Open Source eCommerce That Let’s Your Customers Shop With The Best

eCommerce has certainly come a long way since I started using the Internet 15 or so years ago. Around then the “Amazon experience” was extraordinary. Now using open source eCommerce software from Magento, you can create an online shopping experience that will rival Amazon and some of the biggest merchants on the net.

Back in the late 90’s most sites used what we called “shopping cart” applications to build an eCommerce store. Of course some of these were pretty rudimentary. Just clicking on a picture of an item which fired off an email to contact you to buy was considered eCommerce. If you had a shopping cart that created a database of items, prices and shipping options and the pages where created on “the fly”, whoa, that was big time. You had to pay some serious cash for that kind of functionality.Of course updating prices, running specials and any number of other retail functions required amazing acts of programming skill. But that is not the case anymore.

Today there are a wide range of eCommerce platforms that can let you duplicate the terrific experience that Amazon and other online merchants offer. One such solution is an open source platform called Magento. Magento has been downloaded over a million times since 2001. Owned and developed by Varien, it is offered under a dual licensed model. The community edition is a free open source edition with only forum support. Varien also offers an enterprise edition with even more features and premium support. Varien describes Magento as:

Magento is a feature-rich, professional open-source eCommerce solution that offers merchants complete flexibility and control over the look, content, and functionality of their online store. Magento’s powerful marketing, search engine optimization and catalog-management tools give merchants the power to create ecommerce sites that are tailored to their unique business needs. And this ain’t your dad’s shopping cart either!

A list of features available is pretty shocking:

Marketing Promotions and Tools

• Flexible Coupons (pricing rules) with ability to restrict to stores, customer groups, time period, products, and categories.
• Catalog Promotional Pricing

Analytics and Reporting

Admin Dashboard for Report Overview
Abandoned Shopping Cart Report
Best Customers Report by Total and Number of Orders

Search Engine Optimization

Google Site Map
URL Rewrites give full control of URL's
Meta-information for products and categories

Site Management

Control multiple websites and stores from one Administration Panel with ability to share as much or as little information as needed
Web Services API for easy integration between Magento and any third-party application
One-Click Upgrades
Google Website Optimizer Integration for A/B and Multivariate Testing

Catalog Management

Batch Import and Export of catalog
Google Base Integration
Downloadable/Digital Products
Advanced Pricing Rules and support for Special Prices (see marketing tools)

Catalog Browsing

Layered / Faceted Navigation for filtering of products in Categories
Layered / Faceted Navigation for filtering of products in Search Results
Product comparisons
Product Reviews

Product Browsing

Multiple Images Per Product
Product Image Zoom-in Capability

Mobile Commerce

iPhone Optimized

International Support

Multi-Lingual
Support for Multiple Currencies

Checkout

One-Page Checkout
Checkout without account/Guest Checkout
Shipping to multiple addresses in one order

Shipping

Shipping to multiple addresses in one order
Multiple shipments per order
Free Shipping

Payment

Integrated with Google Checkout (Level 2)
Payment Extensions Available through Magento Connect
Configurable to authorize and charge, or authorize only and charge on creation of invoices
Customer Service
Feature-rich Customer Accounts
Order Tracking from Account
Customer Accounts
Re-orders from account
Downloadable Products
Recently ordered items
Order Management
View, edit, create and fulfill orders from admin panel.
Create one or multiple invoices, shipments and credit memos per order to allow for split fulfillment

I think you would have to agree that there are few stones left unturned in the eCommerce feature set. The experience of the store builder is equally as rich. Varien has You Tube videos that walk you through every step of the way.They also offer a forum, wiki and a host of other great ways to interact with the large community of fellow store designers, but the company as well.

I am enclosing a few screen shots and a YouTube to give you an idea of what I am talking about. Magento runs a variety of platforms. If you are in search of a great eCommerce solution that gives you all the bells and whistles, this open source gem could put you right up there with biggest and best on the web!

Example of front of Magento Store:

Example of back of store admin: