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Sunday, June 28, 2009

Oscommerce vs. Zen Cart vs. Magento vs. Prestashop on SEOs

 

This article will describe the most popular open source shopping carts, such as oscommerce, zen cart, magento, and prestashop, with the focus on their capabilities with the SEO, and all of these are based on php/mySQL.

While choosing the best eCommerce shopping cart for online business website people often ignore the SEO while focusing more on the features being offered by the shopping cart.


However, when they have completed the shopping cart installation, configuration and try to promote the online shop, then only they will realize that they are in trouble as some shopping carts are not good prepared for the SEO:

osCommerce

The osCommerce SEO contribution – osCommerce: Ultimate SEO URLs, freely and publicly available, is not well capable of providing the full features for SEO. It requires tweaking to make it a perfect tool to utilize the full potential of SEO.

Zen Cart

Zen Cart, another popular free shopping cart and similar to osCommerce, also offers the SEO friendly URLs capability however customizing it further is a difficult task as it is based on Smarty.

Magento

Magento is one of the most search engine friendly e-commerce platforms straight out of the box. The Search Engine Optimization for Magento, enable Server URL rewrites, can be enabled through the script admin area -> System -> Configuration -> Web -> Search Engines Optimization:

Besides, since Magento runs on a form of the Zend Framework, there are numerous options for implementing SEO friendly URLs.

Prestashop
Prestashop has the default templates that are much better than any of other open source shopping carts.

It's also very good at SEO, you can describe articles and products more specific in the meta description and keywords. And it carries with the ROBOT.txt, SITEMAP analysis of documents, as well as Google Analysis Module, you can fill in relevant background from the code, this is not complicated.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Six Critical Steps for Zencart, Oscommerce, Magento, Opencart and Prestashop to Success

 

Create an online store using open source shopping cart , such as Zencart, Oscommerce, Magento, Opencart or Prestashop, but How do you get customers? How do you receive payment?

The following six critical steps is the same to all above mentioned shopping cart:

 
Step 1: Create your website
you can either hire a qualified web designer to create a website for you, or you can use an online site builder. The key point is: Your template may not be unique, but your content will.

Step 2: Set up an e-commerce store
When you set up an e-commerce shopping cart, you're providing a way for your customers to bring their purchases to the cash register. The program you choose will allow you to enter your products in the database and allow shoppers to choose products when they click on "Add to cart" or something similar.
All these well-known shopping carts, zencart, osCommerce, Magento, Opencart and Prestashop, allow you to do these tasks:

Add, edit, and delete product categories and other information
Set tax rates and charge tax
Receive payment via numerous online and offline payment processing methods
Bill customers
And much more

Step 3: Get a merchant account and payment gateway
A merchant account provider authorizes the transfer of payments to your account, and a payment gateway transfers the information from your customers' financial institutions to yours.
Most merchant accounts have setup fees, transaction fees, monthly fees, and statement fees. The transaction fees are less than what you'd pay using a third party credit card processor such as PayPal. With all the fees, however, the overall cost is typically lower only if your monthly sales volume is over about a thousand dollars.

Step 4: Create a secure payment environment
A Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate enables you to receive credit card information securely from your customers. When a payment page is using SSL data to encrypt data, a small image of a lock appears at the bottom right of the screen.
Some web hosts offer SSL certificates as part of their hosting packages. If your web host package doesn't include SSL certificates, you can purchase one separately.
Please be noted that With PayPal, no SSL certificate is required.

Step 5: Generate traffic
Your products are on display in your newly designed store, your shopping cart is set up and ready to use, and you have everything in place to be able to receive payments securely. Now all you need are customers.
This is where marketing comes in:

 
Submit your site to search engines.
Advertise your site.
Keep your company name in front of your customers with a regular email newsletter.
Add more content to your website to keep it fresh.

Monitor your website traffic to see where it's coming from and how you can increase traffic for key content areas.

Step 6: Improve Conversion ratio

The visitors who succeed in buying goods from your online store are called conversions.  And your conversion ratio is the percentage of your visitors who convert. 

To improve your online store's conversion ratio, Starting from what you consider success, whether it’s filling out a contact form, making a purchase, entering a promotional code, etc.  Then map how a visitor might be instructed to get there and trace how a visitor might have seen those instructions.  Many site owners find it’s not as easy to convert as they’d envisioned.

Discover How to close more sales by improving your conversion ratio. Learn to match the client's NEEDS with the Features & Benefits associated with your online store's unique products and services. Overcome any objection and close the sale.

In summary, creating an online store using open source shopping cart is easy , such as Zencart, Oscommerce, Magento, Opencart or Prestashop, but following these six critical steps to get customers and  receive payment is a long term practice.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

simple comparison among Zencart, Oscommerce, Mangeto, Prestashop, Opencart, on Godaddy

 

Keywords:  Open Source, Shopping Carts, Software Feature, Comparison On Godaddy: Zencart, Oscommerce, Magento, Prestashop, Opencart

Think about it… your ecommerce business will be powered by your chosen shopping carts software, choosing the wrong solution can cause you further headaches in the future.

Below are simple comparison among Zencart, Oscommerce, Mangeto, Prestashop, Opencart, on Godaddy web hosting, based on the following features:

1) How Easy Is It To Use

Magento > Prestashop > Zencart > Oscommerce > Opencart

Almost all shopping carts have point and click interfaces but what may seem easy to someone else may not be simple to you. So, this is very much a personal choice.

You definitely don’t want to waste too much time testing, trying and learning how the software works, so please make sure you choose one that is easy to use.

2) Connection Speed, Stability & Future Growth Potential

Zencart > Opencart > Oscommerce > Prestashop > Magento

When shopping online, people move at internet speed. So, it’s critical that your store loads up quickly and is up and running properly all the time. As being mentioned above, all the comparisons are carried out on Godaddy hosting, there may be a difference is you choose other hosting providers.

3) Store Pages Created Are Search Engine Friendly

Opencart > Zencart > Prestashop > Magneto > Oscommerce

provided that I only installed some easily used plugins, please forgive me if I missed some seo plugins for magento and oscommerce.

Since you absolutely must make sure the shopping cart you choose generates search engine friendly pages with static URLs. the top shopping carts software providers should also give you tools to help your store pages rank well for the search terms you’re targeting. So, those who do provide such tools are a bonus.

4) Promotion Tools

Zencart > Oscommerce > Opencart > Magento > Prestashop

Although you can probably getting a cheaper ecommerce software and buying the marketing tools separately, the best shopping carts include marketing tools to get you started quickly promoting your store and start selling. Since marketing your store is your most important job after you’ve finished building it, any bundled tools will get you started quickly and save you from any large initial investments.

OScommerce vs Zencart vs Magento vs Prestashop: Hands-on Experience shared

 

 

There are many good open source PHP e-commerce systems, such as OScommerce, and developed on the basis of OScommerce by ZenCart and so on.


The first test is OScommerce, regardless of experience or reputation in the industry is a leader of a group, I tried, indeed, very detailed, but the OS template is not independent, it is not too adaptation.


Then try the ZenCart, it is very similar to OScommerce, background interface.

I personally feel that pleasing to the eye than the OScommerce, and that it is independent of the template. Similarly, a breakdown of its features are also very very detailed, because I do not need to consider to calculate the distance freight transport, so I closed it on this option, and then there was BUG - normal freight charges will not be able to show. There is no question of re-playing.

 
Magento is a very powerful electric business system, but read the introduction, I did not even try try, because it can be from a background of managing multiple sites and stores, which I do not have access to, and there are many other very strong features.

Finally, I chose the PrestaShop , you can Look at the background of its presentation here http://www.prestashop.com/demo/demo/
Need to enter user name: demo@prestashop.com and password: prestashop_demo

First of all, its interface is very easy to use. Functions, I do not think that lost OScommerce and ZenCart, from transportation costs, calculated in different currencies, the choice of trading countries and regions, to cart the design, are in place.
And it more than the default templates that are to be two good-looking too much.

Its very good SEO, you can also describe articles and products into the more specific your description and keywords. And it has been carrying the ROBOT documents, SITEMAP analysis of documents, as well as Google.

Google Analysis Module, you can fill in relevant background from the code, this is not complicated.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Shopping Cart Migration Service to Zen Cart

 

 

If you have made the decision that Zen Cart is the best choice for you, then don’t hesitate - move your store to Zen Cart easily with Cart2Cart. This is unique online shopping cart migration service that allows you to migrate all content of your store quickly and accurately.

Cart2Cart service allows you to migrate products, customers, orders, manufacturers, product categories, images and other data to Zen Cart. Currently the service supports the following shopping carts: osCommerce, X-Cart, Zen Cart, CRE Loaded, Magento, Pinnacle Cart, etc. Other shopping carts will be constantly added to this list.

Make a smart decision for your business - use Cart2Cart to migrate your data and save your time, which you can spend automating other aspects of your store. This professional shopping cart migration service makes your migration to Zen Cart pretty smooth.