The OpenCart community needs to strive for the global market as much as possible

In recent years, I have asked customers to buy modules.

Many of them have stopped selling and developers have left OpenCart, The community in my country also has a very low market share due to the lack of local language translation resources.

I think we should make the OpenCart community as good as WordPress and recruit as many translation team members as possible to create more possibilities:
https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/teams/

There are some issues in the WordPress community right now, I think this is an opportunity for us, as long as we combine more account integration and discount marketing features, we have a chance to succeed again.

What do you guys think?

I have seen clients moving to WordPress and Woocommerce. IMO it's a backward move and I say that but they move anyway. Opencart is fantastic, modern, easy to work with and affordable. I cannot see why it's not more successful than it is. Also as a developer I have seen a big move to store owners trying to do everything themselves. I had one client that lost lots of sales and revenue as he wanted to fix a problem himself that would have cost and hour of paid support. He never did and gave up and moved to Shopify. IMO client time is best spent managing a store not fixing or debugging it. If they know what they're doing fine but many do not. Like many developers I'm finding work increasingly hard to get. I've had clients ask for a quote as a different developer has quoted £5k. I quote £2k and they say it's too expensive. Work that out if you can because I can't. Also with extension installing and bug fixing. I've had clients that won't pay £10.00 to have an extension installed. Much of the time IMO store owners are their own worst enemies. They want loads of advice and guidance in the OC forum for free then when they get stuck rather than pay for support they moan about Opencart and often move platforms. It's the same with marketing. I offered to do a mail shot that would have bought the client a few £000 in. I quoted £300. After costs they would still have been well in profit. The answer. Oh no, that's way too expensive. I'll do it myself on Mailchimp.

How do we get Opencart to be more popular and have more market share? Answers on a postcard please.

I think making it easier to understand versions and version numbers and clearly stating which is a stable version would help. So would a makeover of the OC Marketplace and forum. I'm always happy to give feedback and my honest opinion but have never been asked for it from the OC team. Also rethinking the way extensions are sold would help. Taking junk ones off of the marketplace is a job high up on my wish list. Also having some kind of standard for coding and extension creation. I understand how it all works but clients often don't.

I suggest clearly describing each OC version on the OC website. Something like:

OC 1.5.6.4: Depreciated but still good for hobbyists.
OC 2.3.0.2: Still recommended.
OC 3.0.4.0: Current stable version highly recommended for productions sites.
OC 4: Under development and to be used If you have some coding knowledge.

I would suggests having something similar for marketplace extensions.

Personally I wish Opencart would be more used and known as I think it's brilliant. I think it will need to be a team effort though. That includes developers and store owners paying for support if it's genuinely needed which helps keep developers in business. Store owners having thousands of £s of stock and not wanting to pay £10.00 for support is crazy IMO. Support the developers, support the creators, support Opencart. That goes both up and down the line.

Like the OP I would be interested to hear other users and developers opinions and viewpoints.

Many of the clients I have come into contact with find it difficult to accept the high cost of customized module development, But I think promoting multilingual sub-forums and recruiting customers with common needs to share development costs may be a solution.

Because subscription-based e-commerce platforms are already very popular in many countries, and many people only need to pay for the handling fee to own their own store. I think this is challenging for OpenCart, but I don’t think we should give up OpenCart, but we should find a way to break through the difficulties.

HAO wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 15, 2025 9:06 pm

Many of the clients I have come into contact with find it difficult to accept the high cost of customized module development, But I think promoting multilingual sub-forums and recruiting customers with common needs to share development costs may be a solution.

Because subscription-based e-commerce platforms are already very popular in many countries, and many people only need to pay for the handling fee to own their own store. I think this is challenging for OpenCart, but I don’t think we should give up OpenCart, but we should find a way to break through the difficulties.

I also think Opencart or any similar platform can be a bit overwhelming for someone new to ecommerce. Some of my clients have three or four products to sell. I have customized OC a few times and "downsized" it to showcase a few products with a simple checkout. OC is very flexible and can be customized to suit a client's needs as we know but again, getting that across is a challenge.

Here's an example of an old OC 1.5.6.5 which just sells event tickets.

https://alternativeview.co.uk

https://alternativeview.co.uk/shop

Only the /shop part is Opencart. It does a simple job and does it well.

I'm currently working on an OC based project that will have just one product for sale. The main focus will be affiliate marketing and promotion for the one product. The site will not look like an Opencart site but will use Opencart power and features under the hood.

johnp wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 15, 2025 11:35 pm

I also think Opencart or any similar platform can be a bit overwhelming for someone new to ecommerce. Some of my clients have three or four products to sell. I have customized OC a few times and "downsized" it to showcase a few products with a simple checkout. OC is very flexible and can be customized to suit a client's needs as we know but again, getting that across is a challenge.

Here's an example of an old OC 1.5.6.5 which just sells event tickets.

https://alternativeview.co.uk

https://alternativeview.co.uk/shop

Only the /shop part is Opencart. It does a simple job and does it well.

I'm currently working on an OC based project that will have just one product for sale. The main focus will be affiliate marketing and promotion for the one product. The site will not look like an Opencart site but will use Opencart power and features under the hood.

You must understand that for end users, you must provide the functions they really need.

This is a Facebook ad from Taiwan:
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1194382616024755

Several features are mentioned in the video, which are what Taiwanese store owners and consumers need:
1. Store credit card that can get a specified amount based on the checkout amount, For example: 2000 can get 100.
2. Register within the first month of store launch to get 100 store credits.
3. Spend a specified amount to qualify for the lottery system.
4. When you spend a certain amount, you can auto switch to the designated VIP customer group, and you can get 500 store credit cards and 6 discount coupons.

I would say that it is a challenge for us when a lot of subscription e-commerce services include these as built-in features.

Therefore, my idea is that in addition to the English market, we must also provide relevant solutions for the business models that each country is accustomed to.

To this end, we must recruit translation team members from each country, and wait until there is enough foundation to seek customers willing to invest to customize the relevant modules.

After completion, we will launch the designated plan so that customers can get the most direct service on this basis, I think only after this can we promote customized development or module sales.

SHOPLINE

I must say that this is a strong opponent. I will not say that all functions need to be free, but corresponding solutions need to be provided so that customers can choose and combine the store functions they want.

I personally think Opencart needs to go back to the 1.5.6.4 time of being an "upload, configure, and go" shopping cart.
#1 Stable release that are ADVERTISED as stable and the non-stable ones ALSO ADVERTISED as non stable (i.e. disclaimer on 4.x.x.x to not use in production on places you download it.)
#2 Working extensions out of the box or reasonable extension prices for those that are not.
#2a Here in the USA: USPS and UPS are two of the staples that should be included or decent priced for at least basic functionality
#2b Also here in the USA: Paypal and some of the other payment systems should be included or decent priced for at least basic functionality

To summarize - People should be able to download, then upload, and configured and their customers can buy pretty quickly then Opencart would get a lot more people coming back, or starting to use Opencart. If they struggle with buggy code, the core doesn't include extensions for the most used items (or there isn't a lower cost version of said extensions), then people will go elsewhere.

I moved to Opencart because that is what it offered back then. It was a plug, configure, and play system that the latest version I downloaded worked.
I feel for those who have a learning curve to start using any cart, and then need to figure out how to code, and/or pay extra to get a basic running store.
Mike

I think the most basic functions should be further evolved.

Drag-and-drop category managers can quickly create and move all category levels, There is also a drag-and-drop multi-image upload function.

What I mean is that as long as the functions are perfect, there is a chance to compete with WordPress.

The most important thing is that I think Asia is a market worth developing, but the current discussions seem to be under the table, which makes it difficult to promote.

Creating discussion and getting customers interested in having this fully autonomous environment is the most important thing.

Back to the point, our main competitors are WordPress + Woocommerce and subscription-based e-commerce services.

How to further strengthen the promotion of each language community and make more potential customers willing to choose to use OpenCart.

I think this is the most important.

Most of the problems here in Europe for small shop is not maintaining the shop but EU regulations. Then you also need good knowledge of Google "google rules" and other channels like Facebook etc. Here in the Netherlands the number of webshops has been decimated. Selling via Amazon or Bol will cost you 15%. If your product sells well it is purchased by the reseller himself.
Yes woocommerce is the biggest business before opencart. But most Woocommerce shops will still run into problems with special modules or subscriptions for links to accounting programs or special carriers.

I can understand that the European market is special, But the Asia market is almost domestic sales.

Therefore, it is very important to connect discounts with other SNS. How to use mature websites to import customers is a feature of the Asia region.

How to import the following three SNS accounts that are commonly used in Taiwan:
LINE
Facebook
Google

The same is true for the Shopee e-commerce platform, and many other competitors are advertising how to import Shopee's product information into their systems.

But the prerequisite is the lack of discussion on Taiwan's localization, We also provide comprehensive translation support services.

I think the releases starting from OpenCart 4.1.0.0 are the significant releases, Because this version can be based on European standards.

And in parallel, the globalization and localization discussions and resources of this version can be re-examined and arranged.

I think spontaneous solidarity and promotion are important, After all, OpenCart means that programmers can make money with this system.

But subscription e-commerce service companies don't give us workers job opportunities, This is the difference between the two.

I started translating OpenCart Traditional Chinese language files myself in 2009, I have a lot of feelings for this program and I won't give it up easily.

This is what I want to say!

My boss informed me yesterday that he wants to use Taiwan's CYBERBIZ subscription e-commerce service.

I must say this hit me hard, Because the services provided by this company are not just e-commerce, He also provides POS and warehousing services, which means that both Taiwan and export can be easily completed.

What I want to say is, OpenCart lacks an integrated subscription or one-time integration solution, Provide it to every country so that users can get their needs met at one time.

And there are very serious defects in the basic functions of OpenCart, That is, the product images will generate thumbnails of different sizes according to the basic functions and different modules, which will make it difficult for virtual host users to use it, and will only push users to expensive VPS, further reducing their willingness to use it.

The host's hard disk file usage capacity increases the cost of use, So I think it will be necessary to either localize or directly provide the features that every store owner absolutely needs.

My thought is that OpenCart Pro might be the only solution, Through the module purchase plan, users can purchase the desired combination of functions. On this basis, we will complete the system maintenance and global translation, and try to win more users.

If we don't finish quickly, we will fall far behind our competitors.