Wednesday, October 10, 2012

eCommerce Solutions for Website

With e-commerce, web design really starting to take off, it's never been more important to choose a platform which suits the developer and one that will provide your clients with the features that they need to run a successful online shop.These platform to be easy for them to manage, update, and also track sales and related finances. Features are a necessity for a client, but even more important is security, stability, and expandability from a development perspective.

Lets have a look into pre-made solutions or premium services, open-source solutions or the option of creating custom e-commerce systems built to fit each website.

Custom eCommerce System

  • osCommerce

osCommerce is an open-source shopping cart solution with a variety of common and useful features. From a design and development standpoint, many agree that this is the easiest platform to work with. There are customer accounts, an extensive admin back-end, HTML product descriptions, several payment options, real-time shipping quotes, and more.
OsCommerce has a number of store owners on its books, notable customers include Truffle Shuffle and Linux Uk.
There are multiple payment Gateways to choose from including (but not limited to) – 2Checkout.com,Authorize.Net, ChronoPay, iPayment, PayNova, Paypal, PSIGate, SecPay and TrustCommerce.
As expected from a platform such as this its jam-packed with features.

Notable Features
  • Supports unlimited products and categories
  • Multicurrency support
  • Support for physical (shippable) and virtual (downloadable) products
  • Object oriented PHP backend
  • Web Browser Install and Plugin support

ZenCart

Zen Cart website doesn’t do justice to the professionalism of the end product, and although it doesn’t not offer as many payment processing options as OsCommerce and other e-commerce platforms it is a more mature product, with OsCommerce often taking quite a long time to release fixes for important issues such as security. ZenCart is a fork of OsCommerce it has very similar sorts of features, it's also easier for the newbie developer to get into than Osc. Payment gateways include LinkPoint, Authorize.Net andPaypal.

Notable Features
  • User frontend is validated to XHTML 1.0 Transitional
  • Any PHP coding changes can be protected during upgrades by using the built-in override protection system
  • Integrate with phpBB
  • Meta Tags keywords and descriptions can be controlled at the per-product level

Opencart

Opencart is a 100% open-source and free shopping cart system with a great community behind it. It is fully expandable with unlimited products, categories, pages, and more. It also has some nice features for a more community-based online shopping experience like product reviews, ratings, and customer accounts. The back-end interface is clean and well organized, and the front-end templates are open-source too. There are several extensions available plus an API for further development customization and a theming guide for custom design as well. There is even an area where developers can sell extensions and templates specifically for this platform to earn some extra cash flow.

VirtueMart

VirtueMart is an Open Source E-Commerce solution designed to be used with Joomla! (but also works with Mambo). Joomla and VirtueMart are written in PHP and made for easy use in a PHP / MySQL environment.

Notable Features
  • Stock Level Control for Products and Item
  • Ajax-powered Product Overview allows to quickly add Products to the cart
  • Product Attributes (like Size or Color) can be added to Product
  • Manage different Currencies, Countries & States
  • Product Availability: show how fast a Customer can expect delivery.

Payment Gateways supported include Authorize.net, PayPal, 2Checkout, eWay, Worldpay, PayMate and NoChex. If you have an existing Joomla based site, integration is particularly easy. Virtuemart uses Joomla’s admin interface for store administration, and because it is implemented inside an already rich CMS, administration will come very easily to Joomla users. Given that Joomla is (probably) one of the best CMS systems out there, it may easily give OsCommerce and others a run for their money.

Magento

Magento, one of the more exciting e-commerce platforms available for free on the market today. Dripping with features, they really have thought of everything. Wish Lists, shop by price and category, item comparison – all the things we’ve come to expect from professional web stores. Its software as good as this that really keeps licensed software on their toes..
Just some of the features, for a full list download the pdf
Notable Features
  • Integrated with Google Analytics
  • Multiple Images with Zoom
  • Add to Wishlist
  • Send to a Friend
  • Batch Import and Export of Catalog
  • One Page Checkout
  • Multi Lingual

PrestaShop

PrestaShop is an open source solution with over 250 features, and integrates with many of the most common forms of payment: PayPal, Moneybookers, and direct credit card payments. It is easily and completely customizable from a design perspective, and even the backend admin area is customizable. There are also plenty of other features that are not standard on other shopping carts that can be beneficial, such as a Customer Loyalty program with a points system.

TomatoCart

TomatoCart is an innovative open source ecommerce solution, branched from osCommerce. Aiming at creating the best online shopping platform, TomatoCart is devoted to blending all flexible functionalities for users even with the basic software knowledge. Notably, innovation can be found in our admin panel, which is based on Rich Internet Applications combined with Ajax, contributing to our creative web desktop, one of central means by which we provide easy management of your store and intuitive interface. Various payment processing options are available, including Authorize. Net, Ogone, PayPal, Saferpay, Wire Card and Google Checkout.

Notable Features
  • RIA based Administration Pane
  • Search Engine Optimisation
  • Web Analytics (Piwik)
  • Lightweight Framework
  • Content Management System
  • Email System.

  • eCart

eCart is another open source solution with easy templating for designers and plenty of the standard features any shopping cart would need. It also features a sleek AJAX powered admin backend for handling customers, orders, products, and statistics. It's designed to be SEO friendly, and is perfect for online stores that will have a lot of products as it carries advanced catalog and search features.

Premade Solutions


  • Volusion

Volusion is a premium solution that offers all the quality features a client company would need, with great support and extensive add-ons. The company also offers a number of services from design and code customization, to marketing, and to training. There are also a number of premium quality templates that can act as a base to your own design for customization, or just as the design overall. Pricing depends on the number of products needed, data storage, and support features. The cheapest starts at $29/mo. and can upgrade easily - perfectly suitable for most clients budgets.
  • Shopify

Shopify is another premium software, with plenty of free themes and extensions. It comes with its own iPhone App for the store, support, analytics, and a great interface. They also offer cheap hosting for a Shopify store that can make the website easier to maintain in terms of support. The hosting offers features that are perfect for ecommerce websites, such as unlimited bandwidth, fast servers, automatic backups and more.
  • Big Commerce

Bigcommerce from a design and development standpoint offers fully customizable design, and also a drag and drop interface for design features on the client's end. Just style the "widgets" and the client can also have more control without endless updates, tweaks, and maintenance from you, the designer. Big Commerce offers features for social media, marketing, product options, checkout options, multi-currency support, and more. There is also an API and documentation as well that allows developers to have further customization.


For more details about eCommerce website development, please feel free to contact  Prevaj Consultants at prevaj@prevajconsultants.com or call +91-8144760745