ecommerce solutions
Ecommerce (more specifically electronic commerce) is the online version of the commerce that comprises the buying, selling, distributing and other business and commerce related activities over the electronic system like internet, intranet, and other computer networks. With the extension of the electronic devices, the ecommerce is done over the technologies like mobile now-a-day and is known as mobile commerce.Ecommerce involves pretty much everything that a real business requires. For a physical store, a store owner requires a physical store, products or services offering, option to let customer browse and pick their products, shopping cart, checkout, payment, product pick up, tax etc. For an online business the store owner requires an online store, products (physical products are represented with the product images and other description while virtual products like e-book are downloadable), a shopping cart solution, checkout, payment options, shipment process, tax setup etc.
The ecommerce solution means a platform or software (already built or should be built from scratch) that facilitates the intended store owner to design the online store (ecommerce website), add products/ category/ catalogue, create content, setup payment options, shipment options, checkout and shopping cart feature and let admin track the orders. From business owners’ point of view ecommerce solution is an application or the result of developers/ designers output that facilitates him/her to deploy and run an online business. From customers points of view, the ecommerce solution id the website (or similar technology) that let them compare products, add them to shopping cart, pay for the products mostly using credit cards, and then finally receiving the ordered products to the address mentioned for shipping.
The ecommerce solution comprises many parts including the store designing, product showcasing, setting up tax, shipping integration, discount integration, shopping cart solution, checkout, and payment & shipping processes.
Now the ecommerce solutions have their own variations and intended for different ecommerce business owners type. For instance, some ecommerce solutions are intended for B2B (Business to Business) while others are intended for B2C (Business to Customers). Apart from that there are lots of other variations.
There is a range of different ecommerce types and based on these type the solution provider offer different ecommerce solutions:
- B2B: Business to Business
- B2C: Business to Customers
- B2M: Business to Managers
- B2E: Business to Employee
- C2B: Consumer to Business
- G2B: Government to Business
- mCommerce: Mobile Commerce
- fCommerce: Facebook Commerce
Following are some of the ecommerce solution variation types and the list of the best solution providers:
Open Source ecommerce solutions:
There are several open source ecommerce solutions and they are used by enterprise business owners. Being open source, it offers significant improvement, lots of features, readymade modules and easy to use options.Magento: Look at the client list of Magento and you would instantly know that this is probably the best ecommerce solution available. Easy to use, multi store facility, stunning designs, rapidly growing of the client base makes it one of the best open source ecommerce solutions available.
Click to view who are using Magento?
Download Magento
VirtueMart: This shopping cart solution has been targeted to work on Joomla!, and it’s a really neatly designed ecommerce solution. Rich administration and plug-in based extension makes it one of the prominent ecommerce solutions ever.
Download VirtueMart
Ubercart: This shopping cart solution is intended to work with another market leading CMS Drupal, and
offers many powerful features to deploy and run a successful online store. If you are a drupal user and your website is built (or if you are planning to build) in Drupal, the ‘Ubercart’ would be the best solution for you.
Download Ubercart for Drupal
Zen Cart: A really powerful and open source ecommerce solution that you should pick to deploy your online store. This ecommerce gives you every feature you need to implement your online store no matter how big it is. It’ easy to develop for newbie developers and is manageable by the store administrator.
Download Zen Cart
OsCommerce: A notable and significant clients denote the power and robustness of this ecommerce solution. A lot of payment gateways and shipping integration is implemented in this ecommerce platform and it gives a lots of marketing and product related features. Unlimited product creation, multiple currency support, support for physical and virtual products, web based installation and maintenance makes it one of the best open source shopping cart solution.
Cube Cart: A neatly designed powerful ecommerce solution that offers a range of payment merchant vendors, template driven webs store, order history, checkout and many more features. If you are planning to deploy your online store in a open source ecommerce platform, Cube Cart can be a really optimised solution for you.
Main features of Cube Cart:
- Intuitive User UI
- Sales Reporting
- Built in SEO features
- Module based feature extension etc.
Cube Cart Demo
OpenCart: One of the main powers of this ecommerce solution is its scalability. You can create unlimited products/ categories; accept payment in multiple currencies, use multiple languages, choose different payment and shipping options, SEO feature, enable customer review feature etc.
Advantageous features of Open Cart eCommerce CMS:
- Unlimited Category and Product creation
- Multi-Language and Multi-Currency Support.
- Downloadable Products
- PCI Compliant
- Backup and Restore Tools
- Sales Reporting
- Multiple Tax rates
- Shipping Weight Calculation
- Printable Invoices
- etc.
Download Open Cart
Open Cart Demo
