Should I move from Virtuemart to OSCommerce?

[classixuk]

Hi Everyone,

Before I install OScommerce, I wanted to hopefully get a little advice from you all about my little problem.

 

I'm thinking of moving shopping carts to OSCommerce from Virtuemart.

I have a site built with Joomla that sells just 4 products directly, and 20 via affiliate marketing. Most of my sales are made up of the 4 products I sell directly.

 

The shop has been up and running since 12th February, and I used Virtuemart to build the shop seeing as my site was built with Joomla. The problem seems to be that I lose around 50% of my sales after the checkout stage! Currently the user goes through checkout inputing their name, address etc. and confirming their order. After that they get taken to Paypal for payment.

It's at this stage I lose the sales. :(

 

I was hoping to change to a different payment processor, but it seems that support with Virtuemart is almost non-existant, even for the likes of Paypal Pro (which I've been reading up about).

 

Questions

1. Is it easy to bridge OSCommerce into a Joomla site?

2. Is there a way in OSCommerce that I can have the user enter their name and address etc. just once during the checkout stage? (Currently my users have to enter their details in Virtuemart and then again at Paypal)

3. What is the easiest merchant to implement into OSCommerce?

4. And as a general query, I send all of my items by special next day delivery for £4.50 (have to for the insurance coverage). Do you guys find that absorbing the cost of postage leads to more sales?

 

Thanks for your time.

 

P.S. One other thing, is there an easy way to implement conversion tracking via Google Adwords in OSCommerce?

[satish]

You can use joomla wrapper concept.Bridging is bit difficult.

 

Or You have catalog totally in oscommerce and other pages thru Joomla.

 

 

 

Satish

[Guest]

Hi

 

Re losing sales: You may find that its a case of pepole not wanting to use paypal, this can be a issue since pepole that do use it normaly pefer it and thouse that dont hate it, it may be worth getting a merchant account if your sales allow you to do it ie. you make enough to justify it

 

If using paypal the custmer will still need to create an account with you then when they go to pay they get send to paypal which asks them to login to their paypal account there is no way your can merage the two since this would invole the loging in of Paypal on your site and that would be a big Big securety risk for all involed

 

Re#3 their are 10 payment methods reddy to install with a single button press in OSC so i would say this is easy and even if you want an other type then its quite easy to install them as well like any Contab see http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions

 

Re#4 you could try a Contab like Discont coppon which you could give out to give % of postage ( you dont need to lose money on it ) it just makes the custmer think they are getting a better deal but that Q as a whole is more of a marketing issue rather than shop design / sytem Q try somthing like http://www.wilsonweb.com they will probaly have marketing tips that can help in that department

[khoking]

The "problem" with OSC is that the default theme is really BAD. You need to do modification before actually using it to sell things professionally.

 

OSC is a really basic software, just like windows. You need to install many different contributions in order to make it good.

 

The advantage of OSC is that there are many different contributions around, but the disadvantage is that installing require time and patience...and some php knowledge.

[Ailmar]

I agree that oscommerec has very poor and complicated default web interface. But I'm using store manager for oscommerce. It has some useful features and allows to perform each task in a few steps less than in OSC.

[npn2531]

Moving to OScommerce, or for that matter to any other cart, is not going to change how you interact with paypal. It will be the same.

 

Virtuemart has all the usual payment methods as does OSCommerce, and if you are having difficulty getting support implementing another payment method, then that is just the nature of free open source software. You are going to have to learn how to do it yourself or pay some one to do it. There is not going to be anything really that different implementing other payment methods over here than in any other well designed cart.

 

As much as I like OSCommerce and am willing to sing it's virtues, If you like using Joomla, and it is a great CMS system, struggle with implementing the other payment methods with VirtueMart. It will be far, far easier than attempting to integrate OSCommerce with Joomla, or scrapping your working site and starting over with OSCommerce.