The Mouse Doctor and Zen Cart

Even if you are a small business, you may find it advantageous to offer goods and services for sale on the internet. Although you can spend thousands of pounds on this, you don't have to!

 

Zen Cart is a solution for e-commerce sites. It has an extensive feature list including support for secure online payments, and is almost infinitely customisable. Best of all, Zen Cart is Open Source - the developers don't charge for the actual software - so all you pay for is the customisation and the hosting.

Our Zen Cart package includes:

  • A Zen Cart template unique to you
  • Installation and customisation of the basic product to your requirements
  • Set up of initial products to get you going
  • A reference guide including examples from YOUR store, to assist you further
  • Training in the product
  • We can also offer a full support service including setting up new products.

Here are just some of the features of Zen Cart.

  • Allows customers to shop your store 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365+ days a year!
  • Easily keep your product/catalogue updated
  • Secure -- no one but your administrative personnel can access your customer/catalogue data
  • Merchandise Pricing options -- Single and Multiple items can be put on Sale. Sale options include Percentage-off, Fixed Amount off, New Price, etc. Sales can include or exclude product attributes. You can add or exclude a discount from a Special. You can put a whole category or the entire store on sale!
  • Products can be marked as Free, or "Call for Price"
  • Products can be marked as "Featured" for specific highlighting/attention.
  • Minimum or Maximum Quantities and Units - You can sell 1 per customer, or require at least 4 and in multiples of 2. You can set requirements on a per-product basis.
  • Quantity Discounts can be configured per-product for varying pricing levels or quantity levels.
  • Product Attributes can be added, either as Radio buttons, Checkboxes, Drop-down lists, Text Boxes, File Uploads, File Downloads, and more. Attribute Options can upcharge the price of an item, and an item can have its price completely controlled by attributes. Attributes can be configured as "read only" so as to provide a Features List.
  • One-Time Fees can be added to products via attributes
  • Attributes also support Text Pricing, such as price-per-word or price-per-letter for personalizing
  • Attributes can show image/colour swatches
  • Entire categories of products (or individual products) can be enabled/disabled with just a few clicks
  • You can send administrative emails on most customer shopping activities to various administrators as desired. Email addresses are protected from abuse, as they are not displayed on-screen. The Contact Us page can be configured to support multiple destinations, such as Sales, Technical Support, Webmaster, and so on.
  • Nearly every piece of information about your products can be controlled in the Admin areas, giving you the ability to fine-tune how your products and services appear to your customers. Features and options can be enabled/disabled quickly and easily.
  • Multiple items can be added to the shopping cart by simply entering quantities and click Add
  • The Product Type feature allows you to customize information fields and display format for different products differently. Products for sale vs Documents for viewing, vs Music Downloads, and the list goes on.
  • You can add multiple images to your products, in small/medium/large format. Popups are available if desired for viewing of larger images.
  • Customer Access Control -- You can set up your shop to only allow customers access to pricing or pricing but not buying until after being authorized by an administrator. You can restrict them from browsing at all too, if desired.
  • Showcase - You can set your store up to be simply a product showcase, without pricing at all.
  • Search options allow you to search for products based on name, description, metatags, price, and more!
  • Tight security on password handling, login/logout, and more.
  • HTML-style email supported
  • Email archiving supported for audit trail
  • Administrative activity logging enabled for audit trail -- especially beneficial with recent Merchant Agreement requirements concerning tracking of activity related to accessing customer information.
  • Advertising Banners -- show information about your business colleagues and track banner link activity.
  • Shipping Estimator allows your customer to get an idea of their shipping costs prior to checkout
  • Coupons and Gift Certificates are easily handled both by customers and administrators
  • Customer "Group Pricing" allows groups of users to receive a set discount amount at checkout
  • Newsletter system and Product Notification system
  • Low-Order Fees can be configured
  • COD Fees can be added
  • Shipping Tare, Large-Package handling to give fine-grain control over shipping services
  • Tax rates, zones, etc easily configured in the admin area
  • PayPal IPN and many other popular Merchant Services supported
  • Customers can write product reviews (approvals can be required by an Administrator)
  • Low-Stock notifications to administrator when inventory is getting low (level can be configured)
  • Scalable from small shops to larger shops with hundreds of thousands of products
  • Track Who's Online interactively
  • Multiple Language Support
  • Multiple Currency Support