For the novice especially, choosing the right shopping cart extension to use on a Joomla ecommerce site can be a daunting and confusing affair. Like other extensions, there’s a bewildering array to choose from and this can result in a lot of time wasted on trial and error.
Bearing this in mind, we’ve put together some of the better Joomla 2.5 shopping cart extensions to help you to make a choice. These are free solutions and have a number of common features, including:
- Ease of use – easy to install and configure with a configuration dashboard for simple management.
- Feature rich – with options for offering customers discounts, vouchers, etc.
- Multi-language and currency support to offer sales to customers around the world
- Payment options to ensure that customers have a good choice
So this is what you want as basics in your shopping cart and those that don’t contain these options should be discarded immediately.
Some suggestions
J2Store is ideal for beginners, thanks to its simplicity, and your ecommerce shop can be up and running very quickly. There is an easy-to-use interface which allows for configuration, but doesn’t complicate things too much.
However, payment plugins have to be downloaded separately and this could put some users off.
Similar to J2Store is JoomShopping, an open-source solution which is feature-rich. This includes product ratings and testimonials, which is great for additional product details and can even be used for sale items and so on.
Menus and configuration are fairly straightforward and it can be found as a free extension, or you can purchase a Pro version. However, there is only support for three payment methods, so this may not suit everyone.
HikaShop
This extension comes in a choice of three different editions: HikaShop Starter, HikaShop Essential and HikaShop Business.
The starter edition gives plenty of features that are likely to keep you happy, such as coupon and discount options and customisable options for global sales, taxes and currencies.
HikaShop also supports social and RSS for products, so that it’s a simple matter for your items to be shared on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. This has numerous configuration options and is a powerful ecommerce solution for anyone.
VirtueMart
Has long been billed as the best online shop solution for Joomla, but has fallen down slightly with more recent builds and come in for a fair amount of criticism. The sheer amount of options it has makes it an inadvisable choice for the novice and this is recommended for more advanced users.
Of course this is far from an exhaustive list, so it’s always worth doing your research and having a good look around at what else is available. Experimentation is also a good idea so that you can familiarise yourself with Joomla shopping extensions in order to help you choose the best one to suit you and your business.