Top 10 e-Commerce Platforms

Online marketing and shopping has become quite common nowadays, so it is obvious that e-commerce websites of all sizes are now a great business.  There is a plethora of online shopping stores on the web, and they are increasing day by day. This thing increases the need and importance of good e-commerce platforms. A number of e-commerce platforms are present out there, but choosing the best suited one for your website is not an easy task.

We have a list of 10 Best e-Commerce Platforms for Your Website. These platforms will allow easy creation of your own online store, as they boast some of the most amazing set of features and options. So check them out and pick the one that suits your needs the best!

1. Shopify

This one is a hosted e-commerce platform that allows extreme easy and quick creation of your own online store. It offers safe shopping carts, nice e-commerce templates, plus web hosting. You can also try out the 30-day trial before making the actual purchase.

2. FoxyCart

This one is different from all the rest in this list. It is not a one-stop solution for all your e-commerce problems. It is not a complete CMS, as it does not have any specialized tools for analytics or inventory. Instead, it can be simply integrated seamlessly within your existing design and functionality.

3. Magento

Magento needs no introduction. It is one of the most popular and widely used e-commerce platform that has a user base of more than a 100,000. The best thing about it is that it has different solutions based on different businesses’ needs, such as Enterprise and Small Business versions. It also conducts Developer Certification programs.

4. CubeCart

CubeCart boasts a handy way of creating your own e-commerce website. It offers two solution according to prices — a free limited Lite version with 100 customers and 250 products (and no technical support), or the Pro version by paying a one-time $180 which boasts tech support and unlimited features.

5. BigCommerce

This one allows selling products on Facebook and eBay, or on your own store. You can get a Platinum Plan for $149.95/month for getting option of selling unlimited products on your website. You can also try out the free 15-day trial before making the actual purchase.

6. Zen Cart

Zen Cart is another really cool e-commerce platform which makes setting up an online store quite easy. It is free and open source software which is quite user friendly.

7. Ubercart

Ubercart is not really a total CMS, but it is a shopping cart solution which can be integrated in your Drupal-based website. This might not be one of the best e-commerce solutions,  but if you have a Drupal-based website and want features like paid or Premium downloads, shopping cart, etc. then you can try it out! The best part is that it is free and open source.

8. osCommerce

This one is another open source e-commerce platform. It already powers more than 12,000 websites and boasts a community or more than 260,000 members. It is licensed under a GPL and has addons.

9. Highwire

Highwire is quite different from the rest as it allows both, setting up your own store, or using it for selling on eBay or Facebook. Syncing your inventory across many channels of e-commerce is also possible. You can also keep tabs on all your orders and payments from one centralized system. It has handy mobile features, even an iOS and Android apps. The amazing thing is that it also has a Free plan.

10. Volusion

This one is an all-in-one hosted e-commerce platform. There pricing is quite competitive, and you can also try out its 14-day free trial before making the actual purchase. It also offers a 24×7 support too.

Payments through Mobile Devices

These two payment services allow merchants to accept credit card payments directly through their mobile devices, making it possible for devices such as the iPhone, the iPad and Android smartphones to act as a mobile point of sale (POS) checkout system.

• Square
• Intuit’s GoPayment

Conclusion
There are plenty of online payment systems out there that you can use to conduct e-commerce activities. Choose one that’s in line with your business objectives.

Best Online Payment Systems

In this article, we’ll be reviewing some best online payment systems for accepting payments on the Web. While many of the companies on this list have been available to online merchants for years, many are also now getting into new areas of online payments such as social commerce and in-store online card reader systems.

1. Authorize.Net

Authorize.Net is the Internet’s most widely used payment gateway. With a user base of over 300,000 merchants, Authorize.Net has been the go-to method for e-commerce sites that need a gateway to accepting payments. Widely used e-commerce platforms such as Magento, Volusion and X-Cart are designed to accept payments using Authorize.Net easier.

Pricing source: Authorize.Net pricing.

2. PayPal

PayPal is the world’s most widely used payment acquirer, processing over $4 billion in payments in 2011. PayPal payments are made using a user’s existing account or with a credit card. Money can be sent directly to an email address, thus prompting the users to sign up for a new PayPal account. In addition to taking payments, PayPal also allows its users to send money through the service, which is a feature that only a few payment solutions provide.

Pricing Source: PayPal merchant fees

3. Google Checkout

Google Checkout is Google’s answer to PayPal. Google Checkout allows users to pay for goods and services through an account connected to their Google profile. The major benefit that Google Checkout has over the competition is that millions of Internet users use Google for other services, making a purchase through Checkout a simpler process.

Pricing Source: Google Checkout fees

4. Amazon Payments

Amazon Payments allows its users to receive money using its API (and to send money out via ACH). Popular crowdfunding site Kickstarter uses Amazon Payments.

Pricing Source: Amazon Payments fees

5. Dwolla

Dwolla is a direct competitor to PayPal. One of the newcomers in the third-party payments space, the company is processing over $1 million per day. Setting up Dwolla payments is similar to PayPal, although Dwolla doesn’t have the same name recognition as their competition.

Pricing Source: Dwolla fees

6. Stripe

Stripe provides an excellent payment solution for web developers who would like to integrate a payment system into their projects using Stripe’s robust API. By bypassing the traditional sign up process, Stripe acts as a merchant account for its providers, handling all PCI compliance and merchant approvals.

Pricing Source: Stripe pricing

7. Braintree

Braintree is an online payment gateway and merchant account solution known for working with popular tech startups such as Airbnb and LivingSocial.

Pricing Source: Pricing – Braintree

8. Samurai by FeeFighters

Samurai is a payment gateway and merchant account solution. The company’s main product, FeeFighters, is a tool to help merchants compare rates for merchant accounts. Samurai was developed as a direct competitor to Braintree and other gateway/merchant solutions and offers customers a payment gateway or a gateway/merchant account package.

Pricing Source: Samurai by FeeFighters pricing

9. WePay

WePay is a payment processor that allows Internet merchants to accept credit cards and bank account payments online. WePay seems to be focused on the individual user, and has recently added e-store pages to their service to help their customers conveniently take in payments (e.g. event tickets, products, donations and so forth) through their service.

Pricing Source: WePay fees

10. 2Checkout

2Checkout is another payment processor that combines a merchant account and payment gateway into one, allowing customers to receive credit card payments as well as PayPal payments. The company offers international payments, shopping cart stores as well as a recurring billing feature.

Pricing source: Pricing and fees – 2Checkout

Common Mistakes to choose a CMS

There are several possible reasons for using a Content Management System, but the main reason for using a CMS is to make creating and editing of content simple and easy. Often developers forget that this is the main purpose of a CMS and in search of more and more functionality, they cripple themselves (or their customers).

Content doesn’t just include text however. Sometimes the content you need on a site is a contact form or user authentication system. The trick is to find the CMS that provides the functionality without sacrificing ease of use for yourself or, depending on the situation, your customer. A good CMS will allow you to spend more time focused on the design of the frontend then on implementing extensions or functionality. Following are some common mistakes to choose a CMS:

Mistake 1: Choosing a Geek Friendly CMS

First and foremost it is imperative for those developers building sites for customers that they remember that not everyone is as tech savvy as you are. Even if you’ve found a CMS that you like and work well with, it doesn’t matter unless you’re making the site for yourself. The most important factor in the site should be whether or not the customer can use the site like they imagine it should work. So, in the long run, it will be better for your health if you pick a CMS with a simple admin interface, even if you have to customize it more to meet the customer’s needs.

Mistake 2: Bigger is Better

Beware of any CMS, open source or not, that cites its huge following as reason to use their system. Don’t be taken in by the promises of a huge, helpful user community, and all the beautiful extensions or plugins the systems already have to offer. It’s a TRAP!

Just because many people are using a CMS, does not make it good. Take for example the huge amount of people who insist on running Linux. I still have no idea why people wish to inflict that kind of pain on themselves. Similarly, picking a CMS based on a following is an extremely bad idea.

Another reason why people will choose these types of CMS’s is because they see that there is a huge community of developers or amount of money behind a certain web application.

Mistake 3: Going With the Little Guy

Again, this is the same as #2, where in an attempt to recover from an unfortunate run in with a behemoth you pick an overly simplistic CMS. Always make sure to check that the CMS you are looking into does include extensions with the functionality you will need. Many times you may stumble upon a promising CMS, but do not invest in it until you have found that it offers what you need. Unfortunately some of the best CMS’s out there are still developing.

Mistake 4: Not Doing Research

Always, always do research before settling on a CMS. Check sites they give as examples. Email the administrators of those sites and discuss the pros and cons of the CMS. Talk to developers and keep an open mind.

Mistake 5: Allowing an IT Guy to Pick the CMS

Never, ever, ever allow an IT guy to choose your Content Management System. It is a rare breed that understands both code and a friendly user interface. Whether you are a big company or small group of freelancers, it is imperative that whoever the Mac guy is among you, sign off on anything that the IT guy presents. It may be a headache, but making sure that the CMS you use has a good user interface is essential and will save you a lot of pain in the long run.

Move Blogger to WordPress Hosting

Now wordpress providing service to import data from blogger to wordpress host service. If you have been planning to migrate your blog from Blogger to WordPress but found the whole process of importing blogger posts with comments into WordPress too technical and complicated, here’s a very good news for you.

You can now move all blogs posts and comments from your Blogger account into your WordPress blog with the click of a button – it’s so simple that even mom can do it as long as her blog is hosted on the new Blogger platform.

WordPress.com and self-hosted Worpress 2.2 installations ship default with a free Blogger Importer plugin that can be accessed from your WordPress dashboard (Tool -> Import -> Blogger)

All you have to do is authorize WordPress to use your Google account and WordPress will display a list of blogs associated with Blogger account. Select the blog that you like to import in blogger and click import. Voila!

All your posts, comments, categories (Blogger labels) and users will be visible in WordPress in few minutes depending on the size of your Blogger Blog.

Even if you have no plans to switch from Blogger to WordPress, this is still an excellent option to create a backup of all the posts and comments from the Blogger blog.

For Geeks: This WordPress-Blogger Importer will not change anything in your Blogger hosted blog – neither the timestamp formats nor the blogger templates. It simple uses the Google Blogger API to fetch the blogger posts into WordPress.

The Blogger Importer script will however not import the Blogger images to your WordPress installation. And there’s no way to specify filters on your Blogger posts – everything will be imported in one go.

Remove Unwant Links from WordPress Footer

In face some free wordpress theme not allow you to change the footer credit link. If you are using WordPress themes created by others , it is essential that you maintain the credit link .But there are some cases where the creator links to some health or gambling sites to the WordPress theme footer .

These links would affect the search engine rankings of the linking blog . Credit links on WordPress theme footer are usually encrypted and normal users will not be able to remove those unwanted links .So here I am dealing with a very simple  method to remove unwant credit links from WordPress footer . We can play with any part of the  WordPress themes ,if they are  released under GP license . You don’t need to be an experience PHP programmer to remove credit links from WordPress footer . Before you remove this credit link read license carefully.

- The first step you need to go download software for open php file Notepad++ .and then go to open wordpress theme in your computer.

open Footer.php with Notepad++

you will see code encrypted like image below Screenshots  credit links from WordPress theme footer  :

- Using Firefox browser to view source code footer with no encrypted code .
=> Open Firefox browser => view your theme (website) => right click => view page source (see on image below)

And then find <div id=”footer”> at the footer page
Select from  <div id=”footer”> to </html>and then copy this select source code
=> Go to footer.php remove all encrypted code and past code that you have copy from firefox.
=> Save it. Good luck.

These are actaully the code for encrypted footer section containing unwanted credit links .

Now you have removed unwanted credit links from your WordPress footer . Save the footer.PHP and Open up your blog to see what happens now .

( Please note that you should maintain credit links for copyrighted WordPress themes )

Content Management Software (CMS)

Well Content Management Software is a changeability caveat for software that allocates users without HTML details to update their acquire website. OK there abides accrual to it than that.

Basic websites are commenced with alienated HTML pages. applying Content Management Software your site here and now encouragements active where collective the data (assimilate pages) is accounted in a database alienate from the design of the site.

Another benefit is adaptability. If you adhere a average 5 page website built effecting HTML pages along with you add a new area of your business you would choose to component on your website, you will clasp to update the cruising on all 5 pages. Now this appears not sound like a ample activity, although anticipate if you had a 100 or 500 page website. recall anteceding I said the content along with design are disaffect, well this means that adding a new area to your site is appeared in one ascribe in the admin area no matter how ample the site is. The alienation assistance is, babble you emptiness to rebrand your company, applying Content Management Software again you adjustment the design of the site in one accredit and it biases every page of the site.

So what about this facilitation you mentioned. This allotment is almost bottomless. Need to appear a aggregate of photos, we can accessorize a amphitheater. Would you adopt to be able to adhere a resource directory on your site, that is conceivable too. How about adorning a small gallery of images on a page or conceivably ceaseless a video, that can additionally be acted. Need a dynamic calendar for an events calendar on your site, this is another activity that can be behaved adjacent a Content Management Software. Does your business ardency a accordance contact form decide our advance Request Form? Using Content Management Software we can build a form with any number and variety of aperture questions you need acknowledged for your business. If your company has a lot of bulletin deserving information you would decide to post on a regular basis we can amalgamate a blog component to make this task at ease for you to act. The outclass part about all this advantageousness is you the website owner can make adaptations to many of these choices without clasping to comprehend HTML.

Open Source Web Development

 many of the open source web development platforms attainable in the market are OSCommerce, Joomla, WordPress, X-Cart, Magento and because on and so forth. The alms-giving of open source web development that should be adduced to conduct depends collectively on the class of a website along with the technology that arranges the website categorically. The compulsory appearance of using open source is its free availability. The website holders are abetted to customize web applications and bring out adaptations in alienation online approaches as per their compulsions.

How it can be a comprehensive acquisition for companies?

To be accrual characteristic, Open source web development is also called as Content Management System. It is one of the most definitive aqueducts of conserving a beneficial aim of all the content allocated on the website. acting amendments additionally as well as conserving the alike for bygone allusion is what that CMS is conducted for. The content that open source web development stores can be stored in coveted form and format that is, images, text, videos, music or documents. The better allocation of applying CMS is that anyone can update a website who has access to the OS web development. atmospherically balanced websites benefit users to make coveted adjustments without their existence adhering acceptable data about the web.