Online shopping is no stranger to everyone, especially for shopaholics in today’s modern society. If you are an online businessman or retailer, OpenCart is an ideal software helping you and your customers fulfill the shopping tasks effortlessly.
It is considered as one of the top 3 most famous software in the world to support the design of a professional online sales website full of outstanding features.
The magical software, also, is an online resource enabling merchants to interact easier with buyers.
To understand clearly, check out the “all things about OpenCart, you need to know.” Don’t miss out on any parts. Read on now!
What is OpenCart?
OpenCart is an open-source eCommerce software that provides an online store management system. The software is based on the PHP programming language and uses the MVC (L) model, a popular architectural pattern, to build the structure.
OpenCart supports Multi-shop sales, which means that you can create more than one store on it. Those can include discount service management systems, product management, product categories, plus and bonus management, and booth management.
These stores are extremely clear, effective, and easy to use. Besides, this framework has a self-build theme mode that allows us to design our own interface.
Built on the MVC model, the development of writing modules on it is super simple. Developers can code their own custom functions, plus a very convenient Module management system for customers.
OpenCart has been developed since 1999 until now, and it has continuously improved and dominated the eCommerce market.
Pros and cons of OpenCart
OpenCart is a powerful CMS, though, it still exists distinctive advantages and disadvantages.
We list out some typical pros and cons of the framework to help you visualize whether your website really fits this source code or not.
Pros
- Manage multiple stores
- Effortless to use and develop for both users and developers
- Abundant resources from the Internet and support most of the problems you encounter (this is a pretty important thing for developers).
- Easily customize the source code
- Provide many free modules and templates
- Support backup and restore
- Support Multi-languages and affiliate marketing (affiliate program to increase sales)
Cons
- Easily generate errors when using with VQMOD
- Some of the functions are missing and must be much optimized
Overview outstanding features of OpenCart
Plugins
This powerful system gives you an offer with a wide range of plugins. The latest free version provides you about 1,500 plugins.
This number of plugins makes it easy to customize your site to meet the needs of your online business as well as your clients’ needs.
Script
The script architecture for OpenCart is based on a program structure called Model View Controller (MVC). As this script foundation is trendy, many people in cyberspace are accustomed to the script, which offers you optimal access if necessary.
Dashboard
OpenCart’s administration is incredibly effortless for new users to understand because the administration panel is uncluttered, clear-cut, and not difficult to control as well.
For newbies, these are vital factors to your online shopping cart working. The nature of the program expands from the administration dashboard to your consumers’ experiences.
Support
OpenCart community is relatively important. It gives you access to ask technical support for severe issues that you can’t get answered, sometimes.
With several skilled programmers, community forums on OpenCart enable users to give their input like a bug, and then, they will tackle immediately.
Cost
Thanks to the Open Source platform, you can free of charge to download and use OpenCart.
For most small and medium scale business online stores, the early version will run pretty fine, and the cost is totally free!
You just pay a minimal fee if you want to install add-ons and plugins to make your project very own.
Server Resources
This framework does not need to get as many built-in features as some of its rivals, so it is less effortful on the server systems that offer power for it.
Adding several plugins does not seem to influence the speed as well as the efficiency of your OpenCart website much. Adding multitudes of plugins to your website could, however, make users anxious on the speed and efficiency.
Why are people choosing the software?
There are dozens of opportunities and platforms to initiate an online store. You can select freely between SAAS platforms, a website with custom CMS and a site on an open-source platform as well.
However, you should choose an open-source platform like OpenCart.
There are 10 numerous reasons to opt OpenCart for your online business we have collected, including:
- Easy to install
- Easy to customize
- Support third-party integration extensions
- Provide a vast abundance of the free theme
- Building up a multi-lingual store with 17 languages which allows you easily to choose. Hiring the agency can assist you in working your own project. make sure that you opt the specialists who understand their business.
- Manage an only inventory for multiple stores
- Localize each store for various countries by setting different default language, currency, and types of taxes
- Different payment gateways and additional options in the OpenCart extension section. It is almost ideal for any online business scale
- Divide your customers into countless subdivisions. For instance, you can create a particular group for your wholesale buyers and make them unique options and have a specific price only them see it.
- Thanks to the advanced report system, OpenCart enables your business marketing plan productively. Sale reports: allow store owners to calculate the sum amount of sales per day/week/month. Products purchased: indicate which product sold like hotcakes. Products viewed: indicate which goods have interest from customers most
- Set up multiple tax zones, so customers will pay taxes depending upon their different regions and country, where goods will be shipped to or paid from
Which business needs OpenCart?
One of the pivotal problems with small and medium scales businesses is that do they not have enough budgets for hiring full-time developers – this leads to limiting their opportunities when it comes to eCommerce sites.
OpenCart is regarded as one of the top-end solutions that are the combination of flexibility, simplicity, and multi-functionality. It is super ideal for small and medium-sized eCommerce businesses.
The OpenCart marketplace provides more than 13000 extensions and themes to start, develop, and spread your online business. It allows you to opt for any gorgeous themes. We will list out some typical sorts of sectors needing OpenCart:
- Service integrations
- Payment providers
- Shipping methods
- Social media
- Marketing
- Accounting
- Reporting
- Sales
- Language packs
What do you think about OpenCart
With all information about OpenCart we have just mentioned, hope that it is helpful for those who are building or tend to build an online business based on this platform.
If you have any concerns about this post, don’t hesitate to leave your thought in the comment section below. Thanks for reading.