A brand new component to build online shops with Elxis CMS just released. Open Shop is a shopping cart software that provides all the features and tools an online shop needs nowadays. In this article we list the most important features of Open Shop and give you ideas on what you can do with Open Shop.
Introduction
Open Shop is based on the commercial IOS Eshop component for Elxis 2009.x series developed by Ioannis Sannos (Is Open Source). The license changed from commercial to Elxis Public License and so Open Shop is open source software and provided for free! Although Open Shop shares many features of the old IOS Eshop the source code is brand new, the layout is modern and responsive and all the functionality is enriched with new ideas. You can download Open Shop and extensions for it from Elxis Downloads Centre.
Administration control panel of Open Shop
What Open Shop can do for you
Open Shop can be used to build small to medium scale online shops. You can use it to sell both tangible and intangible goods online. There is a build-in downloads manager that allows you to sell even downloadable products, like software. After a customer pays online a special email containing a download link is sent to him to download the products he bought within 24 hours. After this period the link expires. You can also use Open Shop to sell physical goods like clothes, home accessories, technology products and anything else. Services are also supported. With Open Shop you can organize the products and services in categories of unlimited depth. Visitors can also find the products they are interested in by using search, following tags and via the manufacturers pages. They can also compare products or add them to their wishlist. Special offers are supported and they can expire automatically on a specific date. Inside Open Shop pages you can display any Elxis module in the built-in module positions. For instance you can generate a fully custom frontpage for your shop. Both interface and data are multilanguage.
Features
Most important features of Open Shop.
Product types
Unlimited products, categories and sub-categories of any level.
Shoppers groups. Assign customers to different groups each one with different prices. Option also to auto-assign customers to group based on the origin country.
Advanced products search. You may also search based on product type and any of the extra fields describing the product.
Product tags and tags cloud
Special offers. Each offer can expire on specific date. Friendly messages on products which expire soon (f.e. The offer expires on Friday, hurry up!).
Products comparison
Brief and full description for products
Pagination and navigation
Many options to control the appearance and the layout
Insert video and any Elxis plugin inside product description area.
Support for digital, intangible and downloadable goods (download manager is included)
Discounts, discount coupons and gift certificates
Product variants and price modifiers
Any currency support
Various shipping methods and automatic calculation of shipping cost.
Open payments support (customer fills-in the payment amount)
Express checkout option (shop without login)
Tax and discount per product and shopper group
Various payment methods (Paypal, Alpha bank e-commerce, Western Union, order, bank deposit, and more)
Generation of receipts and invoices (for companies)
Sales report per month, year and product as well as option to download the report in CSV format.
See current carts from administration area.
Diagnostic utility for misconfiguration and problems.
Products XML export for price comparison sites like skroutz.gr and bestprice.gr (export format is configurable).
New customers can register a new user account from Open Shop during the checkout process.
Load any Elxis module internally into Open Shop.
Time scheduled tasks. A number of tasks are executed automatically every day keeping your shop in good condition and performing many checks and operations (f.e. send notification when the product stock is bellow an alert limit).
Option to set Open Shop status to online (normal operation mode), offline, under demo mode (no transactions allowed) and products catalogue (no prices are being displayed).
Extended use of AJAX makes the shop management extremely easy and fast.
Direct e-mail contact form with customers from within Open Shop control panel.
Products, categories, payment methods, and any informational field can be entered in multiple languages.
Support for customers from any country.
Module Shop Basket
Module Products I have seen
Payment methods
Payment methods currently available for Open Shop.
Alpha bank e-Commerce
Bank Deposit
Paypal
Western Union
Order
More payment and shipping methods can be developed by you or by hiring a professional like Open Shop developer Ioannis Sannos.
Special thanks
Open Shop has been developed by Ioannis Sannos with the financial support of three people, Spiros Panagiotakopoulos, Kostas Kosmopoulos and Chong Bing. Without them Open Shop wouldn't exist. Thanks for your support and for allowing this project to be released for free to the community.
Download
Open Shop has been released on EDC and you can download it from there. A number of modules and plugins for Open Shop also released and you will find them in e-Commerce category.
