A Web Design & Marketing Blog

My Top 5 eCommerce Platforms
Posted in Web Design & Development, Zing Blog on July 28th, 2010 by Rusty

Tags: ecommerce, magento, prestashop, virtuemart, zen-cart

It’s definitly been a while since I posted my last blog post and the reason is because of eCommerce. Online Shopping Carts have been running wild in my mind and a few recent clients have been keeping me busy designing and developing them.

In this post I’ll go over the different eCommerce platforms I have used and will give my opinions on ease of use and management. These are simply my persoal choices for clients when they come to me wanting to sell something online. So let’s jump right in.

1. VirtueMart – I found VirtueMart to be very simple to use and maintain, plus it’s FREE. Importing and exporting products can be a problem since that’s an additional plugin which I find tiedous and that isnt very user friendly. As far as setup goes I found it easy to configure and add taxes, shipping details, payment processors. Good templates can be hard to find and alot of the better ones are for sale. There are tons of addons, plugins, etc. The only downfall is you need “Joomla” which isn’t as easy to manage, for all of you non-joomla users, Joomla is a content management system to control your website. But if you have a Joomla website already getting VirtueMart installed and working isn’t a daunting experience.

Themes: Download Themes
Download: Dowload

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2. Prestashop – Prestashop is an Open Source all in one eCommerce solution from the get go. Providing a very basic Content Management System built in, Newsletters, and Ajax functionality to add Products and Categories. The import and export abilities function pretty well (in the newer versions) and I was able to get categories and products added to the cart immeditely. Prestashop The only downfall to this software solution is the lack of free modules and themes, I also feel the admin interface still reminds me of osCommerce which I hate.

Themes: Download Themes
Download: Download

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5. Magento – You can’t mention eCommerce without supporting Magento. Magento is a full Open Source eCommerce solution. It is very well coded and recommeded for advanced users only. This is in my top five because of the quality they put into the programming and design of the shopping cart software. The downfall to it is the complexity in configuration and adjustment. It’s totally different than any of the other shopping carts I’ve worked with. Adding products and categories isnt too hard but when you want to change themes or move blocks around it can be quite tricky. Magento features builtin SEO, Content Management, Mobile Browsing, International Support and more.

Themes: Download Themes
Download: Download

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4. Zen-Cart – Zen-Cart is an Open Source shopping cart system that has been around for a while now since 2003. Zen-Cart offers similar features to Prestashop however it is even more basic and the interface reminds me of osCommerce. Besides that their import/export feature is a good one and I was able to get a basic store up in minutes with minimal effort. They list a huge database of websites using Zen-Cart for every category, so it’s easy to find a site similar to what your looking to create.

Themes: Download Themes
Download: Download

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5. Drupal e-Commerce – For those of you who are not familiar with Drupal it is a Open Source Content Management System similar to Joomla in features but with a totally different interface. This is the shopping cart system I have the least experience in but it still goes down as my top 5 because of it’s versility and resources that are provided for it. Drupal has a huge community following them with a huge database of plugins and themes to follow suit. Drupal eCommerce is similar to other CMS eCommerce plugins it integates easily. I was able to setup a basic cart with categories and products in around 30-45 minutes. It’s simple to configure and easy to manage I did not test the import and export functions.

Themes: Download Themes
Download: Download

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 at 8:19 pm and is filed under Web Design & Development, Zing Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.