for marketing methods implemented into the site, and I think this is where StoreSuite will excel. We have real life eCommerce experience and have sold millions of dollars worth of software online. We know that StoreSuite isn't just an eCommerce platform - it is a complete online selling solution and will include unique marketing features in the final release that encourage people to buy more products on your site, as well as features that encourage repeat orders, word-of-mouth referrals, etc.

I'll keep my cards close to my chest for now as these features will completely blow you out of the water.