There has been a colossal rise in the e-commerce industry over the last few years. The concept of buying and selling products through online platforms has become effortless. From the customer’s point of view, the e-shopping process is both pleasurable as well as easy together with a numerous array of products, brands and essentials offered at a reasonable price. In case of a conventional vendor system, the seller has to depend on restricted customer base and their preferences. However, the standard e-commerce world presents the vendors with an opportunity to target global customers over a single platform. Modernistic and visionary companies are coming up with innovative platforms that can cater and fulfill all the retail requirements of the modern society.
OpenCart is the most popular eCommerce supplier of the world in terms of the actual number of users. Founded in 2005 by Daniel Kerr, Opencart is one such free, easy to use, powerful, Open Source online store management program that can manage multiple online stores from a single back end. It allows users to manage every aspect of their new online store from any device, anywhere in the world.
The e-commerce platform offers a quick and concise dashboard to keep track of the customer sale, or a choice from one of the many menu options to view more in detail. With a huge range of features included out-of- the-box and over 14,000 additional extensions available to download, OpenCart is perfect for eCommerce stores of any size, any industry, any budget. The online shopping platform requires no monthly fees or any hidden catches; it is just an effective and customizable platform for the new eCommerce store. A user has to merely install, choose the desired template, add products and begin the selling process.
Key Features of OpenCart
- Admin: OpenCart is equipped with administrator dashboard, user management, multi-store experience along with discounts, coupons & specials.
- Unlimited Categories & Products: The e-retailer platform is free, easy to download with unlimited range of categories and products.
- Customer Friendly Offerings: In order to narrow down a purchase, the platform has filters which simplify the multiple product chaos. In addition, the vendors can sell products in any currency, anywhere in the world, with automatic rate updates and update settings for different taxes. Language is not a barrier for OpenCart. It is available in more than 40 languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Arabic and Hebrew. OpenCart offers an easy way for customers to get a subscription to its official newsletter.
- Comprehensive Payment Gateways: Payment options include Authorize.Net, Amazon Payments, First Data, Klarna, LiqPay, Skrill, PayPal, SagePay and many more. Moreover, recurring payments, shipping methods and sales reports are also available for the vendors.
- Easy Extension of the Functionality: OpenCart is a module-based system which allows users to easily extend the functionality for their needs through easy, quick and modify feature: bestsellers, category, featured, latest, specials, best sellers, manufacturers, information, Google analytics and many more pages.
- Responsive & SEO friendly: Impressive mobile/tablet look, SEO extensions, marketing campaigns, product feeds and guest & registered user checkouts are also offered.
- Market Place for the Third-Party Extensions: The eCommerce platform provides over 14,000+ extensions & themes on the OpenCart marketplace with little or no bureaucracy and competitive commission rates based on the vendor sales.
Amplifying the User Experience
OpenCart currently has about 300+ live OpenCart sites, which is significantly more than its competitors. It is really appropriate for anyone who wants to sell products online. Even for an eBay seller, it is useful to have a personal OpenCart store. The platform integrates with other systems so that one can have a single view of inventory, sales, etc.
Ace, Volvo, and the British Red Cross are some of OpenCart’s biggest customer base. While in terms of competitors, from the lower end of the market are WordPress and Shopify and that at the higher end of the market is Magento.
Furthermore, OpenCart forums are a great way to get community support. With more than 120,000 registered members and 600,000+ posts, the user gets to be a part of one of the biggest eCommerce communities. It also offers dedicated technical support for anyone who wants to get professional technical support for their OpenCart project right from the source.
Latest Launches
Daniel Kerr and his team are soon coming up with the next version of OpenCart including both a theme editor and a language editor. Keeping up the Cloud Computing usage and technology advancements, the e-retailer has launched the OpenCart Cloud. This is a major upgrade that the entire team has been working on for a while. This is based on the Amazon Web Service cloud platform and also allows OpenCart to offer its customers to host their websites for them. While the OpenCart software remains free, there is a monthly fee for the hosting service. Users have the choice of either hosting OpenCart themselves on their own servers/hosting providers or to have the e-retailer team host and manage it for them in the cloud.
