Online Shopping Carts – Zen Cart

As my main service is to provide online shopping sites I thought id spend the next few days talking about the various shopping carts, and the pros and cons of each one.

Zen Cart Zen cart is my favourite shopping cart. The benefits to it make it perfect for an online shop. Here is a list of features, which is in no ways complete but gives you a good idea of how customisable the cart is. Benefits of using Zen Cart: 1. Highly Customisable The beaty of zen cart is that is has many customisable options, mainly done through the shop admin panel. Just about everything I have ever been asked to change a shop is covered in the shop admin. From removing certain text and attributes to addons easily implemented to enhance the site.

2. Numerous Templates

Installing a template is very easy, its just a question of uploading files. Then activating the template in the shop admin panel. There is many sites out there offering free and cheap templates. Templates are also very easy to customise, so even if the one you like ‘isnt perfect’ it can be adjusted easily to your taste.

3. Addons Galore

Over at the zen cart forums and Download Section is a whole host of addons you can use for zen cart. They are simple to implement, usually requiring no or very few file edits and by using the shop admin you can run an sql file to make any database changes to accomodate the addon. Obviously you have to ensure that a backup is taken before installing a new addon, but in the main its a pretty easy installation. Also make sure the addon is compatible with your version. You will find the developers will update an addon frequently, in line with new versions of zen cart.

4. Helpful community Forums

Over at zen cart is their community forums, heaving with developers and shop owners discussing any issues. Great place to get the answers for any tweaks you want to make but just dont know how to do it.

5. Compatible with lots of payment services

You will find that zen cart is compatible with most payment systems and should have no problems finding an addon to connect your shop to the appropriate payment system. Includes paypal, nocheck, Protx…the list goes on.

6. Search engine Friendly cart

In my experience I have found zen cart excellent for making sure my shopping sites appear in search engines such as Google. Very easy for google to deep index your site. There is even a module to enhance your search engine friendliness, giving you the ability to have SEO friendly URLS. Instead of having a url such as http://iwebshop.co.uk/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=19 the SEO module will show the URL as http://iwebshop.co.uk/ecommerce-shops-c-19.html

Downside to using Zen Cart

To be perfectly honest I cant think of many reasons why you shouldnt use zen cart. Ive heard some people mention that they ‘dont like the look of zen cart’. But what they fail to see is that the cart is highly customisable and its up to the web designer to make it look good.

iwebshop specialises in setting up online shops. Whether you already have a high street shop or an ebay shop and want to venture into the online world of ecommerce then we can offer you the services to achieve just that.