Using Zen Cart For Your Online Store

Zen Cart is open source software, like WordPress.  Open source means that anyone can download the software and use it.  As a web developer I really like working with open source software because it is always being improved.  There are new versions released, bugs fixed, and programmers around the world contributing to it.  I have worked with a couple of other carts that were purchased and for the most part I have found them to be out of date and clunky.

In this article I want to point out some of what Zen Cart can do.  When you look around for an e-commerce shopping cart there are so many options available.   Is a free one good enough?  Is paying for one better?  What all does Zen Cart include?  And, the best part, what kind of addons can you get?  I plan to touch on each of these questions in turn.

Is a free shopping cart good enough?

For the non-developer I would say no, you won’t get what you need from Zen Cart as-is.  However, if you are working with a developer you can get exactly what you need and more.  Zen Cart is user-friendly.  Once it is all set up adding and editing products is very easy to do.

Is purchased e-commerce software better?

Again, no.  In rare cases, like this, you may not get what you pay for.   I have worked with several shopping carts in the hundreds of dollars range and have found nothing particularly superior about them.  Sure, you get technical support.  But the Zen Cart forums are full of answers and you don’t have to purchase tech support time!

What if I want to set up my own cart, and not hire a developer to do it?

It is possible to learn how to work with Zen Cart, especially with the help of the forums or workshops.  For the most part it’s a lot of checking boxes to enable or disable certain functionality.  The one piece that you won’t be able to do yourself is customize the template (look and feel) of your store.  You can download a template from a place like this: Free Zen Cart Templates.  But, if you hire a web designer for anything, I highly recommend getting a customized template.  You’ll be so much happier (not the mention the benefits of branding)!

Below is an example of what your web designer/developer can do to customize your template.  The template on the left was a free download from the link above, Free Zen Cart Templates.  With some editing to the images and the code this template transformed into the screenshot on the right.  What a difference!

What are the features of Zen Cart?

• Allows customers to shop your store 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
• Easily keep your products/catalog updated – no HTML coding required to add, delete, or modify products.
• Secure – no one but your administrative personnel can access your customer/catalog data.
• Easy to install – our helpful installation program guides you easily through the setup process.
• Switching from one installed template to another is as simple as a couple of clicks in the Admin.
• Merchandise Pricing options – single and multiple items can be put on sale. Sale options include percentage-off, fixed amount off, new price, etc. Sales can include or exclude product attributes. You can add or exclude a discount from a special. You can put a whole category or the entire store on sale.
• Products can be marked as free or Call for Price.
• Products can be marked as Featured for specific highlighting/attention.
• Products can be linked and/or copied to multiple categories.
• Minimum or maximum quantities and units – you can sell one per customer, or require at least four and in multiples of two. You can set requirements on a per-product basis.
• Quantity discounts can be configured per-product for varying pricing levels or quantity levels.
• Product attributes can be added, either as radio buttons, checkboxes, drop-down lists, text boxes, file uploads, file downloads, and more. Attribute options can upcharge the price of an item, and an item can have its price completely controlled by attributes. Attributes can be configured as read only so as to provide a features list.
• One-time fees can be added to products via attributes.
• Attributes also support text pricing, such as price-per-word or price-per-letter for personalizing.
• Attributes can show image/color swatches.
• Entire categories of products (or individual products) can be enabled/disabled with just a few clicks.
• Sort order of products is easily controlled in the Admin area.
• If you need to take your site offline for a period of maintenance, you can do it easily by posting advance notices, as well as a friendly Down For Maintenance page that’s also search engine friendly. Webmaster and web designer can specify IP addresses to override maintenance and still access the site for testing.
• You can send administrative emails on most customer shopping activities to various administrators as desired. Email addresses are protected from abuse, as they are not displayed on-screen. The Contact Us page can be configured to support multiple destinations, such as sales, technical support, webmaster, and so on.
• Multiple items can be added to the shopping cart by simply entering quantities and clicking Add.
• The product type feature allows you to customize information fields and display format for different products differently. Products for sale vs. documents for viewing, vs. music downloads, and the list goes on.
• You can add multiple images to your products, in small/medium/large format. Popups are available if desired for viewing of larger images.
• A verification for agreement to the Terms of Service has been added for compliance with new laws regarding privacy and disclosure.
• Shipping options – multiple carriers are supported, including hold for pickup, free delivery in an area, and most major couriers and postal services.
• Customer access control – you can set up your shop to only allow customers access to pricing or pricing but not buying until after being authorized by an administrator. You can restrict them from browsing at all too, if desired.
• Showcase – you can set your store up to be simply a product showcase, without pricing at all.
• Search options allow you to search for products based on name, description, metatags, price, and more.
• Meta tags keywords and descriptions can be controlled at the per-product level, all from the administrative interface.
• Automatic detection of search engine spiders.
• Built in WYSIWYG page editor for modifying non-database pages.
• Tight security on password handling, login/logout, and more.
• HTML-style email supported.
• Email can be sent via sendmail, smtp, or smtp-with-authorization.
• Email archiving supported for audit trail.
• Advertising banners – show information about your business colleagues and track banner link activity. Banners can open in new windows so that customers never really leave your site.
• Shipping estimator allows your customer to get an idea of their shipping costs prior to checkout.
• Coupons and gift certificates are easily handled both by customers and administrators.
• Customer group pricing allows groups of users to receive a set discount amount at checkout.
• Newsletter and product notification systems.
• Low order fees can be configured.
• COD fees can be added.
• Shipping tare, large package handling to give fine-grain control over shipping services.
• Tax rates, tax zones, etc easily configured in the Admin area.
• PayPal™ IPN and many other popular merchant services supported.
• Customers can write product reviews (approvals can be required by an Administrator).
• Low stock notifications to administrator when inventory is getting low (level can be configured).
• Developers toolkit helps quickly locate a setting or text string to be customized.
• Scalable from small shops to larger shops with hundreds of thousands of products.
• Track who’s online interactively.
• Multiple language support.
• Multiple currency support.

What kind of addons or plugins are available for Zen Cart?

There are several addons that help photos enlarge nicely, enable different types of checkout procedures, create  special offers, social media integration per product, homepage slideshow, and much more.  Take a look here for their complete list of addons: Zen Cart Addons and Plugins.