I want to develop an ecommerce website.I just confuse, which platform want to choose magento,OScommere,prestashop,wordpress,etc…15 open source option i think.
Before anyone can give you a meaningful suggestion it’s important that we understand your business and goals to know what’s right. Your signature implies that you design sites but is this one for you? Is it for an established business or a brand new venture? How seriously will you be getting behind it? Do you need any special integrations or features beyond a standard cart?
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As Ted suggests, every online store has different needs, so what may be perfect for one may not work or might be overkill for another. We recently switched the shopping cart that we recommend in our online eCommerce training course. We took a lot of things into consideration, tested more than a dozen platforms, and ultimately chose BigCommerce as the best solution for meeting the needs of the majority of websites.
Not only are the various features of the shopping cart important, but being able to actually use the software is a huge component in your decision. Magento, for instance, is a great platform but had a much higher learning curve that we thought would be too difficult for the majority of our members - especially ones that were brand new to eCommerce. The only way you are going to know for sure is to utilize the free trial period that all respectable shopping cart companies offer. It took us months of testing to ultimately pick one. Our three finalists were BigCommerce, Americommerce and CoreCommerce, by the way.
Whatever platform you decide upon, I would recommend getting a hosted solution rather than trying to host it yourself. Non-hosted solutions are never 100% PCI compliant, which could cost you far more money in non-compliance fees (not mention lawsuits if there was a breach) than the little bit you save by hosting sites yourself.
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Thanks for your valuable suggestion.i will workout these
Hi, I’m going to hijack this thread since it’s the same question I have. But, I know what I want, just don’t know the best way to get there.
My background: I have about 8 years experience in PHP/MySQL development. Most is self taught as my employer was too cheap to send me to training :). I spent most of my time creating surveys in and intranet environment, so security was not as huge a concern as internet. Thus, I don’t know all that much about how to make things hack proof.
About my store: I have an embroidery business that I run from my home. I want to go online to help increase sales. A customer will need to choose their base item (shirt, cap, saddle pad, koozie, etc…) and then select a monogram, name, design, etc…, thread color.
What I need: I need for product variations to be flexible. For instance, certain fonts will only work for a 3-letter monogram and will not work for a name. So, if a customer selects that they want their name on a saddle pad, I don’t want to show the fonts that won’t work with a name in the drop down. Also, if someone want a Koozie, I don’t want to show designs that are too wide for a koozie with has a max width of 3".
What I don’t want/need: I already have a url and host at HostGator. I don’t want to move everything to a different host if I don’t have to. Also, as in BigCommerce, $39.95/mo is a bit steep for my budget right now.
I have been playing around with ZenCart, but unless I write my own module for product variations, it won’t work for me.
I’ve played around with WordPress/Cart66/Gravity Forms, but can’t seem to find any documentation to figure out how to get the three to work together. I know there’s a way, but I just cannot seem to pry the information out of any of the forum moderators.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Alisa
Dancing Bay Embroidery
As far as my knowledge is concerned mangento is most popular one but wait a minute. for whom you are developing your store? Does website owner has the technical knowledge? If not than better is to go for Prestashop as it requires less learning curve to get started with.
I am using prestashop, it’s much easier and flexible for a newbie.
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I’m developing for myself. I thought opening and running my own business would be less stressful than being a programmer for a big company with a jerk for a boss. 
(:
I will look at Magento and PrestaShop. I looked at available themes for Magento and was not that impressed. I have not looked at PrestaShop themes yet. I like the ZenCart themes and found several that I really liked, but alas, I cannot get product variation with conditional logic. At this point I’m thinking of going back to WordPress/Cart66/GravityForms because with GravityForms, I can get that conditional logic. Formatting is a bit limited, but hey, if I can get slick variations, maybe layout is the least of my problems.
Thanks,
Alisa
Dancing Bay Embroidery
OpenCart is the best one. Not sure if Megnto will be good for bhadriram’s needs.
Tell me about OpenCart. My main interest is in conditional logic for product variations. If I have a customer who would like to add embroidery to an item, then:
They have these choices of Personalization:
- Single Letter Monogram - $10
- 3 Letter Monogram - $10
- Name (up to 2 lines of text) - $10
- Breed Logo - $10
- Design - $10
- Design & 1 line of text - $15
Fonts differ depending on whether they choose a Monogram or Name because some of the fonts won’t work with straight text, so this is my first conditional logic. Also, if the customer chooses a single monogram, the I only give them a small text box which is limited to 1 character. 3 Letter monogram is 3 text boxes each limited to 1 character, and Name/Text is 2 text boxes limited to 12 characters each.
I have this all worked out on paper, so I know what I need for each product variation.
The only thing so far that I’ve found that will do this is Gravity Forms which is a $39 to $199 plugin for WordPress. However, between my template, shopping cart, and gravity forms, there is not a lot of help. I know it is possible to integrate the 3, but I can’t seem to wrap my head around it all and don’t get much help from the different forums.
If OpenCart will do what I need, then I have no qualms about at least giving it a try.
Thanks,
Alisa
Dancing Bay Embroidery
you can personalize the product by using variation module. Then you will just need to configure it.
Question is, with the variation module, can you use conditional logic? i.e. If this is selected then show that.
Thanks,
Alisa
in this case you will need to code a bit the variation module. I know lots e-commerce shopping cart solutions. No one offers such a module.
OpenCart system is good choice.
Ah, but Gravity Forms which is paid Wordpress plugin does. I wish they would write modules for the true ecommerce shopping cart solutions.
Install the WordPress 3, and installed the eShop plugin. wham bam thank you ma’am.
I have the same problem with you, starting a ecommerce business is not easy. Traffic and high conversion rate is my target.
I’m back to my origional plan of WordPress, and ecommerce theme, Cart66, and Gravity Forms. Cart66 is pretty light weight I’ve read, but Gravity Forms beefs it up quite a bit. If you have lots of conditional logic on showing/hiding options in your form, then I haven’t found another way around it. Now, Gravity Forms will work with other WP shopping cart plugins, but good luck finding which ones. The only way I found out about Gravity Forms was from reading in Cart66 support forums. However, when I read in Gravity Forms support forums, I read about people using other shopping cart plugins.
So a Google search came up with these: Cart66 (PHPurchase), Jingoshop, eStore, MarketPress, WooCommerce. I’ve posted a question on the Gravity Forms support forum to see is I can get a list of the carts that will work with GF, so if anyone responds, I’ll post the info here.
Tnx, Alisa
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Best known open source CMS to develop E-commerce site according to me is magento. Its dashboard is easy to use and maintain and tutorials on it are also available free on the net.
But does Magento allow for a conditional logic order form? If it doesn’t have that then it won’t work for me. So far, the only solution I’ve found is WordPress/Cart66/Gravity Forms. Cart66 is optional, but it is one of the carts that will work with Gravity Forms. However, Gravity Forms is exclusive to WordPress. I would truly love a true ecommerce solution that has a conditional logic order form built in, but so far cannot find one. Tnx, Alisa
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