One of the most important section on a zen cart based e-commerce website is the support system. Zen cart in itself does not have a very good support management system. While the team at Zen cart works on such a solution, it makes sense to explore other cost effective options.

One of the most popular support/help desk systems on the web is Kayako. Kayako has both esupport and supportsuite products that can handle tickets, online live chat and bunch of other features.

We can help you with the integration of zen cart with the kayako support suite or kayako esupport system. This way your members can seamlessly login into both the systems using the same login and password. Whats more, your support agents can see client’s zen cart profile and order details inside their kayako staff support panel. This not only saves their time on searching for the client records in zen cart database but also increases efficiency and reduces errors in handling support issues.

It also gives a more unified experience to your customers when it comes to the services that you offer. Research has shown that refund rate significantly reduces with increased efficiency in handling support tickets. Hence this is one area that no e-commerce store operator can look to ignore.

Contact us today to know more about Kayako zen cart integration. You can use the contact link on the website or simply email us at quote @ zencartonline.com.

Zen cart e-commerce store is a powerful system that can be used to start and run a highly scalable e-commerce store. However, one of the drawbacks of the standard script is that it comes with a standard look. As a site owner, you would want your zen cart e-commerce store to look unique.

We can help you make a custom e-commerce site design and integrate it easily in zen cart. If you already have a design in place and wish to simply get it integrated in your zen cart store, we can help you do that as well. If during the integration of the design, it is found that custom mods have to be written then we can handle it as well.

We can also advice on placement of menu items, buttons etc for a better conversion rate. We will soon offer many free zen cart themes that you can use on your website.

In case you wish to get a custom zen cart theme designed, please contact us using the contact link on the website. You can also email us at quote @ zencartonline.com for more information.

One of the most important aspects of the Internet revolution has been the e-commerce. With advancements in the technology and popularity of open source solutions, e-commerce software have not only become more advanced but also cost effective. In fact most of these open source e-commerce scripts do not cost any licensing fee. If you know how to install, configure and support the script, you don’t have to shell out any money for its usage (of course except for the hosting fees that you pay to your web hosting company).

So before you venture out into choosing the best way to add a shopping cart to your existing website (or for that matter starting a new site with a cart feature) what are some of the points you must keep in mind?

Technology

You have to really decide what technology or platform you wish to use for your shopping cart e-commerce website. If you think from an end user perspective – you may think how does it matter? Well the decision that you take here will determine almost all of your future plans related to the website. Be it choosing the correct hosting company or looking for help/support for your website maintenance etc.

There are many e-commerce solutions available in the market today. Most of them do not have a licensing fee (i.e. they are free to use). The only time you have to spend money on these systems is when you wish to get them customized or the design integrated (the site look and feel). Open source scripts like zen cart, oscommerce etc fair pretty well in terms of license cost (they have none) and support cost. These scripts are supported by the open source community. Hence any security vulnerability is fixed within hours of it being reported. Also since its a community driven project, there are lot of additional modules available for free. Given the entire community system, finding a technical person to help you setting up the site or maintenance is also not really a problem. Technical resource is available in abundance and at a very reasonable rate. These scripts are also based on PHP and MySQL, one of the most popular web application development platform.

The other thing you must keep in mind is whether the software that you choose supports your preferred payment method. Zen cart supports almost all the popular payment processors including Paypal, PayFlowPro, Google Checkout, Authorize.net, MoneyBookers, EPDQ etc.

Security

The second aspect that you should look at is the security of the system. Generally open source scripts are more secure than closed source scripts. You may ask why? Well, the entire code for these software is open to public and hence gets scrutinized by a large community of programmers, testers and technology enthusiasts. This review weeds out any optimization or other such technical snags in the software. Also given the huge community support for these scripts, any vulnerability that is reported gets fixed in matter of hours.

Web Hosting

The next important task is to find the right hosting partner for your website. In case you already have a website, you must check with your host if your existing plan supports installation of an e-commerce website. You will generally require a database (MySQL) and permission to run dynamic pages (PHP).

Apart from the technology requirements, you should also check with your hosting company about scalability. If your website grows, does your hosting company provides higher plans? Do they provide virtual and dedicated server hosting. This sort of planning makes sure that you can form a long term relationship with your host and you know that the hosting company can take care of your scalability related upgrades easily.

Creating your site design and its integration

Once you have finalized the hosting provider, you can look for some design work completion. Most of the e-commerce softwares including zen cart come with a standard look. You may want to change that especially if you already have a website. You would want the zen cart based e-commerce store to resemble your website. You can easily hire a zen cart specialist to help you integrate your existing design into the zen cart store. Or you can get a new design made and integrated into zen cart

Setting up the store

Once the design is ready, you need to install and configure the store. Most of the e-commerce scripts come with their installation instructions which are pretty easy to follow. However you can simply hire a zen cart or e-commerce specialist to do the installation and initial configuration for you. The configuration will include setting up the store categories, products, payment methods (paypal, credit card etc), support email IDs, installation of SSL etc.

Installing Tracking code and onsite SEO

It is important to install some kind of traffic monitoring code on your e-commerce store. The best traffic analysis software is Google Analytics. Its free and very user friendly. Whats more it gives out lot of information about user and site activity that can help you plan promotions, fix site issues, identify and promote high conversion items etc. It is also important to make sure that all onsite SEO (search engine optimization) is done on the store. This includes title, meta tags, correct xHTML code for the template, SEO friendly site URLs, integration of Google sitemaps.

E-commerce store promotion

E-commerce store promotion can be a topic in itself. However you should look at ways of integrating social media tools like Digg, Facebook, Twitter on your website. Zen cart based e-commerce stores can be easily customized to integrate with many social media and micro blogging platforms.

A lot of times our websites outgrow the server we are currently hosted with. Moving a website to a different server or a different host is always complicated. It becomes even more complicated if the website you intend to move is a zen cart based e-commerce website.

Below are some steps that you must follow if you intend to move your website to a new host.

Choose the right hosting company

I think a lot has already been written about this all over the Internet. Basically look for a host with good support and good reviews. You may want to check www.webhostingtalk.com to find more about the host you wish to review.

Making sure the server supports zen cart stores

It is important to confirm with the new hosting company that they support all the necessary softwares and services to host and run a zen cart based e-commerce store. This includes checking PHP, MySQL and Apache versions. Also if you make use of mod_rewrite (Zen cart SEO tools), you should make sure that apache supports mod_rewrite, GD library and any other module which is required for proper functioning of your store. It is also important to check if SSL certificates can be installed on the server and confirm that the server IPs are not blacklisted in any spam databases.

Backup and transfer

Before you begin the process of site transfer, make sure to backup each and every file and database at your old host. It is recommended to shut down your store before you start the database backup. If you have any integrated systems like zencart helpdesk etc, make sure to shut them down as well and back them up as well.

After the complete backup, transfer the files from old server to the new server. Try doing this with some server tools like rsync as it makes the entire process pretty fast.

Restore the files, database and settings

Once the transfer is successful, restore the files and database on the new server. Also make sure you do all the necessary settings (like config path, database password, SSL etc). Before you do the DNS switch, make sure to test all the important functionalities of your store (Order, add to cart, checkout, payment, support). Once this is tested, you can make the DNS switch and in few hours the new store will be online.

If you have better control over the old and new servers, you can minimize the DNS update time.

We can also help you in moving your store from one server to another. Contact us today to receive a free quote.

Are you looking to start a zen cart based e-commerce shopping cart site? We offer web hosting for zen cart shopping cart at very competitive rates. We differ from the traditional “web host” because our service caters to very specific type of websites. Our servers are optimized to run a zen cart based shopping cart site/store efficiently. All our zen cart hosting packages include free installation of zen cart with default template and settings. If you already have a zen cart store running with a different host and wish to switch hosts, you can send us the details of your old zen cart site and we will transfer your zen cart store to your new hosting account with us absolutely free of cost.

Our hosting comes with a feature rich control panel that allows you to control all aspects of your hosting account. Our servers support php4, php5 and MySQL, the essentials for Zen Cart.

Whats more we also offer zen cart customization, zen cart theme integration and host of other zen cart related services. So you will be hosting your website with a host that knows Zen cart in and out.

We offer two packages for zen cart based stores.

Plan 1. 500MB of disk space and 20GB of bandwidth every month. Other features like email accounts, databases, forwarders, mailing lists, ftp accounts etc are unlimited. The plan comes with default zen cart script installed. Plan 1 costs $29.95 every month.

Plan 2. 1000MB of disk space and 40GB of bandwidth every month. Other features like email accounts, databases, forwarders, mailing lists, ftp accounts etc are unlimited. The plan comes with default zen cart script installed. Plan 1 costs $39.95 every month.

If you choose to pay annually, we offer a 10% discount on the total invoice!

Contact us today to get your account setup!