10 Must-Have OpenCart Extensions To Kickstart A New Website in 2017
E-Commerce just keeps growing and more entrepreneurs are trying to leave their mark on the digital landscape. Naturally, this means that the competition across all industries is growing as well, which creates the necessity to offer more value, create better experiences and build user-friendly websites that make shopping online simpler and intuitive.
This OpenCart extension list will show you the tools that we believe are most suitable for new stores.
If you are just starting out with OpenCart and your website is still in the initial stages, take a look at these modules to see the types of functionality that will help you kickstart your growth and start making a better profit faster.
1 AlsoBought
Displays the most frequently purchased products by other customers in your store.
A conversion tool that works on two levels - shows your visitors alternative choices with similar products, and also builds customer trust, which is integral in any purchasing decision.
AlsoBought allows you to customize the widget that shows products purchased by other customers. You can modify:
-
Widget Name
-
Product image dimensions
-
Number of displayed products
-
Add custom CSS using the editor
What’s even better is that you can pair products that have been often purchased together for a greater impact on customers’ average order value.
2 SEO Backpack
Skyrocket your store’s ranking with the most modern and intuitive SEO module for OpenCart.
A powerful SEO extension that focuses on an intuitive user interface and complete transparency regarding the functionality. Everything SEO Backpack does is reported so users can view the changes they perform with the module.
There are a few unique features we introduce with SEO Backpack:
-
One-Click Fix Button for All Issues
-
Built-in SEO Crawler
-
Search Engine Analytics
-
Structured Data Using JSON-LD Format
SEO Backpack lets you configure your SEO friendly URLs easily, generate metadata for all your pages, setup URL redirects and much more for extensive control over your ranking capabilities.
New stores often struggle with getting the website indexed, which is an obstacle for acquiring traffic and customers. With our newest extension, you can kickstart your store’s positions in search engines much faster and easier.
3 FacebookLogin
Give your customers quick and easy access to your store with a single button skipping over tedious registrations.
Placing FacebookLogin on the pages within your OpenCart store will give new visitors an easy way to sign up and begin shopping instantly.
The tool lets you configure the type of information you collect from your customers’ Facebook accounts, the button text and design, and lets you assign the visitors who use it to specific customer groups.
OpenCart stores that are just starting out need as much accessibility and usability for customers so they do not cause any obstacles for potential customers to begin shopping. FacebookLogin is a huge step towards that.
4 Ajax Quick Checkout
Customers want a fast checkout and an easy shopping experience. All of that - in a single page.
The default OpenCart checkout process features is technically in a single page, but requires multiple steps and has a lot of fields to configure before you can confirm your order.
What does Ajax Quick Checkout do about this? It lets you have just the fields you want, all in a single page with an optimized flow and an attractive interface, scalable on all devices.
We already talked about the importance of usability for new stores - you cannot afford to lose precious customers due to a long and hard-to-finish checkout process. All the effort you spend on your website, its design, functionality, search engine optimization, it can all go to waste if your checkout process does not work in favor of customers.
5 iBlog
Start publishing SEO-friendly blog articles to generate more traffic, better indexing and engage customers.
Every E-Commerce site owner with a blog will admit of the numerous ways they benefit from it. Fresh content helps for:
-
More traffic
-
Better indexing
-
Customer engagement
-
Conversion
-
Trust, loyalty, authority
With iBlog, you can start publishing useful blog posts for your audience with a built-in Disqus commenting system as well as social sharing options.
The SEO features let you configure metadata, and a custom slug for better ranking of the blog post. Advanced users can take advantage of the custom CSS field and a blog post editor allowing to modify the source code.
For new stores, the content marketing opportunities are significant since as a new player, you will have to find a way to shine among your competition not only with your products. You need to have something valuable to say. So just blog about it!
6 AlsoViewed
Notify your customers of the most desired products related to the one they are viewing.
AlsoViewed makes sure that the products with the highest rate of views are the ones recommended to your customers. Similar to AlsoBought, this extension presents an alternative choice with related products and shows what other customers prefer.
Suggesting which products have been viewed by other customers stimulates purchasing decisions when customers feel like the item might go out of stock due to high interest.
New stores can benefit from a tool that lets customer interest and demand to guide the purchasing decisions of other customers.
7 EmailVerification
A simple, free OpenCart module to verify your customers’ accounts via email.
Verification by email is a highly recommended security measure that adds another layer of safety for your OpenCart store.
EmailVerification is a free, simple to setup and use extension that allows you to send customizable emails to new customers so they can verify their accounts.
8 Mastercard
Integrate the second most popular credit card network in the world in your OpenCart for free.
Mastercard Payment Gateway Services for OpenCart is a free integration that is endorsed and backed by Mastercard themselves. All the sensitive customer data is collected and safely managed by them.
What you get with this integration is the second biggest credit card network and payment method in the world, ready to be used by your customers.
To give users the most premium shopping experience and payment security the extension has the following features:
-
Checkout hosted by Mastercard
-
Only works with SSL Certified stores
-
Capture, Void and Refund transactions directly from OpenCart
-
Tokenization of credit card details
A great way for a new store to shine among the competition is adding a simple and secure payment method that nearly 200 million Mastercard users can take advantage of.
9 FacebookMessage
Make your customer service more social by taking the conversation over to Facebook.
FacebookMessage introduces a chat widget in the storefront of your OpenCart site and lets customers send their messages directly to your Facebook page.
Simpler communication, faster answers to customer questions, all of that leads to more conversion rates and better engagement. FacebookMessage can be personalized to your store’s design, work on a multi-store setup and look excellent on mobile devices.
New stores are expected to be as flexible and social as possible, which is where FacebookMessage can truly shine for your efforts to offer better, faster customer service and offer users an improved experience.
10 ComingSoon
Open your store in style and build the anticipation leading to a sales-rich launch day.
The development stage of your store is precious time you can use and not let go to waste. Create an attractive and informative coming soon page that will help build anticipation and make your customers impatient for you to launch your site.
ComingSoon is a customizable extension that lets you build a beautiful page without any technical knowledge and skills. For more social outreach, you can show all your business social profiles where users can get updates on your store, products, launch date and promotions.
Finally, a subscription form where customers can leave their email address and get notified when your store is finally live.
Wrapping up
We believe those extensions are vital for new stores and have the power to make a real difference when you are first starting out in E-Commerce with OpenCart. If you are just building a new site on OpenCart and use some of those extensions, let us know how they worked for you in the comments below!
