E-commerce has boomed since it’s inception, rapidly growing year after year with market leaders such as Amazon and Ebay pathing the way forward. Due to it’s popularity and accessibility, new e-commerce technologies and platforms emerge on a regular basis that assist in making the buying and selling of goods or services online, easier than ever, for individuals, large corporations and brand new businesses. This makes it extremely easy for anyone to set up and start offering their products on the world wide web.

Unlike that of a standard brick and mortar retail store, online stores possess a much broader customer reach while having the ability to also lower operating costs. With an estimated 2.4 billion internet users worldwide, as of 2012, it makes sense to operate as an online retailer and not only showcase, but sell your products, or services, in front of such a vast audience.

Getting your online storefront up and running is a relatively quick process and surprisingly easy to do. Quite simply, the first step is to ensure that you have a domain name relevant to your business and a web hosting plan in order to host your online store. After this it’s a matter of selecting an online e-commerce application that best suits your needs for use in powering your store which allows your customers to view, purchase, pay and receive products.

E-Commerce Applications

There is a range of great online e-commerce web applications which are more than capable of powering both large and small scale online stores. Most of which come bundled with some of the following essential features:

• Creation and fulfillment of orders
• Coupon and promotion management
• Invoicing
• Multi payment gateway support
• Multilingual
• SEO friendly

The following outlines a few of the various popular e-commerce applications, available for free via the softaculous installer or direct download.

Magento

Magento, an open source e-commerce web application, is owned by eBay and currently stands as one of the leaders in online shopping technology. Although Magento is an open source application, known as the Community Edition, there are 2 premium versions available – Magento Enterprise and Magento Go.

Magento Enterprise edition is built off of the Community edition with the inclusion of multiple premium features and increased functionality. Although enterprise does require an annual fee it included access to live technical support with the aim of appealing to larger businesses.

Magento Go, launched 3 years after the initial Magento launch, is a premium complete cloud based e-commerce solution. Go is hosted by Magento which eliminates the need for users to purchase a hosting service and install Magento on their own.

Magento comes packaged with a set of rich features that assist in making the running of an online store as easy process. Some of these include:

• Order management
• Marketing tools
• SEO Tools
• Administration analytics and reports

• Multilingual & Multiple Currency Support
• Shipping management
• Multiple payment options

Magento can be directly downloaded or installed via the softaculous auto-application installer.

PrestaShop

Prestashop, a free open source online commerce application, is one of the most popular applications and boasts awards such as the 2010 and 2011 best open source business application.

Like Magento, prestashop, although open source, is also available under a premium model known as Prestabox. Prestabox is a fully hosted Prestashop solution that eliminates the need for users to manually install and host the application, making it easy to setup shop in little to no time at all.

Prestashop is packed with a broad list of the features that you would expect to find in an e-commerce application. Some of these include:

• Catalog management
• Marketing and promotional tools
• Analytics and reporting
• Checkout and shipping management

• Multilingual
• Search engine optimization
• Client management

Prestashop can be downloaded for free from the official site or installed automatically via the Softaculous auto-application installer.

osCommerce

osCommerce is an open source online store management application that empowers individuals and businesses with the ability to promote and sell products via an online storefront. osCommerce, although quite possibly not as heavily used as some other e-commerce applications, is one of the oldest with the initial launch occurring in 2000.

As with many of the other e-commerce applications, osCommerce features all of the tools required to successfully run your own online store. Some of these include:

• Customer management
• Product and order management
• Online and offline payment method support
• Design and layout options

• Marketing tools
• Shipping management
• Multilingual

osCommerce can be installed within a matter of seconds via our auto-application installer, Softaculous, or directly downloaded via the osCommerce website.

Zen Cart

Zen Cart is a user-friendly open source e-commerce application, available under the GNU General Public licence, that is based off of osCommerce, branching out as it’s own application in 2003. Many of the difference include a stronger templating system and architectural setup.

Zen Cart has an active community of over 100,000 members which makes it easy to gain support, advice and assistance with the software. In addition to this, over 1,000 plugins, or addons, are available for download in order to further increase the core applications functionality.

Many of the features found within Zen Cart are similar to those of other e-commerce applications. Some of these include:

• Catalog and product management
• Pricing and promotional options
• Shipping and payment management
• Multilingual

• Multiple currency support
• SEO Options
• Design and templating options

Zen cart, as with most others, can be downloaded directly from the official website or automatically installed via softaculous.

And Many Others

There are many other e-commerce applications that you can choose from, some of which are lightweight with minimal features whilst others are more feature rich and provide varied experiences.

Many of the smaller applications are geared towards specific niches or product ranges. An example of this is FreeWay, an e-commerce applications that is designed for the online sale of services rather than physical products.

Some of the alternate applications include:

• dashCommerce
• UberCart
• VirtueMart

• SimpleCart
• Freeway
• OpenCart

What One Is Right For You

Choosing the right e-commerce application for your online store can be difficult due to the varied applications available, each of which share similar features and options. Although we’ve provided some relevant information and feature lists for some of the more popular applications above, it is well worth further researching each applications to find just what one suits your needs. It’s ideal to look at the kind of support provided by the developers or community of each applications as well as the availability of additional inclusions such as plugins and themes.

Most of the above mentioned applications are supported for cross-application migration. This means that should you choose to use one application, then decide it’s not the right choice for you and your store, you can run a migration in order to transfer your products, options and customer across to a different platform.

Digital Pacific is an Aussie web host with a range of e-commerce web hosting plans suitable for individuals, small-medium sized businesses and corporations.