Zen Cart is a free of charge and open source shopping cart software. Just like all open source software Zen Cart's source code is allowed to be freely modified and also redistributed by users. The code for Zen Cart is a fork of another shopping cart software plug-in known as osCommerce, and is supposed to be less difficult to use and configure by those not so technically inclined. Due to a small, but focused community Zen Cart get regular upgrades and maintenance.
Installation is rather straight forward and smooth, if you have ever installed WordPress correctly this should be a cake walk.
Speaking about benefits of Zen Cart we can point out that this software is designed to make it easy to create product listings, pricing and payment options along with act as a content management system (CMS) for all other aspects of your e-commerce site. This makes the common tasks of managing a site more user-friendly and simpler to understand for many who are not necessarily web designers or programmers. A very active help forum will assist you to solve any problem you may have.
Today all users can customize their site with a help of countless quality Zen Cart templates available from different sites on the net. Using of Zen Cart templates gives the site owner an opportunity to quickly modify the design of the web site according to their personal wants. One of the advantage of Zen Cart template is that site owners can eliminate the necessity to hire a web designer to modify the basic layout to suit the particular type of product presentation. Other advantage is that Zen Cart themes are easy to install.
There are various places on the web where a site owner can find Zen Cart themes that use their specific company color scheme and branding. By using Zen Cart themes it enables the site to use the colors and branding associated with a certain brand or possibly an established brick and mortar retailer. It is important to have a standard branding and color scheme shared by all facets of a business enterprise to insure consumer recognition.
A web site owner may opt to go and hire a web designer to give his shop a highly customized look, this has some drawbacks however. First is the time necessary to find the right designer with the needed skill set, designing for Zen Cart is rather different from designing sites using the more popular HTML and CSS languages. So you need to hire a designer who knows how to design specifically on the WordPress platform.
Another aspect to consider is the time it takes to meet with the designer, have them produce a design mock up or two, and then make revisions before final design approval. If time is of the essence then using a pre-configured template is certainly the route to take.
The upside to hiring a designer to give your web page a custom look is that you can find a unique design that can help your site and business be noticeable among the countless cookie cutter web sites in your market niche. Certainly your website is usually the first opinion a customer has of your business- dont miss this opportunity!
A professionally designed web-site that is pleasing to the eye and easy to navigate instills confidence in your products and helps keep customers on your web-site, increasing the odds of them making a purchase.
Author Resource:
With an experience of more than 5 years in the area of e-commerce web design - specifically Zen Cart templates and Zen Cart themes - Stan Lem is currently employed with ZenCartWebTemplates.com as a freelance writer and blogger.
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