Oscommerce Shopping Cart
Open Source Shopping carts software are will matured these days and can be used to run online shopping portal of any size. If you are a small company and looking for setting up your own shopping portal then you can choose any of the good open source shopping cart software, download, install, customize and add products on it. After adding the products and categories you add your payment details for accepting the credit cards from your users. Once all these things are done, your online shopping portal is ready to go live.
Choosing the right Open Source shopping cart is very important factor in determining success of your e-commerce business. Good software will help you in growing your business. But if due to some reason wrong shopping cart software is selected, then it will add a burden on you. You won't be able increase your business. You may face server down time or slow performance of website. So, choosing a right shopping cart is very important factor in determining the success of online business.
There are many Open source shopping cart developed by many organizations. These open source shopping cart can be downloaded from their websites. The source code of these shopping carts are also available and can be downloaded from respective distribution websites. Availability of source code is a big advantage of using any open source shopping cart. You can download and modify the source code to support your specific business requirement. Now you are not vendor locked, you can modify source code of shopping cart as per your needs.
The open source shopping cart is now very advanced software system which provides following features:
- Scalability:Modern shopping cart system is highly scalable and can handle your growing business.
- Integration:with other software. It provides xml and other format export and import of data. So, it can well integrate with existing ERP system of the company.
- SEO: Most of the open source shopping cart is SEO enabled.
- Extensible:It can be extended to add new features and functionality
- Template support:These are based on template which makes much easier task to change the design of store font easily.
- Plugin support:There are many plugins developed by developers which can be used to add extra features on the top of base shopping cart system
- Web 2.0 based design:Most of the shopping cart software is based on the Web 2.0 design principles.
Advanced feature of Open source shopping cart system:
- Marketing Promotions and Tools:Most of the modern shopping cart software is equipped with marketing promotion tools.
- Analytics and Reporting:There are various types of report to view the overall performance of the e-commerce portal.
- Search Engine Optimization:Search engine optimization is very important since most you will be getting lot's of traffic from search engines. These tools help the e-commerce portal owners to take the full advantage of search engine and natural traffic.
- Site Management:Helps the web master to manage the e-commerce portal well.
- Catalog Management:Well designed and developed Catalog Management system is an integral part of open source shopping cart system. It helps the admin to manage products easily and efficiently.
- Catalog Browsing:Finding the products in products is very important. It comes with good search functionality to find the products and catalogue easily.
- Product Browsing:Good product browsing is developed and included in open source shopping cart system.
- Mobile Commerce:These days people are using mobile devices for internet access and also for e-commerce purchase. So, its important to have mobile commerce support in the open source shopping cart solutions. Mobile commerce module is also available with major open source shopping cart solutions.
- International language modules:Many shopping cart software provides many language support.
- Checkout and Payment: The Checkout module is will developed and supports multiple payment methods.
- Shipping:The shipping module automatically calculates the shipping price based on the shipping zip code.
- Customer Service:This modules is important and major open source shopping cart provides this module.
- Order Management:We designed and developed order management system enhances the productivity of the staff.
General features of open source shopping cart
Front Office:
The font office is used to manage the products that will be displayed on the portal.
- Special deals (price reductions, gift vouchers):E-commerce webmaster can display the special deals on premium location of the website. This will increase the sales of the product. This feature is one of the most used on different e-commerce portals.
- Featured products on homepage:This feature can be used to promote featured products for increasing the sales.
- Top sellers on homepage:Application identifies the top selling products and displays on the home page.
- New items on homepage:Most of the e-commerce shopping cart portal displays new products on the homepage of shopping portal.
- 'Free shipping' offers:You can display the free shipping offers on the premium location of the website. It also also allows the users to find the products with free shipping.
- Cross-selling (Accessories):The cross-selling module is also an important feature of many open source shopping cart software.
- Product image zoom:Providing different images sizes in the system and then allow the users to zoom the product image is also very interesting feature of the system.
- Order out-of-stock items:If the items are not in stock, e-commerce shopping cart software display the message to the user.
- Customer subscription & user accounts:E-commerce shopping cart software should allow the users to create user account.
- Unlimited payment methods:E-commerce shopping application should provide integration with almost all the available online payment system.
- Payment by bank wire:The payment by bank wire transfer feature is also a good feature.
- Google Checkout module:E-commerce shopping portal should provide support for Google Checkout.
- Cash-On-Delivery (COD):This can be another optional feature.
- Preconfigured for Paypal:Almost all the open source shopping cart system provides Preconfigured for Paypal payment module.
- Multiple-recipient contact form:This allows the uses to send product to different address.
- Product tagging & tag cloud:This feature is a must have feature of any shopping cart portal.
- Search:Must have module for searching the products.
- Order tracking:Customers should be able to track the status of the order.
- Loyal customer program:Good module
- Affiliate program:Can be useful if store owner is taking part in Affiliate programs.
- Customer product reviews:This will allow the customers to post the products reviews.
Back Office features
The back office of the e-commerce shopping portal should be fast and easy to use. It should have tools to increase the productivity of the employees of the e-commerce portal.
- Unlimited categories & subcategories:E-commerce admin module should allow the admin to add unlimited categories & subcategories.
- Full-featured WYSIWYG text editor:Not all employees are aware of HTML, so Full-featured WYSIWYG text editor is very useful. It increases the productivity of the employees.
- Unlimited product attribute combinations:Good feature to manage and display the product on the portal.
- Unlimited product specs:Most of the open source shopping cart software supports Unlimited product specs.
- Unlimited images with automatic resizing & file optimization:Automatic image resizing is another good feature of e-commerce system.
- Unlimited currencies:It should at least support 36 language motioned below.
- Unlimited tax settings:Every country have different rules for tax, e-commerce shopping cart software should support unlimited tax settings.
- Digressive pricing (Quantity discounts): Digressive pricing or Quantity discounts is an important feature of e-commerce shopping portal.
- Real-time currency exchange rates:This is another good feature which can display the real-time currency exchange rates.
- Inventory management:Shopping cart system must have Inventory management modules.
- SMS/Text-message alerts:This very good module which can increase customer loyalty.
- Bar codes:Should support bar codes.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO):SEO module helps the webmasters to increase search engine ranking.
- Content Management System (CMS):A good CMS is necessary for adding pages to the website.
- Reports:Should provide different types of report.



