Advantages and Features of OpenCart for E-commerce

Having an online store has many advantages. During the COVID-19 pandemic, with curfew measures and the closure of shops, these precautions increased the demand for online shopping as an alternative to securing consumer goods. According to data released by the U.S. government on online shopping and the impact of the coronavirus on global commerce, online trade increased by 12% over the previous year.
Therefore, many traders are rushing to build online stores to maintain their shares and their commercial domain. At Yasham Internet Design and Programming Company, with branches in Izmir and Istanbul, Turkey, we design and program all types of online stores professionally and advancedly.
Advantages of an Online Store:

  1. Time and Effort Savings: This is one of the most important advantages of online stores as they allow users to shop at any time and from anywhere, providing great flexibility since users do not have to adhere to store hours.
  2. Electronic Payment Methods: Online stores offer a variety of payment methods such as credit cards, cash on delivery, and PayPal.
  3. Knowing Other Consumers’ Opinions: Through the store, you can know the opinions of other customers who have tried the product, which helps attract more customers to deal with this store.
  4. Shopping from Anywhere in the World: If the store provides delivery of products to the user’s country, this means a new and diverse customer base, not limited to the store’s country.
  5. Significant Commercial Cost Savings: Through e-commerce, you can save many expenses incurred to manage your business in the case of a traditional store, such as paying for the store’s premises and hiring employees, in addition to the service expenses within the store’s premises. This is what the global company Zara has done. Zara announced the closure of about 1200 branches worldwide, transferring all its efforts and money to invest online.
After mentioning the main advantages of online stores, the important point remains: how to convert your store from a traditional one to an online store. E-commerce platforms can help you with this, and there are dozens of them. In this article, we will mention two of the best and most powerful platforms for building online stores:
– OpenCart Platform:

OpenCart is a free and open-source independent e-commerce platform. Installing and setting up OpenCart requires technical expertise, but managing products, orders, and other functions is easy through the control panel. The platform includes basic functions found in e-commerce platforms and offers many add-ons for additional features and integration with other services such as electronic payment services.

Strengths:

  1. Mobile-friendly, allowing browsing and completing purchases easily on smartphones.
  2. SEO-friendly.
  3. Product comparison.
  4. Wishlist: Allows users to add specific products to the wishlist to review them later.
  5. Reward points system: This system has a strong impact on increasing sales volume as it encourages the visitor to return to your store regularly to accumulate as many points as possible.
  6. Discount coupons: A powerful promotional tool that greatly affects sales volume, and OpenCart allows implementing them.
  7. Multiple payment and shipping methods: The store allows the visitor to choose the payment method that suits them and the shipping method they trust and feel comfortable with.
– Magento Platform:

Magento is a free e-commerce platform, available as an independent free version and a service-oriented version aimed at large companies. Magento is highly customizable, allowing for unique stores that do not resemble any other, while maintaining optimal performance. Magento offers a large set of tools to ensure the store owner has complete control over the look, feel, and functionality of the online store.

Strengths:

  1. SEO compatibility.
  2. Store management: Allows managing multiple online stores from one control panel and controlling user roles and permissions.
  3. High support for Arabic and many other languages.
  4. Inventory management.
  5. Various payment methods.
  6. Multi-currency support.
  7. Performance analysis and reporting.