Top Drupal Commerce Modules

Ecommerce sites with payment gateways and multi language support are nothing new. But, some technologies do make a difference, which is precisely the case with Drupal. Being the second most popular CMS platform in the world, has meant an even greater surge in its already rising customer base.

Drupal helps you build highly interactive, feature-rich websites with powerful modules that can be fully integrated into your ecommerce portal. But, what exactly are the Drupal modules that help you build a robust website? We list some of them for you here:

Ubercart 

Ubercart is an effective and user-friendly module that you should definitely give a try.

Key features:

•     Automatic account generation
•     Single page checkout
•     Activity logging
•     Integrated payment system   

Currency exchange: 

Ecommerce basically means shopping via the Internet. And your customers can be from anywhere in the globe. The currency exchange module displays the exchange rates of different currencies on your eCommerce site and thus helps you in dealing with the pulls and strains in the global financial market.

Drupal Commerce :-

Built on Drupal 7, Drupal Commerce simplifies online store development by simplifying coding for you. 

Key features of Drupal commerce: 

•     Dynamic product display
•     Order management system
•     Flexible product administration system

Invoice :
 
This is a module that manages the records and helps you generate invoices in a HTML or PDF format.

Amazon Store :
 
Amazon links your eCommerce store with Amazon.com without any trouble, helping you in selling products of your store directly via Amazon. To make this module work, all that you need to do is create a personal Associate ID and after you do that, install this module and link it to the Amazon associate store. 

So now you know some of the modules associated with a Drupal-powered eCommerce store. The afore mentioned modules are just some of the plenty made available by Drupal.

Ways to a Fast Ecommerce Website

A fast, performing e-commerce website is today an essential prerequisite for business success.

Yet for those unfamiliar with eCommerce, the prospect of getting a store online can be tasking. The good news though, is that it isn’t as complicated as you might be led to believe and it boils down to only a few options in the end. We look at what options you have in your quest for a fast website.

Buying an off-the-shelf website 

 

Today you can buy a good eCommerce website for shelling a little money 'out-of-the-box'. The person who sells it to you will usually be able to offer fast customization as well so as to make it look like it’s “yours”.

The downside is that you will have to compromise a little in terms of ensuring every single requirement of yours built in. You might have to accept parts of your website work in the manner somebody else originally designed rather than how you would have done it yourself. 

Using a free shopping cart 

 

Using a free shopping cart basically involves picking up a skeleton website and making your own changes to it to make it your own. Many of these have built-in support for electronic payments etc.They are genuinely free and rich in functionality, despite you not paying anything for them! 

The main negative is that because these proto-sites are free, there are many things that may not be quite as sophisticated as you might want. Some of these may also have more bugs than would be the case if you were using a professionally designed website.

Do it yourself 

 

Today you have a number of free software environments, like Joomla, that provide you with facilities to build your own website to a level you desire. There are several options in this category and most are extremely attractive. 

 

The downside is that you are going to spend a much time building your site in the first place. Some like Drupal, require more technical skills and familiarity with programming concepts than others. 

 

If you are found wanting on those, then the time to create a site is going to get even longer.

Professional company 

 

You can, of course, simply contact an ecommerce service providing company and ask them to build a secure, responsive site for you right from scratch and according to your own design. 

 

You will end up with a final product that looks like what you exactly wanted and is in line with your expectations. However, the lead times maybe longer here due to technical support issues.

5 Features That Make a Great Ecommerce Website

Ecommerce has witnessed stupendous growth in the last few years. With more and more people taking to mobile, ecommerce is turning a new leaf with stores quickly becoming more mobile friendly. Even businesses that were initially reluctant to join the bandwagon are forced to reconsider their original positions. This is not to suggest that the ecommerce environment is all hunky-dory. Demand is limited, and supply is growing at a fast pace. Unless you carve a distinct niche for yourself, you might walk into the sunset soon. So, how do you differentiate yourself?

Responsive Web Design 

 

Responsive web design means your site should adapt to the screen of the device in which it is being browsed. Nowadays, people don't browse websites on just PCs and laptops. Most of the searching is done on mobile/tablets/smartphones. In order to provide a smooth and seamless user experience, you need to make sure that your ecommerce store is fully responsive.

Mobile Website or Mobile App

Investing in a dedicated mobile website or a mobile app is even better compared to a responsive website. This is because a mobile website is specifically designed for handheld devices, and therefore its functionality provides for the best user experience possible. A mobile app is a great idea no doubt, but it should serve major operating systems like Android, iOS and Windows. You probably need only one of the two (a mobile website or a mobile app), but having both is not a bad idea if you can afford it. Look at what suits your budget and gives the best experience within that.

Suitable Technology

 
Finding the right technology is the most crucial part in building your ecommerce website. Look for a scalable platform, as it will help you tremendously in the long run. PHP provides many good frameworks to build good ecommerce portals. Drupal, Zencart and Ubercart are good options if you’re looking at a smaller website. However, the leader in this category undoubtedly would be Magento.

Strong Backend 

 

The backend is as important as the front end. You need to ensure that your website is secure and is not vulnerable to threats and attack. You must also ensure your site has enough capacity to handle traffic especially during new product launches or hot deals.

Regular Maintenance

Get regular feedback from users. Act upon it. Listening to customers and acting on their requests is essential to getting them to visit your website again and again. Strive for a better design, a better UI, better navigation, and better support. Don’t be satisfied. Satisfaction means stagnation.

Magento vs Oscommerce

 

Magento and osCommerce are both popular ecommerce platforms, but you have to ultimately choose one that fits you the best. Running an osCommerce website requires the web server to support PHP and MySQL. osCommerce offers a range of features for ecommerce stores to be setup fairly and quickly with ease.

Magento, on the other hand, is a highly efficient open source ecommerce platform. Offering an extensive suite of powerful tools that help create and manage your online store, Magento runs on the Apache/MySQL/PHP platform and requires a reliable web hosting service. Support is provided free by an active Magento community. 

The vast array of rich, enterprise-level features, and quality of build have been key elements of Magento’s success . From merchandising to pricing to promotions, Magento lets you control every facet of your store. There are no limits to creativity as Magento lets you create stunningly beautiful themes take your brand's visibility several notches up, adding trust and thrust to your business.

Advantages and disadvantages of Magento over osCommerce:

• Magento requiress dedicated servers from particular hosting providers to run fast shops as compared to shared web hosting account for osCommerce.

• The feature set for Magento includes not only all of the features of osCommerce, but also many of the add-on modules. For example, it includes order editing, coupons, meta tags and SEO urls, product comparisons, abandoned shopping cart reporting, editable order emails, shipping estimator, and much more.

• Magento shopping cart is built to be easy to update.

• Magento a bit slow, being heavily layered with a complex coding style that requires time to learn and customize.

• Magento offers organized backend along with a cleaner site structure. osCommerce, on the other hand, has a back-end that is mediocre at best.

• Magento is regularly improved. Developers and store owners look forward to new releases of Magento which never disappoints them, coming up as it does with exciting features every time.

• Overall, osCommerce is easy to install but difficult to configure and customize. Magento has revolutionized eCommerce with its flexibility and power, taking the best things from osCommerce such as open source, ease-of-modification, and a strong community, and also takes these to the next level of sophistication. So, it would be safe to say that Magento is a better choice when it comes to a one on one contest between these two platform.

The blueprint of a Successful Online Ecommerce Solution

Businesses today are no longer confined to their product locations. With ecommerce spreading its tentacles far and wide, they have found a powerful tool in the web to help reach customers in the remotest corners. Selling online is a necessity for any business today. But the first step to selling online is finding the right ecommerce solution that prime your business for success. This article gives you a blueprint to make the right choice.

Website design

First impressions count. Make sure you find an ecommerce solution with unique free templates and full code access for fully customized design. Responsive design is the first step to building a good ecommerce website. The ‘Stanford guidelines for web credibility’ report says that 75% of web users make judgements on the credibility of a company based on its site design.

Features

Next, make sure your ecommerce solution has the right tools to help grow your business. This includes:

• Merchandising and marketing tools
• Search engine optimization
• Customer reviews
• Affiliate program
• Stock controls
• Soft add-to-basket and one-page checkout

You must also make sure you have alerts or emails for abandoned baskets. This is important as the average basket abandonment rate is as high as 60%.

Security

Online security is important to protect you and your customers’ sensitive information. Check if you have the following available:

PI/CISP Certified

This means that the provider has

• Been certified on Visa’s list of providers
• Taken specific measures in solidifying hardware and hosting facilities

This is apart from must-haves such as SSL encryption, premium hosting, multiple admins and spam protection.

Support

The doors of your online business must never close and neither should your provider’s. When you choose an ecommerce software solution, pick one that offers 24*7*365 customer support.

Social and Mobile Selling

The revolution has begun long ago and you must play aggressive here if you are to succeed. A majority of Twitter users recommend companies and products in their tweets and a large number of users consider the information before making a purchase online.

Why You Should Choose Magento

Among lots of options like Shopify, Prestashop and Oscommerce, currently available for developers across the world, the most obvious question is why choose Magento? This question can be adequately answered only if we look at the features of Magento in detail and what it adds in terms of business value to your ecommerce website. This article does just that. It looks at the specific features of Magento and its advantages over its peers.

1. Open Source 

 

Magento is Open Source which means it’s free to install. If you have the technical knowledge required to customize Magento, then you can add multiple extensions as well as functionalities to your website.

2. Ecommerce specific platform

Magento has all the features that an ecommerce website requires. In addition, Magento websites have features and extensions that are better when compared to competitors such as Woo Commerce and Zen commerce.

3. SEO friendly

Magento provides an SEO friendly platform in which you can easily customize URLs and Meta tags for products and categories, Sitemap, blog and many more.

4. Analytics and reporting

Easy to integrate with Google analytics. Also useful for multiple reports like sales, tax, product reviews, coupon usage, refund and many others.

5. Site management

• Control multiple devices and stores from one administrator panel
• Web services API for easy integration
• 100% customizable design using templates
• One-click upgrades

6. Payment

Magento offers you multiple payment options.

• Integration with Amazon payments, PayPal, Google Checkout
• Virtual gift certificates
• Checks/Money orders

7. Customer account

Customer account features like order status and history, reorders, recently ordered items, address book, billing and shipping addresses, wish list, reviews and many more.

8. Order management

It offers the following

• View, edit, create, and complement orders
• Create one or multiple invoices
• Email notifications of orders
• Order tracking from account
  
  

All this, apart from multilingual support and other promotional tools make Magento the No.1 ecommerce platform in the world. 

Magento vs Prestashop vs Opencart

We’ve heard of all of them. But what are the features that distinguish one from the other? And where does one score over the other? These are some of the questions that this article tries to answer.

Contestant One- Magento

Magento is one of the most popular ecommerce platform widely preferred by the world’s leading brands. Having an online community of over 200,000 merchants, Magento is a flexible, scalable, and high performance platform that helps in getting the most out of one’s online store. With Magento eStore owners can manage content, look, and functionality of their store as per business specifications. Some of the notable features of Magento are:

• Multi-store functionality
• Guest checkout option
• Built-in SEO tools
• Customizable design
• Effective ecommerce website
• Efficient analysis and reporting
• Mobile commerce

Contestant two- Prestashop

Prestashop is a leading ecommerce shopping cart platform, having a number of extensive features. Committed to providing the best shopping cart experience to online merchants as well as consumers, Prestashop can be installed in a single click. Let’s have a look at some of the remarkable features of this free open source ecommerce solution

• Efficient catalog management
• Multiple product display methods
• Search engine optimization
• One page checkout
• Flexible shipping modules
• Variety of promotional tools
• Multi-store management

Contestant three- Open Cart

• Customization, cross-selling
• Theme design and development
• Product comparison
• Automatic image resizing
• Discount coupon system
• Printable invoices, unlimited categories, products, and manufacturers

Look at your requirements, make a thorough study of it and then match them with the features of these platforms. The one that fits best, is the one for you!

Why and When to Re-platform Your Ecommerce Website

In the ecommerce world, robustness and stability are often touted as the watchwords. Then, why do businesses change platforms? Is it because they need to keep changing with the current trends? In simple terms, it could be said that the answer lies in our businesses’ endless quest for flexibility. As customer preferences keep changing, e-business platforms too, need to undergo change so as to reflect their priorities. But, there are many underlying factors that compel a business to change platform. In this article, we look the why and how of re-platforming and exactly what makes a strong ecommerce platform.

Why business re-platform 

 

In 2013, more than 20% of businesses were planning an ecommercere-platforming. One of the important reasons behind this is increased web complexity. As ecommerce channels grew rapidly, third party integrations too have grown at the same pace not wanting to be left behind. These third party integrations have risen to pose a challenge to the platforms currently implemented.

As we saw earlier, customer’s changing requirements regarding functionality and performance too, have compelled businesses to tinker with their platforms. This, apart from competitive pressures and vendor conflicts (Platform vendors who don’t support current versions) inevitable in any economy have driven businesses to change shop.

What to look for when you re-platform  

• Performance Scalability

Optimization of Page load time and accommodation of multiple concurrent users specially at peak hours must be on top your list.

• Multi-Channel Integration

Catering to customers across every utilized channel such as web, shop, mobile, social etc.

• Enhanced User experience

This is the most important part. It is UX that decides whether a user stays or leaves a website. It is a combination of factors such as content, search, shopping cart listing, smooth checkout process etc.

• Platform flexibility

The new platform needs to be able to adapt to needs to future markets and also perform within its limitations.

How to avoid re-platforming?

If truth be told, a vast majority of clumsily done re-platforming exercises can be avoided if ecommerce site owners do a proper usability test of their current site before re-platforming. If you know where you stand, you can clearly decide where your business should go.

Re-platforming can be avoided(temporarily) if:

• The platform is ‘alive’ or in its nascent stages.
• The existing service provider is doing well or he can be replaced by someone better.
• The platform is flexible and provide optimum user experience.
  
  
  
  
  

How Magento Compares with Prestashop

 

The growth of Ecommerce in the year gone by has been nothing short of stupendous. Magento, Woocommerce and Prestashop have become household names with a large developer community adding functionality with extensions being written every day. The total revenue of B2C ecommerce sales worldwide in 2014 touched 1.505 trillion dollars in 2014 with 83% of online shoppers saying they were satisfied with their shopping experience.

Among the various ecommerce platforms used to build online stores, Magento, Woocommerce, Prestashop, and Zencart have been the most popular. Top 1 million ecommerce websites were surveyed in April 2014, the survey stated that Magento is the leading Open Source platform used to build online stores. In this article, we compare two popular and highly functional platforms Magento and Prestashop.

Magento

Magento is the most popular platform for ecommerce website development continuously for the fourth year. It is an Open Source platform that provides complete flexibility and control over the online business. It is an extremely feature rich ecommerce software that gives the developer real power over his website.

Some of the main features of Magento are

• Catalog management
• Advanced product filtering system
• Buyer account management
• Different payment methods
• One page checkout system
• 100% search engine friendly
• Control over multiple websites with multiple languages
  
  

Prestashop

 

Launched in Aug 2007, it is now one of the most popular ecommerce platforms in the world. It is also an Open Source ecommerce platform that offers lots of advance features for product management, store management, SEO, checkout and payment options.

• Product comparison
• Affiliate program
• SEO friendly URL structure
• One-page or multi-page checkout
• Payment gateway filtered by currency
• Coupons and vouchers and
• Order tracking
   

Comparison between the two

Magento requires a bit of skill and knowledge on the part of the developer to install, whereas Prestashop installation is much easier. Prestashop is also easier to customize than Magento. Magento also requires programming skills at an advanced level whereas a person with an intermediate knowledge of programming too, could begin to work on Prestashop. 

 

Magento has adopted the Zend framework of PHP and has all the capabilities of MVC architecture. Prestashop, on the other hand, has adopted smarty template based on PHP. Enterprises and store owners prefer Magento (which explains why it’s so popular), while developers and designers prefer Prestashop, owing to its ease of use.