It is becoming extremely popular to start selling online as a way to make a living. Drop shipping is an area of great growth and means it is now possible to start your own online store with low overheads. due to the fact that you do not need to buy products in advance, it means you can hold an inventory of millions of items for almost nothing. To sell these products you do not have to spend a fortune as you can use an open source e-commerce platform for free to get your products to the masses. In this article, I will talk about the open source platforms you should be using if you’re thinking about starting selling online.
1: Opencart Platform
If it is your first time setting up an online store or you have limited tech knowledge OpenCart is the best e-commerce platform for you. It is the easiest along with fastest to learn and even if you have very little technical experience you will be able to pick up everything you need to know quickly. There are lots of great themes to choose from and you will be able to find an app to solve any problem.
2: Zencart Platform
ZenCart is one of the oldest e-commerce platforms and has built up a loyal following over that time. One of the things that make it stand out from the crowd is its superior product management system. It has the largest community of users which makes it easy to get support should you require it.
3: WooCommerce Platform
WooCommerce is the WordPress of the e-commerce world and the two are extremely similar in many ways. If you know how to use WordPress you will love this platform. You will find it extremely quick to get your online store up and running in no time. It is mobile friendly and when you want to grow you will find it simple to scale your business.
4: Drupal Platform
Drupal may not be as popular as WordPress but it has a loyal following. If you have used this platform before you will be pleased to know that you can use the Drupal Commerce to create your online store. It is one of the most flexible platforms with many great features such as multicurrency, multilingual, shopping carts, built in admin along with checkout forms.
5: Virtuemart Platform
VirtueMart is designed for sites built using Joomla and the two work seamlessly together to create the perfect online store. It is a great platform for stores looking to sell to a worldwide audience and has support in multi-languages. It is optimised for search engines which will help boost your site in google rankings.
Conclusion
You will need to carry out research and find the most valuable online training before you begin. Use reason when finding which platform suits your business model the best but you can not go far wrong using any of the above platforms. Make sure you work out the costs of any plugins or extension you may require along with having the cost of hiring a tech worker if needed. Also, make sure the feature you need is available along with a support community or forum.
