OpenCart. The best eCommerce CMS for your website

OpenCart is an Open Source CMS, oriented to e-commerce and is consolidated as the best alternative for the agile and efficient development of e-commerce sites. In this article we analyze some of its main features and we offer reasons for you to consider using this popular CMS for the development of your online store.

Let us begin by understanding that ecommerce, consists of the purchase and sale of products or services through electronic devices such as mobile phones, tablets and computers. Originally the term applied to the execution of transactions through electronic means such as electronic money exchange, however with the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web in the mid-90s began to refer mainly to the sale of goods through Internet services and integrates gateway payments such as debit and credit cards, Paypal, or others.

E-commerce offers important benefits to consumers, including:

• Accessibility: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
• Information: Millions of users access the Internet to find information about the products they wish to buy.
• Less difficulties when the oppressor figure of the seller disappears.
• Multimedia: Through the latest technologies, consumers can experience the product first-hand.
• New products and services: The Internet has created new market niches to determine products and services.

On the other hand, it also has important advantages for the merchant:

• Reduction of costs: less structural costs in staff.
• Improved distribution of products to save the step of storing in stores, companies can improve the final distribution of their products to consumers.
• Creating relationships with consumers and the ability to customize offers: Through their behavior in the online store, the company can understand their interests, buying habits and the consumer communicates personalized offers.
• Ability to respond quickly to the needs of the market: quickly and efficiently, the company can send information to customers, before any changes in the market take place.
• Globalization of markets: electronic commerce allows different companies to offer their products or services in any market in the world.

OpenCart consolidates itself as the best CMS for e-commerce sites by offering a core of development where to develop projects in an agile, robust way and for us is always the first option to offer our customers, because we know the different options that are in the Other CMS and we know what the benefits are. Among its great benefits we can find:

Content management system.

• Load, update and delete products in the system without restrictions.
• Upload, update and delete unlimited product photos.
• Upload, update and delete unlimited product descriptions.
• Upload, update, and delete unlimited product category listings

Payment Gateways.

A payment gateway refers to the channels or options that a customer has to pay in an online store. OpenCart offers multiple payment gateways natively, and countless options through commercial extensions. Among them it is worth highlighting

• Bank transfer
• PayPal
• RedSys
• IUPay
• Authorized.net
• Others

Shipping gateways.

A shipping gateway refers to the different ways a user has to request that they calculate the shipping costs or freight of the products purchased. OpenCart offers multiple native gateways, and countless options through commercial extensions. Among them it is worth highlighting

• Correos.
• Seur
• UPS.
• USPS
• Calculation of tariffs by weight of products
• Calculation of tariffs by number of items
• Others

Discount coupons.

OpenCart offers among its administrative tools a tool to generate discount coupons and that customers can later use in the form of coupon codes when paying for their purchase. This type of tool is usually a powerful advertising and marketing tool to manage sales campaigns at different times of the year for all types of businesses and businesses.

Gift certificate tool.

OpenCart offers among its administrative tools a tool to generate gift vouchers or giftcards that the customers can later use in the form of codes when paying for their purchase. This type of tool is usually a powerful advertising and marketing tool to manage sales campaigns at different times of the year for all types of businesses and businesses.

Email marketing tools

OpenCart has tools available to manage email marketing campaigns to all customers registered in your trade; Or some of them, or those who have purchased a product and from the administrative system of your site will be easy to send information about the new products you have received, promotions and structure advanced email marketing campaigns.

CMS optimized for SEO

OpenCart is optimized to work with SEO friendly URL and many elements related to "SEO on page". Your website will be able to establish smooth communication with search engines leaving open avenues for positioning in search engines like Google or Bing.

User Community

The technical support you can get from the discussion forums and a number of contributing users is really impressive and at DharmaWebStudio we do our best to contribute in technical forums.

Large number of modules or add-ons

Opencart has more than 1600 modules covering a large number of behaviors, extending the native behavior of this CMS beyond its borders.

MVC (Model - View - Controller)

The CMS architecture is based on a popular program model called MVC (Model-View-Controller). This model is widely known among programmers and easy to approach.

Administration

A clean, clear and easy to administer administration panel is one of the biggest advantages of OpenCart. It may not be as advanced as Magento, but it certainly allows for easy administration.