For any e-commerce website, simple-to-advanced, Magento is probably the most complete, free and open source solution out there.

And, it can be improved further so easily with professional extensions in the market.

Magestore, a popular Magento extensions provider, has a fresh extension for improving the checkout process which is called Magento One Step Checkout.

The extension helps minimizing the abandoned cart rate by enabling customers to view the basket and fill the shipping + payment information in only one step.

This checkout page is smart and auto-updates itself when needed without any refreshes (like the change in address, shipping type, etc.).

It also supports applying coupon codes and gift messages or running simple surveys still on the same page and comes ready with multiple payment options (PayPal, credit cards, SagePay..).

1 Step Checkout works with all 3 checkout modes (register, logged in, guest) and has built-in Geo-IP detection for simplifying the process further by auto-filling address details as much as possible.

There is also a unique feature called “Web-POS for admin checkouts”. Using this feature, it is possible to complete offline sales as an existing user or guest. Again on a single page, the store admins can search for the product, add it to the cart quickly and complete sale.

The extension is a must check for any Magento website and there is a detailed comparison of it with other well-known checkout extensions.

How to join the giveaway?

Magestore is giving away 3 licenses and, in order to join, please follow the steps:

• create a free membership at Magestore
• comment to this post using your Magestore e-mail in the e-mail field

Winners will be selected a week later (02 May 2013) with the query below:

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=4020 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 3

Good luck to all.

The winners

Here they are:

• sean (comment #1263084)
• Robin L (comment #1263695)
• webworker (comment #1263886)

robin@rwl.se

Forward is a fresh e-commerce application (that is in the alpha stage) built with PHP and using MongoDB for storing data.

The application is free, open source and built with developers in mind makes with easy custom coding, powerful templates and expressive syntax.

It has a REST-like API for interacting with every feature from orders to customers or products.

Thanks to MongoDB, the capabilities of the store is not limited to the default database schema and it is a breeze to have new fields/structures for everything.

Design of the storefront can be changed with a powerful templating engine (Smarty 3) and the backend is built with Bootstrap.

LemonStand is a professional PHP shopping cart application that allows anyone to create a fully-functional store.

It has support for featuring any number of products within an unlimited category structure.

Actually, customizability is baked into LemonStand’s DNA, it starts with the theming where any HTML-CSS_JS can be used and goes with the features integrated.

The app can be used to sell physical or digital products, services and even subscriptions. A solid product management system exists to control everything from inventory to product details and importing/exporting bulk items.

Built-in marketing tools exist to help self-promote the store like the ability to create custom landing pages for products and categories, product bundling, coupon system, newsletters and more.

Also, a content management module enables creating a blog or content for any page and also maintaining the comments, galleries or testimonials. Read the rest of this entry »

Drag ‘n’ dropping items has its various popular uses and shopping carts are definitely one of them.

In this tutorial, we’ll be creating a simple shopping cart that works with drag ‘n’ drops.

It will have support for add-to-basket with quantity updates (so that the same items could be added more than once) and removing items from the basket. It will be totally client-side and cover the basic functionality (no PayPal integration, etc.).

For that, we’ll be using, probably the best drag-drop library, jQuery UI Draggable/Droppable in this tutorial. Here is the end result:

Let’s get started:

Step 1 -> Get the custom jQuery UI package

jQuery UI has lots of features and every feature adds bytes to its source, it is much more smarter to get only what we need.

As you can see from the screenshot above, we need the Core, Widget, Mouse from the core and Draggable + Droppable from the interactions.
Read the rest of this entry »

AspxCommerce is an open e-commerce system that is built with ASP.NET and uses MSSQL for storing the data.

The application is built on top of SageFrame (the open source CMS) and comes with a single-click installation.

It has an easy-to-use admin panel for creating and managing categories, products, users, orders and the settings provided.

There are various marketing features like the ability to bundle products or discounts based on price/products.

AspxCommerce has different modules that an e-commerce site may need like community poll, customer testimonials, Google Maps store locator, etc.

The layout is themable and multiple themes exists to choose from or you can create your own with ease.

It is SEO-friendly, has a multi-language interface and updated/improved regularly.

For anyone willing to create a modern e-commerce website, Magento is probably one of the best apps around to handle that. Not only because it is free + open source but also it is so powerful yet not-complicated.

Although the Magento core has many features, there will possibly be things that you need but Magento doesn't provide by default. That's the point which you'll be hunting for extensions.

Magestore is a web-shop that is specialized in providing high-quality Magento extensions and themes.

There are 60+ extensions that enhance Magento's capabilities in login, checkout, shipping, marketing and others. For example:

• Affiliate Plus: allows users to create an affiliate program
• Auction: create online auctions
• Gift vouchers: create gift cards for customers to present their friends
• Store pick up: allows customers to select store to pick up purchased products 
• Group Deal: create online group deals

And, there are also free ones.

Magestore not only creates them but also updates and improves these extensions regularly, makes sure they are compatible with the latest Magento release and provides support which is pretty important specially for e-commerce websites.

Affiliate Plus

Affiliate Plus by Magestore is the first and most popular affiliate extension of Magento.

It eases creating an affiliate system for any store where users will be able to refer the website (or products) and get paid for any sales.

Using the extension, you can define the commissions, discount rates and payout requirements. Also, you can add banners in different sizes and it generates the unique tracking links itself for each user.

The extension also automates the payout by using the PayPal API and can send the affiliate payments itself.

Optionally, a Platinum version offers more versions like pay-per-lead, ability to create multiple programs, support for multiple payout methods and more.

The Giveaway

Magestore is giving away 3 licenses of the Affiliate Plus Standard version ($99/each) to WRD readers.

In order to join the giveaway, just comment to this post and winners will be selected randomly (on 14 August 2012) with the query below:

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=3121 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 3

Good luck to all.

And the winners

Here they are:

• Kevin (comment #671680)
• aditya  (comment # 675146) 
• Maik   (comment # 671593) 

Enlight (English version exists) is an open source framework, based on Zend and Symphony 2, for creating e-commerce applications easier and faster.

It is built by the experienced e-commerce company Shopware and also powers the base behind their commercial product.

The framework has lots of components that can bring any type of apps to life including: database connection, authentication, form handling, datagrid, navigation, e-mail delivery and more.

Besides the frontend, a base with similar features exist for the backend where both parts can be improved with the help of a plugin system (a bootstrap file is provided for creating new plugins).

Enlight is not a direct competitor to any ready-to-use e-commerce system but a starting point for anyone looking to develop custom ones.

GoCart is an open source e-commerce application which is focused on offering an easy to use/customize solution and not having a huge number of features but only the important ones.

It can have unlimited categories, tiered categories with any depth, unlimited products-product images-options and can display related items.

The built-in shipping methods include a flat or table rate, USPS, FedEx + UPS and has support for Paypal, Authorize.net and "COD (collect on delivery)" payment methods.

Users can have multiple addresses with the help of an address book and use giftcards or coupons with the system.

A plain admin panel empowers the store owner with features like the ability to configure categories, products, export user + sales data, get sales reports, implement promotions and create/edit content within the site with a simple CMS.

LiveCart is a PHP-MySQL-powered open source shopping cart application that comes with many features to create simple-to-advanced e-commerce websites.

The application is developed with usability in mind, has a distraction free clean page flow and offers an intuitive shopping experience.

Its navigation is very flexible with powerful product searching and filtering capabilities that enables users to easily drill-down to the level they want (like laptops>17" screen>X brand).

The products can be defined in any way you want with quantity and user group-based pricing, unlimited images, custom shipping costs per each product and much more.

There is also advanced marketing tools like discount codes, buy x get 1 free type of promotions, bundled products, a newsletter system and many other methods using custom rules.

LiveCart works with many different payment processors including PayPal, 2Checkout, Authorize.net, Google Checkout, MoneyBookers and lots of others.

Besides standard products, digital (downloadable) ones can be sold as well and there is a built-in auto-inventory management system.

There are also many other features that ease the process for end-users and store owners including no-registration-checkouts, wishlists, completely configurable tax rates, etc.

A powerful back-end helps managing the complete store (products, users, order, inventory..) with an Ajaxed interface.

Also, the application is multilingual and multi-currency. Users can easily switch between the presented versions.

Info: This is a review of a paid application.

Avactis, the powerful e-commerce application for any-sized business (which was previously shared at WRD), has recently released an exciting feature for integrating the stores into Facebook.

Considering the size of Facebook, the amount of time user's spend in the website and how fast a word can spread with it, it is definitely a huge market.

By simply creating a Facebook page, adding the Facebook Avactis application and installing the Avactis Storefront extension, the page gets a store tab which displays your complete store inside Facebook with a theme that integrates to it completely.

After setting up the store, visitors can:

• browse categories
• view product details
• enter promo codes
• enter gift certificates
• add products to shopping cart

right inside Facebook and will be forwarded to the original store during the checkout process.

The best part is, it is only a one-time-setup, the rest is handled automatically and you just need to maintain the main web store.

New Editions of Avactis

Avactis has also launched new 2 new editions of their e-commerce platform; Lite and Premium.

Lite Edition:

It is a package for web designers/developers and hosting providers who provide e-commerce related services to their clients.

The package has all the core features of the software but doesn't include support credits and comes with a much cheaper price.

Premium Edition:

This is the complete package which has all the features including installation and Facebook integration. Also, it includes 1 month of Level-1 support and extra support credits.

P.S. Both editions are hosted on user's server for unlimited time without any restrictions.