Why You Should Use OpenCart To Give Your eStore The Best Start

752
Online shopping illustration

Businesses, big or small, strive to build a strong online presence. The probability of that happening largely depends on their choice of an eCommerce platform. Since there’s no dearth of options, it can become difficult for business owners to find one that works well for them. They need one that is versatile, flexible, robust, reliable, and simple. One such platform that has all these qualities is OpenCart. Being an easy-to-use management tool, OpenCart, if leveraged the right way, can prove to be the perfect high-end solution to your online business development woes. 

Also, there’s a reason why 941,585 websites are currently relying on this platform. That’s because it is one of the best and the most versatile eCommerce platforms that has been helping businesses flourish. How? Read on to find out:

1. It lets businesses set up a flexible online store

The best thing about OpenCart is that it is highly flexible and can be customized according to the store owner’s preference. You can alter the look and feel of your e-store in the easiest way possible, thanks to OpenCart’s user-friendly interface. The platform also offers 11 modules that you can customize to suit your store’s unique theme. They are easy to configure, making for quick implementation and easy management.  

The development process is quite simple, which makes it easy to enhance the store’s functionality. Little technical work is needed here, especially coding, making the entire process fast and convenient. It also makes the result easy to manage. Since it won’t have complicated technical aspects that require remembering and correct implementation. The added advantage is that you don’t have to hire eCommerce developers in India to exclusively deal with the technical aspects, avoiding costs you would have incurred otherwise. 

2. OpenCart Offers Cost-Effective Solutions

Online business owners are on a constant lookout for a solution that is cost-optimized, which is exactly what you get if you choose OpenCart. That’s because it comprises several themes and plugins that won’t burn a hole in your pocket. Many of the plugins are free to use forever, with others available at low rates. Since you have such plugins for every aspect of your eStore, you will save a lot of upfront costs during setup and operations too. 

3. The User Interface Is Easily Navigable

It’s not just your customers that need an easily navigable UI to make the shopping experience a convenient and memorable one. Your eCommerce platform of choice should also have an easy-to-use UI to help you set up such a store with little effort. Opencart shines here as it provides an interface that even beginners will find easy to use. All of the required features and functionalities are neatly arranged under respective categories. 

They are placed in tabs that you can access, and remember too, effortlessly. This helps you save time by not having to search for the required parameter every time you use the platform. Multitasking, an essential part of running an eCommerce business, will not be confusing or challenging either due to this user-friendly setup. 

4. OpenCart Enables You To Automate Marketing

You cannot make a mark in the eCommerce world without an effective marketing campaign. To that end, OpenCart has got you covered. It contains Enalito, an AI-powered Email marketing, and personalization platform. With it, you can deliver customized marketing emails on a one-one basis to better engage with your customers and lighten your workload. It is particularly useful in converting your one-time customers into recurring ones, including gaining brand loyalty. 

A very nifty feature of Enalio is the changing of your website according to the customer visiting it to show the product they are most likely to buy. Then there’s the automated curation of emails with customer-specific products and offers so that each receiver only sees what they are interested in. 

Besides that, Enalito lets you track every applicable business metric too and generates automated reports to help you determine the effectiveness of your campaign and its weak points. The platform gives reports of the following types:

  • Sales Report: Provides information about total sales. You can set the period to be a day, week, or month. 
  • Viewed Products: Showcases the products that received the most attention from visitors using the number of views and time spent on a page. 
  • Products Purchased: Provides information on which products have seen maximum sales.  

5. Keeps Your UI and Data Secure

One of the major issues that every online business faces is the safety and security of the platform’s interface. It’s one of the reasons why several owners aren’t able to expand their e-stores. However, OpenCart is a platform that has been designed keeping security features in mind. 

The user interface is completely secure and it allows both the business owners and the developers to work freely around store expansion. That said, you can always reach out to a professional to set up some security patches at the time of development to ensure total robustness, or better still, opt for quality OpenCart development services.

They can help secure not just your interface but also backend data flow and storage. This not only helps protect your data but also that of your customers like their personal information and credit card details. 

6. OpenCart Lets You Develop an SEO-optimized Store

OpenCart lets you build an eCommerce online store that is, by default, optimized for search engines. The web pages developed using OpenCart can be easily managed since they are already SEO-friendly. This means you don’t have to worry about your online store getting indexed or securing higher rankings. OpenCart takes care of that, eventually adding to your conversion rate, which is a total win-win situation for you!

7. Allows multi-language store creation

Online merchants can easily reach out to a wider customer base because OpenCart lets them create and manage a store in multiple languages, 17 to be exact. This feature can be quite helpful for increasing the outreach of your online store. You can also go for an OpenCart development company to get help with multi-lingual store creation.

8. Gives Access To Many Payment Gateways and Shipping Methods

OpenCart’s modular design stretches beyond just customization of your storefront. There are modules you can use to integrate your preferred payment gateways/payment processors too. The most popular ones are present in the default installation. If you want to add some other specific gateway, you can simply get the respective module and install it. The built-in security ensures that the financial data flowing through your OpenCart-based site remains secure all the way. 

Likewise, you can integrate the type of shipping method you want via a few steps. There are10 shipping methods to choose from. They can be found in the drop-down menu of your console. You only need to select the one you want to have configured, and you’re good to go. 

9. Lets You Manage Multiple Stores 

It is only natural that an eCommerce entrepreneur is ambitious about expanding their store to cover new markets. But these markets are likely to require different versions for the business that fit each one’s local regulations and demands. You’d need to set up multiple storefronts to make your multi-market sales venture possible. With OpenCart, you can do that using its inherent feature to manage multiple stores. 

It lets you open multiple storefronts with unique themes and listings to suit the local market. You can even attach a region’s language to its respective store, along with relevant tax slabs and currency. And you can manage them all from a single console for added convenience and error reduction. It’s also possible to set up different customer groups for each so that your store can cater to retail customers while the other sells to wholesalers. 

In Conclusion

There is always a search for an edge over the competition by eCommerce merchants due to the highly competitive nature of the industry. By using OpenCart to create, alter, configure, and scale your online store, you get multiple advantages that can give you that edge. Its popularity means that you using it keeps you on par with your competitors. In contrast, its customizability means you can set yourself apart from them to anchor and spread your brand identity. The cost-effectiveness, combined with the automated marketing facility, gives you high returns for low investments, two factors that can catapult any new business to profitability quickly.With the added ease of multiple storefront management from a single point and low coding requirements, you can multitask without hassle, leading to better strategizing, implementation, and reviewing. Use an OpenCart development company for the job and amplify your convenience and returns.