What is OpenCart and What Are Its Benefits?

OpenCart is an online resource that was built to make life easier for merchants and customers to interact. Based in an Open Source environment, this shopping cart solution gives you to ability to have your business be search engine friendly with a user interface that is welcoming and inviting. If you’re an online retailer, you’ll likely need shopping functionality on your website, and OpenCart is one option to help you and your customers complete the shopping tasks easily. Whether you are a small brick-and-morter boutique in Darien, CT, a drop-shipper working out of your basement, or a large ecommerce shoe seller in New Haven, OpenCart can fulfill your online sales needs.

Here are a few benefits that come from using OpenCart:

• Plugins. The OpenCart system offers you a wide variety of plugins. The newest edition of the free version offers you about 1,500 plugins, which helps you customize your website to meet the needs of your business and your customers’ needs as well.

• Support. The OpenCart community is pretty substantial. You’ll have access to technical support for those sticky questions that you just can’t seem to get answered. There are community forums where fellow OpenCart users and some skilled programmers are always happy to give you input, as well. Found a bug? There is a quick and easy way to report it on the OpenCart website so you can submit a ticket and get back to whatever you were doing in no time.

• Script. The script architecture for OpenCart is based in a popular program called MVC (Model-View-Controller). Because of the popularity of this script foundation, there are plenty of folks out in cyberspace that are familiar with this script, which gives you optimal access to help when needed. This script is also XHTML compliant.

• Server Resources. Because OpenCart doesn’t necessarily have as many built-in features as some of its competitors, it is far less strenuous on the server systems that power it. Adding just a few plugins shouldn’t affect the speed and efficiency of your OpenCart website much at all. Adding tons of plugins to your site could, eventually, weigh on the speed and efficiency that you and your user’s experience, but having just a few basic features makes the use of OpenCart speedy and easy.

• Dashboard. OpenCart’s administration is particularly easy for new users to understand. The admin panel is neat, clear, and easy to understand and manage. For newbies, these are all important factors to getting your shopping cart site up and running. The user-friendly nature of this program extends from the admin dashboard to the experience of your consumers.

• Cost. Thanks to the Open Source platform from which this program was born, you can download and use OpenCart free of charge. For most small business online stores, the initial out-of-the-box version will work just fine, and that version will cost you nothing! Add-ons and plugins that you’ll probably want to add to make your site its very own come with a minimal fee for most of the modifiers.

We at Optimum Systems Online have built many small business ecommerce websites using OpenCart, and have come to appreciate the many benefits, both as website programmers and website users. Are you an OpenCart user? Share your experiences with us in the ‘Comments’ section below!

If you enjoyed this blog, you may also enjoy reading, “What is Magento and What are its Benefits?”