A lot of people are looking to the web for their shopping needs these days. It’s become a convenient, much more secure way to shop from the relative comfort of one’s home or office and to top it off, it keeps you out of the maddening crowds in the holiday season. That is of course unless, you like being in the maddening crowds during the holiday rush. If so, this post isn’t for you my friend. 
For those that are in business, whether for themselves or a company looking for an alternative to the big dollar shopping cart systems available today, osCommerce has what you’re looking for.
This description taken from their site says it all: “osCommerce Online Merchant is an Open Source online shop e-commerce solution that is available for free under the GNU General Public License. It features a rich set of out-of-the-box online shopping cart functionality that allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain online stores with minimum effort and with no costs, fees, or limitations involved.”
I’ve been involved with the installation and configuring of this e-commerce shopping cart solution and can tell you from experience that it is one of the best ones out there as far as ease of use, setting up the products and catagories, buyer’s options, payment gateways, etc. This is a great option for any company, large or small that wants to sell online.
With many themes (or skins) and many different ways to create just the right appearance you’re looking for, you can’t lose with osCommerce. It’s low impact on a server too so that’s always a good thing for those on a shares server. However, keeping in mind that if in the event your store becomes very popular, you may then need to consider upgrading to a VPS or Dedicated hosting solution so that your impact in a shared environment won’t cause your hosting provider to suspend your account due to too many resources being used. Not a good thing to happen if your store becomes real active.
This About page fills you in on what osCommerce is and where it’s going. They even have a page dedicated to showcasing Live Shops so you can see how others have developed thier online presence.
If you or your company is considering going online with their business, give osCommerce a try. It’s one of the best open source solutions to your business’s online presence that Wilsonsway Designs can help you with.
Tags: ecommerce, online shopping, oscommerce