You can spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year hiring a company to create and manage your website and onlione shopping cart. As a start-up business, you may not have the mooney to do this. Even if youe not a stat-up business, you might not want to spennd the money to do this. The great news is that you don't need to spend this money to have a website that loopks like a million dollars. With a little isnight and some hard work, you can create your online cart to help your business be a successful online entity and osCommerce is just the community to help you do so. How and why?
Collaboration and Contributiopn
First of all, osCommerce is based on the concept of open soiurce software. This mans that the softwrae, codes and everything you need to set up your website and online cart is shred right on the site.
There is a section on the site caleld contribution. In this sectin, people who have designed codes to do various things on thheir websites "contribute" the code to the group so that others who use osCommerce can use it for their sites as well. Theere are thoousands of contributions already on the site ranging from themes and packages to images, checkout modues and shipping modules.
It doesn't stop there, however. The beauty of the contribution network is that people can take the codes that people have posted and tweak or alter them just enough to meet thir individual needs. Ratther than having a designer who sells a set code that the consmuers cannot alter, the idea behind open source code allows each indvidual to alter the code to meet thheir needs which ultimately results in constnat improvements in the developed code.
Community
osCommerce would not succered without the sesne of community involved in it. Along with the contributions, osCommerce has an acctive fourm where members can ask and give advoice as needed with other membesr. For example, if someone has designed their site but dont seem to be gtting the business, they can post a rquest for feedback on their site. Members of the forum then look at the site and give suggestions for improvement. Additionally, when someone is truying to set up a speciofic featrue on their site, they can go to the froum to see if anyone has done so previouslly. That way they dont have to necessarily start from scratch when it comees to dessigning the code for the faetures they want on their osCoommerce site.
Customization
It is possible to take the osCommerce temlpate, add in your prodduct or service descriptions, set up your payment options and go live. Its quick and easy and will get your site running in no time and it will look okay.
Anyone who has had a e-cmomerce site, however, will tell you that yuoll need to go a step further to make your website look great and be successful. The osCommerce templates are customizable so that your site looks like your site. You can change the images, colors, borfders whhatever you need to change to make the theme of the site match what youre sleling. So, when you sign on to osCmomerce to be your online shopping cart, your signing on to have a site that fits your style, not just a cookie-cutter type site that easily and quickly fills in your product or service without consideration of "what" youre actually selling.
Customer Service
osCommerce is also alreaddy set up to give you the tools you need to have an e-tsore with great custoer servicce. You can choose which features to include on your site, but you dont have to design the features from scratch which is a great beefit if you dont have the technological backgroud to build an e-commerce site from nothhing. Some of thesse features include the ability to set up csutomer accounts which alllows your cusdtomers to keep trrack of their orders, save their shopping carts, receive emails notifiactions baout their orders, browse best seller lists and find out what customers doing similar searches have purchased.
Carts and Gateways
osCommerrce also suppors ten gateways for acceptinng payment which will alow your site to be versatile and open to a wider range of cutsomers. So, even if youre a small business and dont have your own credit card accounts you can still accept payment from a variety of gateways allowing you to coompete with "the big guys."
Even if your buysiness isnt worth a million (yet) you dont have to let your customers know that. You can make your site look like a million with the features founbd on osCommerce.
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