e-commerce
in open source
OS Commerce
OS Commerce
Open Source also provides e-commerce with comprehensive, high performance solutions. .
There are a plethora of content management solutions available on the market but for e-commerce there is really only one contender: since 2007, OS Commerce has been the top solution on the market, which has the advantage of development efforts being concentrated on just one product resulting in features being improved on a daily basis. Smile is already an expert on OS Commerce which we have already implemented three times. Knowledge of all the tool's possibilities and its catches and risks, enables Smile's consultants to implement a comprehensive e-commerce solution within just two months. OS Commerce is an open source solution that has been developed and maintained for nearly three years. This powerful, high performance solution makes it simple and convenient for you to put your e-commerce store online. OS Commerce offers all the latest functions for daily management of the website and user comfort.
Technical Environment
OS Commerce can be installed on a Linux or Windows platform using the scripting language PHP, a MySQL database and an http Apache server.
Operational examples
OS Commerce is used all over the world by 1400 merchants for businesses as diverse as selling bags, video cassettes, libraries and businesses in the IT or food sector. This solution was chosen by top companies such as BHV, Paul Harris, Longchamp etc.
Features offered by OS Commerce
The current version of OS Commerce " OS Commerce-2.2ms1 " provides the website administrator and users with a large number of features such as:
Administration/backend functionality
- Administration of product categories and their structure (add, delete, edit)
- Administration of products and their characteristics (description, price, model, tax rate, product photo).
- Administration of suppliers (description, supplier photo, external URL)
- Management of product promotions (old price, new price, date of the promotion)
- Management of product reviews
- Payment set up (by cheque, secure payment etc.)
- Shipping configuration (one rate, rate according to destination, weight, interface with Colissimo or UPS etc.)
- Management of website currencies and languages.
- Management of zones for delivery and payment (tax type, tax rate etc,)
- Editing of invoices and delivery orders
- Statistics about products and suppliers.
- List of registered customers and orders placed.
- Management of newsletter recipients.
- Summary of views per category and per product
- More than a dozen other features that are very useful for website administrators (Backup, email contact etc.)
Front end functionality
- Product lists (photo, description, price etc.)
- Item options (size, colour, etc.) and prices
- Viewing new products
- Possiblity to view bestsellers.
- Choice of products by supplier.
- Multicurrency and conversion between currencies
- Promotional items highlighted
- Integrated search engine
- Order taking (basket feature)
- Account viewing
- Order history viewing
- Payment by cheque, bank card or bank transfer.
- Different delivery options available
- Choice of language.
- Order confirmation sent to the customer by email in real time.
- Order tracking in real time on the website
- Exact delivery costs displayed for the destination country in the basket.
The future of OS Commerce
Despite its large community, OS Commerce suffers from an aging architectural foundation which makes it difficult to implement some features or to modify the core product. In recent years, more modern solutions have appeared such as Magento or Prestashop, which have rapidly taken over some of the market share and which today offer far better functional coverage. The Enterprise version of Magento
, in particular, covers even the most advanced needs such as advanced pricing or promotions management.
