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CRE Loaded An Improved osCommerce

July 16, 2009

Filed under: website development — Tags: , , , , — Denise @ 12:04 pm

In the past decades and until today the Internet is one of the powerful tool that change the way we live and view life.  It is a communication tool that bridges people across the globe as well as a business tool that have been proven to be very effective especially in the marketing business side.  Websites are the gateway to the World Wide Web. Through the websites we can get connected to the Internet and the people on it.  With the benefits that the Internet had brought us, and it has also influenced people that in the business and economy industry to use it as powerful tool to deliver and communicate their messages to their market and it gave rise to the e-commerce. E-commerce is basically doing business transactions online, such transactions are buying and selling of products and service and it is considered as a sales aspect of a business.

Innovations in the field of Internet technology had give way to e- commerce applications and systems. These are e-commerce systems that are embedded in business websites with the objective to deliver convenience of online shopping. This systems are also known as shopping cart systems.  There are a lot of shopping cart systems that are available today, and most of them are open source.  One of the popular open source shopping cart systems is the osCommerce which features a rich shopping cart functionality that allows merchants to set up, run and maintain online stores with less effort and at no costs or limitations.  CRE Loaded is a shopping cart solution based on osCommerce and can run on any LAMP (Linux, Apache, My SQL, PHP) web server.

CRE Loaded is similar to osCommerce, but an improved version. For it has more features installed such as Easy Populate which allows user to populate your database from a spreadsheet file, coupon codes, administrator access levels, template system and an affiliate manager. And because it is much similar with osCommerce, CRE Loaded has one of the osCommerce template systems installed, it allows you to integrate a design into the system and control which information boxes shows on the left and the right columns.

CRE Loaded is like Oscommerce but with many more contributions installed. Some of the nice contributions it has are Easy Populate which lets you populate your database from an Excel file, coupon codes, administrator access levels, template system, and an affiliate manager.CRE Loaded also has one of the Oscommerce templating systems installed
which allows you to more easily integrate a design into the system and control which information boxes show on the left and right columns. CRE Loaded has an extensive variety of features, an aggressive release schedule and a number of developing partnerships and an active international community of users and developers that support its customers. CRE Loaded are available in three versions Standard,  Pro and B2B. The standard version is free and the Pro version has adds better product attribute support and credit card encryption while B2B version has a separate pricing level support, affiliate program, multi-vendor shipping and much more.

UK SEO Agency supports and can manage shopping cart solutions on websites that we build. Whether it is an osCommerce, CRE Loaded, Zen Cart  or Magento system UK SEO Agency can help you install and manage these systems that will meet your online business objectives.

osCommerce An E-Commerce Solution

July 14, 2009

Filed under: website development — Tags: , , , , — Denise @ 10:57 pm

E-commerce is one of the most successful and effective business strategies used by most companies as an extension of their business using the Internet.  And it  has emerged to be the strongest form of  Internet Marketing strategy. Web design and ecommerce has become a vital component of the Information Technology industry.  Shopping cart solution is the most important aspect of e-commerce for it is the tool used to manage online transactions such as order processing and reporting.

osCommerce is an open source shopping cart e-commerce solution that contains both front-end and and an administration tool back-end which can be easily installed and configured over a web- based installation procedure. And it runs on  PHP and MySQL servers.  And because it is an open source solution it is being distributed at no cost. osCommerce provides the basic functionality that every online businesses needs. And beyond its basic functionality, osCommerce can be customised by installing additional modules or custom code to meet your specific business needs.

osCommerce is the basis for both Zen Cart and CRE Loaded e-commerce solutions, thus making it more simple and having less features compared to both.  osCommerce runs well though and can meet almost all the basic needs of any online business. osCommerce is back-end functionality for Administrators and front- end functionality for its customer.

The following are the features of osCommerce:

- Automatic online based installation and upgrade procedure

-Support dynamic pages

- Administration or back- end functionality

-Customer or Front- end functionality

-Product Functionality

- Accepts numerous offline and online payment processing

- Shipping Functionality

- Flexible tax implementation

osCommerce is a simple shopping cart solution that can meet your basic e-commerce needs, it is not a shrink- wrapped application for those who needed to be spoon- fed nor it is difficult as to have it from scratch. Although osCommerce is equipped with the basic functionality of a shopping cart solution it also has some shortcomings and extensibility. One of the advantages of   applications is the nature of their development process for it allows other users to contribute codes to improve and enhance the system. And osCommerce is not an exception for there are over 2,000 user contributions available. This is critical in creating solutions for loopholes of the systems and fixes some serious issues on payment gateways.

However on the security viewpoint, default installation of osCommerce should not be used in a production environment without being customised. Why is that so? Because there is no admin login authentication protection which is usually available on most authentication systems. Such situation can make your business vulnerable to malicious users.  However, there are modules available to fix such issues. osCommerce is ideal for start up business that engage in order processing.

UK SEO Agency supports and manages ecommerce systems such as osCommerce. And we provide web design and development embedded with ecommerce solutions that are tailored to your business needs.

Factors to Consider in Integrating a Shopping Cart in Your Website

July 11, 2009

Filed under: website development — Tags: , , , — Denise @ 12:24 pm

Technology has been part of our daily lives today and things have somehow become easier for us.  The Internet technology is truly one of the great innovations of the century. It continues to give us convenience and ease in living, and it also bridges the gap of communication. The Internet contains an extensive collection of data and information through websites and almost everything that we need can be  found on it. Convenient shopping is also offered by the Internet through websites that are able to handle online shopping transactions by integrating an e-commerce application or commonly known as the shopping cart system to most people.

A shopping cart system should be able to accomodate your business needs rather than you adjusting your objectives and strategies  to match its capabilities.  If you are planning to integrate a shopping cart system in your business website there are things that you need to consider and these are: functionality, shipping, payments, support, technology and reporting.

The most important of the factors that most business website owners should consider in integrating a shopping cart system is functionality.  Customers are not the only ones that should have an access to the features of the shopping cart system, but it should also meet the needs of your business as well.  It is important that the system does not only pleases your customers but it should also meet your business needs. Most shopping cart systems have their own features and limitations, before you make your decision check out what in store for your business, does the shopping cart system that you consider meets your business needs? If your answer is yes, then most probably that system is the one that you should choose.

Functionality is not just the only thing you need to consider in choosing a shopping cart system. Another factor that you need to consider is the shipping capabilities or features of the system and this is also one of the more important factors to be considered. Oftentimes, your products dictates the shipping strategy you need.  You should determine what how will calculate your shipping charges, will you base your charges depending on the prices of the products or will you use price ranges? With this factor it is also important to know if the shopping cart system that you will consider can be integrated with shipping companies.

It really is more than just the options you give your customers in paying their purchases when it comes in the role of payment considerations in shopping cart system. You should pay attention to which payment gateways are available for each shopping cart system. Most online payment transactions are made through credit cards, however there are some people that prefer other options of payment such as offline checks.

Another thing that you need to consider in choosing a shopping cart system is the availability of support.  Some shopping cart systems can provide you with full customer support on their website only and other provides free technical support.  More options for customer support is better.  Technical considerations are also important, more likely you may have a programmer that will help you in implementing your shopping cart system either an individual programmer or a firm.  Such technical considerations are your current site, web host and their limitations. It is also necessary that you know what OS platform, programming language and database system. You may have an options from hosted shopping carts and licensed shopping cart systems.

Reports. Does your shopping cart system allows you to generate reports that you need to analyse transactions made?

Finding the best shopping cart system to integrate into your website may be a difficult task. Let UK SEO Agency help and guide you in choosing the best shopping cart system for your online business. Your choice should meet your business needs and marketing plans as to achieve online business success.

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