OpenCart Custom Modules To Improve eCommerce Performance

Customer expectations increase on a daily basis and as of today, it is a known fact that as buyers we want our shopping experiences to be personalized. Most buyers on eCommerce stores like Amazon & Alibaba do not think twice about revealing personal information if they want a more relevant shopping experience.

eCommerce businesses too need to keep up with this already booming trend of customized shopping experiences. As online shopping sites and the products they offer increases, consumers find it more and more confusing to select and buy the product they need. In a traditional environment, one may even take the help of a store assistant, but this isn’t possible in the virtual world. In such a scenario, having a ‘bare bones’ type of online store isn’t going to help you get anywhere. Not adding the right kind of functionality to your online store will not only impact your revenue but also cause customers to move to another site/business.

As SMB, it is likely that you have opted for one of most preferred, open-source eCommerce platforms in the market – OpenCart. Apart from taking care of personalization needs, SMBs also need to consider OpenCart customization for their e-stores. There are a number of themes, extensions and modules you can adopt to make sure that your customers have the best buying journey possible on your eCommerce site.

In this article, we consider the five most relevant modules you should integrate to customize your OpenCart store and make it truly work for your enterprise:

• • Recommending Products Even When There Are No Search Results: The Recommended Products When No Search Result is an important module to integrate. If a website search doesn’t provide any results, this module will help you retain shoppers. They will see a listing of other closely related products – so the possibility of their leaving without a purchase greatly diminishes.

Request a Free Consultation

• Providing Advanced Reviews for Products: The Advanced Product Review Manager will let your shoppers review and judge your products, delivery time, customer support etc on a set of distinct criteria. Shoppers will also be able to include photos of items they bought, assign them ‘star’ ratings and express opinions on what they liked/disliked about the item. In addition, it is also possible to sort the reviews by popularity and share them on various social media channels.
• Enabling Better Searches: Another OpenCart custom module – Smart Search, helps to make your eCommerce website’s search feature more accurate so that site visitors see only the most relevant results. Typically, product search maybe carried out in four ways – as a phrase match, with correctly spelled keywords, all misspelled keywords or any misspelled keywords. You may also be able to customize the product fields that should be used for the search. For example, using the model number, name, description etc.
• Sending Notifications About Inventory: As an online shopper, we feel frustrated when we see a product is out of stock or an item displaying a ‘not available’. The moment we encounter this, we leave the eCommerce site and the retailer loses the sale. With the Product Stock Notification Alert, you can keep buyers informed about stock updates for their favorite products. This cool OpenCart module, auto-sends SMS notifications to customers when a specific item has been restocked.
• Preventing Shopping Cart Abandonment: Shopping cart abandonment is a pain point for almost all retail businesses. There are a number of factors and reasons that cause cart abandonment. Without delving into them, the Abandoned Cart Reminder Pro can prevent this from happening. By using it, you can send a reminder to your OpenCart store shoppers about the cart they have abandoned along with a coupon that encourages them to buy.

As a decision maker, you may have chosen to sell online to promote your business in a cost-effective manner. The process of setting up an eCommerce store from scratch requires significant investment – of time and other resources. This is why most businesses opt for OpenCart eCommerce development. With the various functionalities and modules provided, you will find it easy to build, run or update online stores.