Magento Commerce Review – The Best Of Open Source E-commerce

There has been a lot of publicity surrounding Magento and if you have not heard of this software, then you must of been lost on an island. Since their launch back in the Summer of 2007 (31st March), this software has improved and evolved over the last couple of years taking in the tremendous amount of feedback from users. The company behind this project is Verian who are leaders within the open source industry. They have created a shopping cart that is feature rich out of the box and Magento Commerce has become a leading shopping cart for open source e-commerce platforms. I recently reviewed Zen Cart writing about the Pros and Cons, and if you haven’t read the review, I would suggest taking a look at it to use it as a comparison.

An Overview Of Magento Commerce

As of the date of writing this review, I have tested Magento Commerce version 1.3.1. It is one of the latest and most powerful open-source e-commerce solutions that I have come across. These are some of the features you will find within the box:

• Marketing Promotions and Tools
• Analytics and Reporting
• Search Engine Optimization
• Site Management
• Catalog Management
• Catalog Browsing
• Product Browsing
• Mobile Commerce
• International Support
• Checkout
• Shipping
• Payment
• Customer Service
• Customer Accounts
• Order Management

Rather than give rewrite the benefits of Magento Commerce has about their software, you can read more and try out their demo on their website at: Magento Commerce.

Read more

Zen Cart Review – The Pros And Cons Of ZenCart

Over the last four years of running my Internet business I have been very fortunate to use a very robust and reliable system called Zen Cart. All of my transactions are processed electronically through this platform and my business has been streamlined because of this. This is a biased review, and the only system I continue to use today. Though I will be upfront and say that Zen Cart is not perfect and I am always on the look out to find better systems such as Magento Commerce. I will be reviewing that shortly as well, so stay tuned. Also if you would like to see a couple of the websites I have developed using Zencart visit DBV.com.au and AsianGroceryShop.com.

An Overview Of Zen Cart

Zen Cart is an online software designed solely for e-commerce businesses. It uses PHP, MySQL and is an open source project that was developed by a community of shop owners, programmers, designers, and consultants who just wanted a simple e-commerce solution. Being open source like Wordpress, the software is free for anyone to use and it allows anyone to modify, develop and distribute. If you would like more information and details about Zen Cart, visit their tutorial section and read their about FAQ.

As of the date I write this review I am basing my experience on version 1.38a of Zen Cart. There was an announcement made in December 2008 for the release of version 2.0 and if you would like to know more about what is happening in the upcoming version, please read the Coming Soon: Zencart 2.0. For now, you can continue below to read my review on the Zen Cart system.

Installation Of Zen Cart
Most hosting companies offer Simple Scripts or Fantastico, which are application installers to help install Zen Cart. I would recommend using them as it saves time and also the hassle of setting up databases yourself. Zen Cart is one of the standard shopping carts available for installation so it should be a breeze to install. If you decide to go through and install Zen Cart yourself then you will need to read the instructions provided and it will take some time to get through. I would only recommend this route if you have a strong knowledge in PHP and MySQL as it will require you to edit some files and utilise FTP tools. You can download Zen Cart here

The Pros Of Zen Cart

Zen Cart Is A Free Bundled With Addons Available
Zen Cart is a great online software and best of all it is free. Since it’s inception over 5 years ago many developers have created numerous add-ons which can be downloaded and installed onto the Zen Cart system at any time. They are publicly available on the Zen Cart website and gives your e-commerce software extra functionality. You can download add-ons ranging from administrative tools anywhere to adding extra languages.

A Great Product Management System
The key to running any successful e-commerce business is how well you can manage your products. With Zen Cart, you are provided with a wide range of product options such as:

• Allows you to sort your products in categories and sub-categories
• Manage and control your stock levels
• Create attributes for your products, such as colours, sizes, and much more
• The ability to create products in bulk using the Easy Populate add-on
• Create specials and featured products
• Write reviews for each product

Each option can be activated when you need it or turned off. Zen Cart’s product management system is by far the most comprehensive system I have used to date and everything is at your finger tips as it is all linked to your orders and customers.

A Wide Range Of Free And Paid Templates Available
Most Internet businesses usually want a customised website and want different features to show their customers, which is why Zen Cart has a wide range of free and paid templates. You will find free basic templates available on the Zen Cart website that can be easily installed changing the colours and layout of your website. If you want more customisation, try some paid templates which start from about $50 and upwards. Here are two sites I recommend: Algozone and Template Monster.

Forum And Community Support Is Good
Unfortunately there is no formal support from Zen Cart or a team hired to handle customer service being a free product. Though there is a strong forum and community that does support and try their best to help. I have posted on their forum many times and got a response quite fast. Most of the answers are found by running a quick search and most of the time they will have a step by step process to fix the problem. I have to admit though it does get a bit technical and if you lack PHP knowledge then I would agree it can be quite frustrating to find a solution.

There is also some documentation available laid out in a Wiki section and FAQ on the Zen Cart website. If you are looking for a detailed manual there is one solely for administrators and it can be downloaded from a PDF file.

If all else fails, then try to find a Zen Cart experienced programmer and pay them to help fix your problem. They won’t cost too much and are very reasonable at what they do. I used a programmer to do some modifications to my website previously and I found them in the forum as well. Simply place a post asking for a programmer and specify what you want done. I am sure you will get people to reply if you pay them.

Export To Major Accounting Softwares Are Available
Currently Zen Cart supports both QuickBooks and MYOB accounting. Though, one module is free and the other does cost. So if you are looking to implement Zen Cart into your Internet business you will want to consider which accounting package to use. Currently there is a free QuickBooks export module that you can download and install available in the Zen Cart Downloads section. Alternatively if you are using MYOB, check out the company that has this export available at Zencart2MYOB.

The Cons Of Zen Cart

Originally when I first started using Zen Cart I was not very impressed by the not so appealing website after the installation. You will you see why:

Not Cosmetically Appealing
As with most of the open source “out of the box solutions”, I knew there were going to be somewhat a lot of customising to be done. What I found at first was the default skin that Zen Cart provided had a lot of “stuff” that were not needed and it made the whole store look a bit cluttered for my liking. Furthermore it was extra work to turn off all the banner advertisements and also to rearrange the boxes to have a simplistic look. I believe there has to be some element of visual appeal for any new user wanting to use Zen Cart as their e-commerce system.

Very Basic Reporting
Most of the basic reports are available which include products viewed, products purchased and customers orders. It lacks more sophisticated reports such as sales by products, profit on each product, profit margins made and so forth. There are additional addons which can be installed but are still not up to scratch. Basically I would not expect in depth analysis of sales, customers and products going through the door. You will need to generate these reports from your accounting software.

Upgrades And Add-On Integrations Are Difficult
This is the big downside of Zen Cart. Once you have installed Zen Cart and made modifications to the software, don’t expect to upgrade for a very long time. In my past experience if you decide to upgrade to the next version, you will basically have to start from the beginning again. The system has not been designed to upgrade without overwriting all your addons and customisations. So if you did any modifications like I have on my websites, I would be very cautious to stick to the existing version. Unlike Wordpress for example, if there are major upgrades or upgrades for add-ons it is a simple click of a mouse and the rest of the system will do the upgrade for you.

I am not saying it is not possible to upgrade, it is just extremely time consuming and a very tedious process. I have upgraded my Zen Cart websites twice from the previous versions of 1.1 to 1.2 and to 1.38a. Each time I have had to do a clean install and migrate all the data to the new version over a very long tedious process. Hopefully when the new version comes out it will eliminate a lot of these issues.

Newsletter And Email Autoresponder Is Not Reliable
I have noticed once your database begins to hit the 1000 customer mark, the email newsletter system and autoresponder facilities begin to show a slower response time. As most hosting companies do not allow for more than 50 emails to be sent out per hour via their mail servers, a majority of the emails do not get sent or are blocked by other mail providers. This begs the question to use other email service providers that will send your emails and guarantee at least a 99% delivery rate. One provider I use and talk about a lot is Aweber and I currently use this to manage my customer email database to send my updates and newsletter through. Unfortunately Zen Cart does not have any addons that are sufficient enough to automatically register a new customer to an email autoresponder and add it to the database. This is a major marketing tool that is missing in Zen Cart that can help Internet businesses grow their online customer database.

Overall Rating On Zen Cart
After using Zen Cart for a few years now I have seen the development and growth of this project. When I first started using Zen Cart it was very basic and I had to do a lot tweaking and personally add code to make it function the way I wanted. This is not ideal if you want a plug and play solution, which is what most e-commerce businesses need. Over time Zen Cart has improved this issue, but has not completely created a plug and play solution just like Wordpress has. I expect the new version of Zen Cart 2.0 will have this ability, as most open source projects begin to migrate to automatic updates rather than manually installing the plugins ourselves.

My rating for Zen Cart is a 7 out of 10 and I would recommend it as a solution to start off with for any small to medium business owners.

Tyrone Shum
Zen Cart User

e-Commerce With Integrated Blog (e-Blogging)

Lately I’ve been exploring different e-Commerece web applications and e-Commerce plugins for Wordpress. Since this blog mainly focuses on how to create profit from an Internet business, the first thing is to choose which web application is suitable for your Internet business. There’s not a one size fits all because each Internet business has different needs and requirements. Though, the foundation (system) can be the same across the board, whether you choose to use Wordpress as a customer management system (C.M.S) or an e-Commerce solution such as Magento, OsCommerce or Zencart. All of these systems work very well and they are constantly being updated and developed for users.

I Am Still Not Convinced With Using Wordpress e-Commerce Plugins

I wrote a post comparing Using A Blog Vs. Using A E-commerce Website?, which discusses the differences between a blog and an e-commerce system. Then over the last few weeks I’ve been writing reviews looking at the different e-Commerce plugins available for Wordpress. If you want to see the various reviews, read the articles section under eBlog Reviews. What I am exploring today are the different options available to integrate a blog into an existing e-Commerce system. If you have read all of my reviews about the different e-Commerce plugins for Wordpress, you will see that I am still not completely convinced. Wordpress for blogging is a fantastic system and is more than capable of handling large volumes of data. Though, once you add on an e-Commerce plugin it does not have the same functionality in comparison to an e-Commerce system, which are more robust to handle large consumer transactions. Now, the big challenge is, most e-Commerce systems do not have a blog interface built-in, which raises the question of how to integrate an e-commerce system with a blog?

Why Have An e-Commerce System Integrated With A Wordpress Blog?

Over the years, web users have found blogs to be more compelling to look at than just shopping sites. Most blogs have written reviews and information relating to a product or service, allowing any web user to do their research before making a purchase. Imagine that you were looking to buy the latest iPhone and you wanted to look at some reviews and read other people’s opinions before spending your money. If you typed “iPhone review” in Google, the first site that appears is usually a review site such as Cnet or Smart Company, which all run a blogging application such as Wordpress. These review sites usually only provide a review and opinions, but don’t have a link saying where to buy. This is where having an e-Commerce system integrated with a Wordpress blog can benefit your Internet business. Instead of the customer going to other websites to read reviews and opinions about the product (by that time they may have forgotten your website), you can have your own reviews and comments linked to your products. This encourages the customer to stay on your website and helps them save time looking for other places for reviews and opinions.

Additionally, the benefit of having a Wordpress blog integrated with your e-Commerce system, is that it helps to increase your search engine rankings. With higher search engines rankings, your Internet business will be found much quicker and also help with becoming an authoritative site.

How To Integrate An e-Commerce System With A Wordpress Blog?

Luckily for us, most e-Commerce systems have a special add-on package which has been developed by experienced programmers. At this point, I would recommend you hire a web developer to install or modify an e-Commerce system because it will can save time for you to focus on other important business tasks. Though I will explain to you how it generally works with some systems I have test:

Magento: This is a relatively new e-Commerce system that is taking the e-Commerce Open Source market by storm. It’s very user friendly and is very powerful, just like how Wordpress has been very successful for many Internet businesses. Magento has an add-on extension called Lazzymonks Wordpress Integration 2.61, which allows Wordpress to be integrated with their system. You can easily access Wordpress from Magento’s administration as well and would save you the hassle of logging out of Magento and logging into Wordpress.

OsCommerce: This system has been around since March 2000, which shows a long history of e-Commerce development for them. OsCommerce also has an add-on which is quite easy to install – the Wordpress Integration. Unfortunately this add-on does require you to log onto Wordpress separately. Once you have installed Wordpress with OsCommerce you will be able to still post your articles as normal and all the posts will be integrated into the OsCommerce theme you choose.

ZenCart: This is the system I have been using for many years for many of my clients and own e-Commerce shops. It is easy to set up the Wordpress On Zencart add-on with a few installation files to upload. Though, I found it wasn’t matching the style of the shopfront at first with this basic add-on. I did hired a programmer to modify some files which generated a good result in the end.

With many Internet businesses seeing the growth of web users searching on blogs and search engines today, it would be unfortunate to see you lose sales because you did not have a blog integrated with your e-Commerce shop. There are great benefits with having both these systems integrated into your Internet business and someday e-Commerce with integrated blogs will be the new community called e-Blogging.

Read how you can promote your eBlog: eBlogging 101: Getting Your Internet Business To Stand Out From The Crowd

Tyrone Shum
Starting the e-Blogging Revolution.