E Commerce with Virtuemart
Written by John Pitchers   
Wednesday, 20 June 2007

Virtuemart is the leading e-commerce system for use with the Joomla Content Management System. More than 1.5 Million downloads so far and according to one estimate approximately 250,000 active online installations.

Virtuemart is Open Source software which means it is undergoing constant development by the very people that use it. It is secure, feature rich and easy to use. Being open source it is also free.

One of the benefits of an open source application is the freedom to develop and change the application to suit your individual needs. Here's an example.

Jubilog Distbution supply wholesale products to corner stores, post offices, news agents and the like. All the shopping cart systems they considered for their site followed the standard E Commerce model. ie;
1. A customer chooses the category they wish to purchase from.
2. Choose a product from the chosen category.
3. Add it to the cart.
4. Return to step 1 or check out.

This model is fine if a customer is only purchasing a few items. But what if a customer needs to purchase a few hundred products at a time? One of Jubilog's biggest movers is batteries. When a retailer purchases a stock of batteries they usually need a number of AAA size batteries, a number of AA's, a number C's, a number of D's, etc. Adding these items to the shopping cart one at a time simply takes too long.

The solution? Develop a custom modification to allow customers to view every product in a category, nominate the amount required of each item and add all the items to the shopping cart in one step. We used javascript to dynamically keep track of the dollar value of the selected items before adding them to the cart. See it in action here.

This modification has proven such a user friendly system, we have used it on two other sites. Ripe Tomato, who home deliver fruit and vegetables. And Hunter Chicken Man, who home deliver cuts of fresh chicken.

Visit the sites here;
http://ripetomato.com.au
http://jubilog.com.au
http://hunterchickenman.com.au

More client sites using Virtuemart.
http://galafreywines.com.au
http://tacklenet.com.au
http://www.naturebase.net

Do you need E Commerce? Click here.
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Following is an exhaustive list of features and benefits of Virtuemart.

Products/Categories:

  • Unlimited number of Products and Categories and unlimited Category/Subcategory depth
  • Catalogue Mode allows you to turn off the Shopping Cart Features
  • Products can be assigned to multiple Categories
  • Sort your Products and Categories the way you like
  • Sell downloadable Goods like MP3s, Templates, Videos or Software
  • Add Images and Files (e.g. Data Sheets) to every Product for your customers’ convenience
  • Add Attributes like Size or Color to your Products to offer product variations
  • Use Product Discounts (percantage/total, time limited or not)
  • Show Details & images for every Item
  • comfortable and flexible Product Import & Export using CSV Files
  • Manage and control the Stock Level for Products and Items
  • Automatically notify Customers when a Product is back in Stock
  • Feature specific products by setting them “on special”

Shopper Groups / User Management

  • Add Shoppers and assign them to different shopper groups
  • global Shopper Group Discounts
  • multiple prices can be added to a Product, each for an own shopper group or a quantity range
  • Restrict “Display prices” to specific user groups
  • Access Management: assign users to user groups like “admin”, “storeadmin”, “shopper” or “demo” to allow the administration by other users (assign products to vendors and allow those vendors to maintain only their products)

Easy Configuration / Customization

  • Manage your shop through an easy and completely Joomla!/Mambo-integrated interface
  • A “Welcome Screen” shows your daily Shop Statistics: A Summary with “number of customers”, “number of orders”, “5 newest customers” and so on
  • capable of Frontend Administration (without having to login into the Backend of Joomla/Mambo)
  • global Price/Currency Display Formatting
  • Templates for Product Display Pages
  • Extend the Shop with other Modules and Functions
  • Manage different Currencies, Countries

Shipping Addresses / Rates

  • Shoppers can add individual Shipping Addresses
  • Add your own Shipping Carriers and Shipping Rates using the “Standard Shipping” feature
  • Fetch Shipping Rates live from Intershipper, USPS, UPS, Canada Post, and more...
VirtueMart has a documented Shipping Module API  so we can create your own custom shipping modules.

Tax Rates

  • Product prices can be displayed “including tax” or not (set for each shopper group)
  • Support for different Tax Modes
  • Support for multiple Tax Rates (7% for food or books, 19% for other goods)

Payment

  • You can use safe SSL encryption (128-bit) and Shared SSL
  • Capable of Live Credit Card Processing

Virtuemart supports the following Payment Gateways:

  • 2Checkout
  • PayPal (IPN)
  • Payflow Pro
  • Authorize.net (AIM)
  • eCheck
  • eProcessingNetwork
  • eWay (XML Transactions)
  • Linkpoint
  • Montrada
  • NoChex
  • Paymate
  • PayMeNow
  • Skipjack
  • Worldpay
With the PayPal(IPN) module Virtuemart automatically updates the customers order details when payment has been processed by PayPal.

Order Management

  • Complete Order Management
  • Automatically notify your customers when the Order Status changes
  • Order Change History
  • Custom Order Status Management

"Nice" Features for Customers...

  • Let your customers easily search for products through a search form
  • Shoppers can see, in what time a product will usually ship, on product-details page (with nice images!)
  • Shoppers can manage their user accounts
  • Shopper can view all their orders (and order details)
  • Order Confirmation mail (customizable!) is sent to shopper and store owner