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Thursday, April 30, 2009

osCommerce vs. Joomla with Virtuemart: Pros and Cons

 

osCommerce and Joomla with Virtuemart are both easy to administrate from each others’ respective admin interfaces.

osCommerce comes close in functionality, but from the developer’s perspective, the code could really benefit from a reorganization and some general TLC. Better comments, cleaner code layout, and a more thought out class structure would definitely boost osCommerce’s standing among developers.

If Joomla continues to grow as (probably) the best web CMS out there, Virtuemart could give osCommerce a run for its money. Having the advantage of being fully integrated into a very rich CMS, managing Virtuemart becomes almost trivial.

 

Joomla with Virtuemart Pros:

  • Fast and easy installation and configuration.
  • Easy to customize and extend.
  • Shopper groups (vendors, guests, whatever your heart desires. Product prices and descriptions can vary from group to group).
  • Small codebase, easy to develop for. (it’s just a Joomla module)
  • Easy to administrate.

osCommerce Pros:

  • Fast and easy installation and configuration.
  • Vetted. Though still a development release, it is widely popular and thus has a larger support base.
  • Lots of plug-ins. Chances are, any feature you need, has already been written by someone else.
  • Supports most e-commerce standard features out-of-box.

Joomla with Virtuemart Cons:

  • Still quite a bit on the CVS to-do list. (some functionality could require development if needed immediately)
  • Not stand-alone. Requires Joomla to function.
  • Must learn Joomla framework (or at least how to write Joomla modules and templates) to develop custom functionality.

osCommerce Cons:

  • Large and overly complex code base. Difficult to extend or modify.


In summary, both products support alot of the same features:

Customizable products, carts, shopper account administration, reports, etc…

Joomla with Virtuemart definitely benefits over osCommerce when it comes to extensibility. If you are familiar with Joomla’s framework and templating system, then the sky’s the limit when it comes to extending virtuemart. osCommerce, while certainly popular, is difficult for the developer wade through, lacking meaningful comments and a having a code structure that is haphazard at best.


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Open Source Shopping Cart Should Pay more on Trust Factors

 

 

Driving traffic to an open source shopping cart site, such as zen-cart, oscommerce, opencart, magento, prestashop, etc. is difficult in the first place. So, once that traffic starts showing up, the last thing you want those potential buyers to do is to leave before making a purchase, especially true if they found you via PPC because that visitor is going to cost you money for that unfruitful click through.

Most on-line purchases are made using a visitor’s credit card and those names and card numbers are hacked all of the time. So, before you ask a buyer to make a purchase using a credit card, you must first create trust between you and the potential buyer.

The most used trust building factor is the VeriSign logo. VeriSign provides SSL encrypted solutions for on-line businesses. They have an excellent reputation for security and regular on-line buyers and retailers know this. So, use the VeriSign logo throughout your site to build consumer trust.

The second trust factor is to use SSL encryption to secure the on-line transaction. You’ll need an SSL certificate to transmit encrypted data. Sometimes, a web host will let you use its SSL certification but regardless, any savvy on-line buyer is going to avoid making a purchase unless s/he sees that little padlock in the lower right hand corner and an https in the address box. The “s” stands for secure.

Of course, Subscribing to the On-Line BBB definitely can also build visitor trust by becoming a member of the on-line Better Business Bureau which indicates a commitment to service and honesty. The BBB logo displayed on your site’s home page and checkout pages is a comfort to new buyers.

In conclusion, since using open source platform like zen-cart, oscommerce, opencart, magento, prestashop, etc. you should pay more attention on trust factors than those commercial ones, thus need more efforts on methods like using SSL, VeriSign, and BBB.


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Saturday, April 25, 2009

Free Open Source Shopping Carts That Are SEO Friendly

 

 

This post discusses the best shopping cart that is search engine friendly and gives you the most flexibility and features, by comparing oscommerce, zen-cart, opencart, magento, prestashop, joomla with virtuemart, and drupal with cubercart.

joomla/virtuemart paired up with either sh404sef or artio, makes it outstand other shopping carts.

magento's infrastructure looks good to seo, but haven't see all the plugins or if its seo friendly...

Prestashop is a good script too

cubercart itself is best to seo, thus going with drupal makes the pairs SEO friendly too.

PS

There is a choice if you like to go with wordpress with shopping cart, by using
wp-shopping-cart wordpress plugin, I haven't used this yet, but since wp is the best cms to seo, I believe this wp-shopping-cart wordpress plugin worths a try.


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Thursday, April 23, 2009

Ecommerce Open Source Shopping Carts Revisited

 

Today more and more people are engaging in online business. E-commerce is business carried through the internet. Nowadays more and more people are using the internet to promote and sale their products.

open source shopping cart packages include advanced platforms such as Interchange, and off the shelf solutions as Satchmo, osCommerce, Magento , Zen Cart , OpenCart , VirtueMart and PrestaShop or the dual licensed PhPepperShop. ...

I tried the latest version of Magento and there were too many bugs to bothered with it. Prestashop is looking best, but lacks themes and payment gateways. Zen cart worked well but is a pain to modify the templates to even get a flash file to ... The best is magento , followed by zen cart , both have got plugins and support community. I like open cart . For its simplicity but thumbs down to support and plugin support, joomla virtuecart is good but lacks community support.


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Wednesday, April 22, 2009

7 Steps to Generate Targeted Online Traffic

 

I have an established blog alone with shopping carts, using open source cms scripts such as megento, presta shop, opencart, and zencart, that I've just started to monetize. After not having many clicks, I began to realize that while I have lots of traffic, it isn't necessarily traffic that wants to buy something.

So I have begun the process of reoptimizing (who am I kidding the blog wasn't really ever optimized) for targeted traffic that's looking for a good or service.

First I spent some quality time with my favorite keyword tool brainstorming about what folks might want to click on in the shopping cart site related sector. It's a subtle shift between just "informing" and "informing & selling." I also read several magazines to see what people were selling here.

Second, I downloaded some seo related plug-ins so I could optimize my posts, tags, categories, and pages, and finally, shopping cart. That has taken a bit of time.

Third, I made sure that I linked between similar posts and I added static pages geared toward folks interested in my site, such as magento, prestshop, opencart, or zencart. I followed the advice  about where to put my important keywords etc.

Fourth, I add 3 to 4 posts a day, with about 350 words in each post. Luckily something is always going on and changing so there's lots to post about! 

Fifth, I have written 3 squidoo lenses this week and linked them with the proper keywords back to my site, among the posts and shopping cart. I've made a list of about 25 lenses I should eventually write and the keywords each will focus on. I'm sure that list will grow.

Sixth, I've submitted my blog to a ton of directories.

Seventh, using rss feeds and rss aggreators to build up contents and spread contents online, not only posts, but also items from shopping carts.

But now I see I haven't even come close to having this blog reach it's potential. Nope it's not big at all, but it's a step in the right direction.


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Monday, April 20, 2009

PR7 / PR6 Social Bookmarking/PR Sites

 

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata.

14 social bookmarking sites listed here, so make sure you're bookmarking this site !!!

DF = Do-Follow
NF = No-Follow
NF/RD = They using redirect, so it's No-Follow

Site              PR    Link           Price

Betanews.com 7 DF  Free
Businesswire.com 7 DF Free

Directionsmag.com 7 DF Free

Marketwire.com 7 DF Free

PRweb.com 7 DF Paid

BizEurope.com 6 DF Free

Emediawire.com 6 DF Paid

IndiaPRWire.com 6 DF Free

Media-newswire.com 6 DF Paid

Nanotech-now.com 6 DF Free

News.thomasnet.com 6 DF Free

PRLeap.com 6 DF Paid

PRlog.com 6 DF Free

programmersheaven.com 6 NF/RD Free


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PR9 / PR8 / PR7 / PR6 Directories

 

Of course there's much more tools, but I only listed the ones I use frequently, so your turn to share guys...

By my experience, I would say that it is not really necessary to register to thousand directories, just the most interesting, with a very high PR, and in a similar category of the content of the website. Also, create a page of your business in Wikipedia and About.us, if it's a serious business of course


www.dmoz.org 9
www.lii.org/ 8
www.hotfrog.com 7
www.somuch.com 6
www.skoobe.biz/ 6
www.netinsert.com 6
www.jayde.com 6
www.info-listings.com 6
www.gimpsy.com 6
www.geniusfind.com/ 6
www.ezilon.com 6
www.exactseek.com 6
www.clickey.com 6
www.canlinks.net 6
www.buzzle.com 6
www.businessseek.biz 6
www.abilogic.com 6
www.123kidzarea.com 6
www.bdcconcepts.com/directory/ 6
www.epooch.com 6
www.search4i.com 6
www.busybits.com/ 6
www.zensearch.com/ 6
www.dramba.com 6


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Monday, April 13, 2009

40 great free link building tips

 

Link building is one of the most important parts of website promotion so as to attract more visitors.  Here are some great free link building techniques.

  1. Post link on forums in signature.
  2. Do something groundbreaking that gets picked up by a news site.
  3. Give freebies away.
  4. Link to others and they might link to you.
  5. Post your link as a source in Yahoo Answers or other questions sites.
  6. Make an ebook.
  7. Produce great content.
  8. Start an affiliate program.
  9. Link from your other sites.
  10. Go to a dofollow blog and become a top commentator.
  11. Guest post and make sure your link is on the author bio.
  12. Form some sort of partnership with other webmasters.
  13. Submit an article to article sites.
  14. Submit and article to sites that need an article and make sure your link is on it.
  15. Provide a great service.
  16. Offer your service or product for free.(at least at first)
  17. Ask to have your site reviewed.
  18. Become Dofollow and get submitted to Dofollow directories.
  19. Submit to free directories.
  20. Review sites.  If you give a good review the site might link to you.  You also have a chance for other sites to link to you if you give a bad one.
  21. Get stumbled, dugg, etc.
  22. Build list pages.  These seem to work the best in getting links.
  23. Make surveys.
  24. Create a page about your site or blog on Wikipedia and put a link back to it.
  25. If you are have a website(not a blog) start a blog.
  26. Start a charity or other non-profit cause. 
  27. Post great videos or pictures.
  28. Get sued.  If it a company everyone hates or everyone loves your in.
  29. Build a website/blog about a service everyone loves.
  30. Release a free extension,component, or plug-in.
  31. Have an interview.  It needs to be someone who is famous. 
  32. Take a unique picture, and allow people to post it on their website if they link back.
  33. Create a theme or template.  Make sure you put a Dofollow link in it.
  34. Use trackbacks.
  35. Ask your readers for link love.
  36. Create new articles/posts.  Everyone loves to link to them.
  37. Use Craigslist.
  38. Create a squidoo and link back to your site.
  39. Link to your site on Twitter.
  40. Tell readers to tweet posts.

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Sunday, April 12, 2009

Joomla with Virtmart or with Zencart

 

For a website developed with Joomla, it would be better to add a shopping cart so as to attract more traffic.
Here are current opinions about the choice of shopping cart: with Virtmart or with Zencart.

Of course, it would be ideal to looking forward to the full Magento release, it definitely looks the goods. However, Magento is nice but not integrated (yet!)..

Joomla and Virture Mart seem like a good marriage of CMS and 'cart'...But Virtuemart is a pain when you want to customise things.

Thus, current solution for Joomla is with zencart and leave the joomla as it is.


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Thursday, April 9, 2009

Zencart Review: Online Shoppers Best Choice

 

ZenCart shop store is not for online shopping newbies, but it's a whole lot of fun for pseudo-geeks, and there's a learning curve. But Zencart is so flexible once you've got the hang of it! The community is awesome, you can find more info in the forums than any other open source shopping carts, such as magento, opencart, and prestashop, etc.

One of the secrets behind its power lies in the robust template system that "abstracts" the look-and-feel from the code and logic behind Zen Cart. This enables you to give clients a truly custom solution that integrates quickly and perfectly with their existing marketing websites.

I really love the ordered file structure of ZenCart that allows for customization. The shop itself is nice to work with. There's tons of add-ons, and nearly a dozen of them are very helpful,  provide good solid content

Zen Cart gives web designers a robust and customizable electronic storefront that's easy to keep up-to-date with new features. It provides usable, intuitive and unobtrusive purchase flows right out of the box based on proven industry best-practices - there are no major revisions required to get things right for your clients!


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Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Add a blog to your Magento store

Starting a web blog at your open source Magento store is a good way to promote the products you sell. This web blog will be a place for you to communicate with your potential customers and inform them about the advantages of your products. Posting interesting and useful articles you’ll make your blog a reliable online resource which will help you succeed in e-Commerce.

The best and the fastest way to learn is to have a blog implemented into Magento online store with the help of Lazzymonks Blog Extension for Magento. If you are attentive it won’t be a problem for you to enhance your Magento store with a stunning blog.

Note having started a web blog you can review the products you sell at your Magento store and answer your customers’ questions; you can also advice the best way your products can be used for. If you post interesting and relevant content your blog will rank well and search engines will come back to your site again and again bringing good traffic and future clients.


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Sunday, April 5, 2009

Some thoughts on open source versus commercial shopping carts.

 

The biggest decision between open source shopping carts and commercial  shopping carts is support. 

There are lots of free open-source software out there, such as zencart, megento, prestashop, opencart, etc.  The only problem is not all of them have good support systems.  Some of them are better than others.  If your e-commerce site goes down you shouldn't have to spend three days on a forum trying to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. 

I know that some commercial e-commerce software come with a little higher price tag, but as with anything else, usually you get what you pay for.   I would just suggest that when choosing an e-commerce software you do your research.  Especially if you are planning to go the commercial route.  Call the company up and talk to them.  See how friendly they are and if you get a good vibe from them.  If you are considering the open-source route, make sure you feel comfortable with the on-line community that supports the cart before you implement it.  That way when you have questions or issues that you need to fix you can maybe find a quick solution.

 

Besides, On the downside of open source shopping carts is that  it can be quite challenging when a new version is released. It takes time to catch up with a stable version of free open source shopping carts.

The commercial software is  quite good and user friendly at this part; however, we found it difficult to properly set up conversion tracking for our various advertising. Although we were growing profitably with this cart, there was always a sense that some of our advertising was being wasted or ineffective.


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Thursday, April 2, 2009

Top Five CPA Affiliate Programs You Must Try

 

Whether you are looking for a CPA (Cost Per Action) affiliate marketing program to join so that you can find products and services to recommend, or you want a program to run your company’s affiliate marketing program, these following programs can make or break your affiliate marketing efforts, :-)

• Commission Junction (cj) - Some of the largest businesses online use Commission Junction. While that’s no reason to rush right over to CJ, you shouldn’t discount it either. They clearly know what they’re doing. 

• ClixGalore - ClixGalore has quite a selection of affiliate programs to take advantage of. If you want to start an affiliate marketing program for your company, they can help you with that too. 

• LinkShare - One of the leading pay-per-action marketing programs online. Wal-Mart, Lego, and other recognized brands use LinkShare. Not a bad pick. 

• ShareASale - A custom program that operates to bring affiliates and products together. Great program. 

• Clickbank - Clickbank specializes in digital products: E-books, podcasts, videos, downloads, etc. One of the first affiliate programs to come online, Clickbank pretty much wrote the rules on affiliate marketing and just about every program now online owes a debt to Clickbank for paving the way. If you specialize in retailing digital products, you just might do well at Clickbank.

When you’re ready to start your affiliate marketing program or you are looking for a product to sell as an affiliate, try one of these programs.


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Tips to Rank in Other Engines Besides Google for Online Money Earnings

 

It's well known that Google is one of the best potential sources for traffic, however, as you may or may not be aware, YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine behind Google. Doing businesses using online video is going to maximize their YouTube efforts by employing some easy strategies to gain more visibility.

Also, one in five searches are image searches, and that alt tags and file name optimization are key. Thus, try to Rank Higher in image searches by:

Add images to your Google Local Business profile
- Enable Google Image Labeler in your Google Webmaster Tools account.
- Add images to local business citation sources.
- Add images to blog posts or news articles for syndication in Google news.
Ranking in Maps/Local Search may seem fairly obvious, but the strategies are different because you need to think about terms a local searcher would use to find your business. They’ll most likely use the city and state in their search, so you’ll want your site to be optimized for those as well as business-specific keywords. 

finally, Ranking in Blog Search has the following positives:

- Number of RSS subscriptions
- Clicks on SERP post links
- Blogrolls
- number of "high quality" blogrolls the blog is in
- ability for visitors to tag posts
- whether or not people are tagging them
- References to the blog by sources other than blogs
- Pagerank

In summary, there are lots of opportunities to get your site found other than just regular google search.


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Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Opencart vs. Magento: More Discussions

 

It is really based on each one's expectations to  choose which Open source ecommerce shopping cart to be used. They are actually very different.

For instance,  Magento has alot more features "out-of-the-box" than Open Cart, from the outset this software appears to be ideal. It’s very much geared for the modern web developer with it’s trendy feel, complete with snazzy design and gradients on the demo store.

BUT, Magento is a lot more complicated and alot more resource hungry.

Some considerations:
1. Magento requires a fast host which has been optimised for Magento. This host costs loads more than than your average host that can host Opencart.

2. Magento requires lots of time to understand and modify the layout.
Try out Opencart on a free hosting account and see if it's what you need.


I would choose Open Cart for a small site and Magento for a large huge site or if I was a developer deploying multiple sites for my clients.

I left Magento because it runs and I don't consider paying for a dedicated server to be cost effective for my size.


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CB vs. CJ CPA Affiliate Programs

 


There are always debates between choosing cb (clickbank) or cj (commission junction) as your CPA affiliate program. Here are the comparisons I summarized based on some debates over Internet:

Clickbank (cb):
high percentage commission and 15-day payout. Because Hottest selling products online are digital ebooks. However competition is a bit higher bit if you can break even the ROI is awesome! So choosing Clickbank if your audiences buy digital products.

if you like "freestyle" method of promoting, since creating affiliate links and starting is pretty easy in clickbank, however, clickbank affiliate links can be changed to their own affiliate names easily and thus it will cut your commissions.

If you're just looking for blind traffic to your website and require credit card payment services, go with ClickBank, because CB doesn't give it's merchants much as far as reporting goes, and no contact with the affiliates running your program.

Finally, CB has more refund rate.

Commission Junction (CJ):
CJ has tons of high-quality products, but too many rules for cj. don't do this and that, or your relationship with the advertiser will be cut.

CJ has dynamic affiliate links, so can't easily to change...

If you're looking to build relationships with your affiliates and already have access to credit card processing, go with Commission Junction.

BTW., there are many affiliate networks which offer similar services to CJ, and do so at far more reasonable prices. For instance, there's Shareasale.com if your program is for a shopping cart type per-sale website.

In summary, choosing CB for good commission rates and choosing CJ for better company choices.


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Customization comparison: osCommerce vs. zencart vs. magento vs. opencart vs. prestashop

 


Customizing the open source ecommerce shopping carts for a unique online experience for visitors is vitally important for shopping cart owners. Below offers the evaluation of each open source shopping cart application's customization capabilities.

osCommerce    
Layout of the osCommerce pages is table based. There is very little customization that can be done from the admin panel.

Zen Cart    
Based on osCommerce, Zen Cart's layout is DIV based and relies more on CSS than its predecessor. ZC also offers more configuration options from the admin panel, such as configuring the columns and side boxes to include and offering an admin based editor for changing information included on several standard pages including the main page.

Magento    
Magento has implemented their own version of "Themes" in the design of the Magento pages. Their themes are implemented on a modular basis and provides an unprecedented flexibility in design choices, including the ability to have different designs on a per page basis. This flexibility comes at the cost of complexity, including a complex software architecture.

OpenCart    
OpenCart has a relatively simple architecture for controlling the look and layout of pages. Even without formal documentation, It is not very hard to figure out how it works and how to make changes. The architecture makes it possible to create multiple template sets that can be applied from the admin panel.           

PrestaShop    
PrestaShop allows for the turning off and on different page elements from the admin panel as well as the ability to edit the home page title and description. This includes the ability to change the position of the various elements. Beyond that, they use a theme architecture similar to OpenCart's. There are CSS files and template files that can also be edited.


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