Getting Started with Zen Cart

Using a popular ecommerce package to put your store online

By Phil Glatz, Owner Electronovelty

You've decided your store needs something a little snazzier than a simple shopping cart button, and are looking for an easy and inexpensive way to take it online. Here are some of the reasons you might have to do this:

1) You have a lot of products in your catalog, and would like to arrange them by categories.

2) You want to include photos and more detailed information about your products.

3) You want to have a more sophisticated design to complement your visual identity.

Decide if it will solve your needs

Study the online documentation and visit sites that are using Zen Cart. As with most free programs, the documentation isn't as rich as many commercial products, but there is lots of information online. You can also use Google to find additional resources, and answers to many questions.
Try: start with the official tutorial/FAQ page and the Zen Cart Wiki. There are a few books available, the most authoritative one being "e-Start Your Web Store with Zen Cart," by Goh Koon Hoek. Visit the Open Source CMS site and take Zen Cart for a test drive; you can get a feel for how it looks and feels, as well as how it is administered.

Where to host your site

Zen Cart can be installed on almost any hosted site that supports Linux, PHP, and mySQL. All you need is an FTP connection to upload their software, and a a quick trip to your site's control panel to create a database for it. There are also some companies that specialize in hosting Zen Cart, and offer assistance with basic configuration questions.
Try: consider a Zen Cart-certified host, like Sashbox or Plzhost, if you are looking for a little extra support. You will also find that many general hosts are now offering Zen Cart preinstalled as an option.

Setting up your store

A stock Zen Cart installation is functional, and requires a small amount of customization. This is all done from the administrative web interface and requires no programming skills. You need to tell it contact information, where you are located, how you charge tax, and what features you'd like to have on the screen. You can also choose from various templates, to change the look of your store. There are many available online, both free and commercial. If you have basic web design skills, you can also create your own templates or modify existing ones. You'll also find a wealth of user-contributed modules to add more functions to your site.
Try: check out the free Zen Cart modules and templates at the Zen Cart site. You'll also find commercial products at places like Template Monster, WebArt4U, and ModsModules.

Building your catalog

Creating an easy to use catalog takes a little up-front planning. Carefully group your products into categories so customers can find them easily. If you have a lot of products in a category, consider grouping them into subcategories. You may already have this information in a spreadsheet or other document. Next, go to your administrative screen and start creating categories, then enter the products. You can move products around to new categories if you decide to reorganize later. Provide a description, the price, one or more photos, tax rules, and other information. After you have your catalog set up, you'll want to investigate the various marketing tools available. You can put items on sale, offer discount coupons and gift certificates, feature new products, and create custom newsletters.
Try: the tips page on setting up products and attributes.

Shipping and payment

You will need to activate various modules for shipping and payment. One of the strengths of Zen Cart is how many options you will have. It comes with interfaces to the most popular shippers and payment gateways pre-installed, and there are lots of additional ones available on the downloads page. You may already have a merchant account to accept credit card payments; they can usually be used to accept online payments via a gateway. If you don't have a merchant account, you can always use PayPal to accept credit cards; for a store with a small sales volume, this is a very cost-effective way to get started. You can set up shipping to provide instant quotes by setting up an account with the US Postal Service, UPS, or FedEx. This is easy to do, and lets your customers know how much postage will be.
Try: using PayPal or a payment gateway like Authorize.Net to accept payment, and setting up instant shipping rate quotes from USPS web tools, FedEx Ship Manager API, or UPS online tools.

Learn from others

There are many excellent Zen Cart sites you can study and get inspiration from. Just do a Google search on Zen Cart, you'll be surprised at the wide variety of looks this program can have. You will find design ideas, marketing ideas, and things that attract you to particular sites.
Try: Here are some good examples of sites using Zen Cart: Jeep Outfitter, Allie's Edibles, Village Market of San Francisco, Jackie's Jewels, Rec-Tect LLC.

Publicize your store by including the URL on all your printed matter. Get mentioned in blogs, and consider creating your own blog; search engines like sites that are mentioned by many other sites.
Get a free Google Analytics account to track visitors to your site. It is also a great tool if you run an AdWords campaign.
Run sales and spotlight featured products. Changing featured products regularly will help search engines notice you.
Offer a discount or free shipping for new customers; this is easy to do with the built-in marketing tools.