CMS and E-commerce

Virtue-Mart

VirtueMart is an open source e-commerce component for Joomla!. It enables Joomla! site administrators to build a product catalog, configure payment and shipping methods, and allows the selling of products online.

Like any other shopping cart (such as osCommerce, Zen Cart, Magento, and so on), VirtueMart allows administrators to configure the shop, configure the selling workflow, configure the payment and shipping options, configure product categories and catalog, and manage customers and orders. However, the difference between VirtueMart and shopping cart applications like osCommerce and Zen Cart, is that

Joomla and E-commerce

There are various types of components and modules for Joomla! which can be used for e-commerce. Due to a large number of components available, e-commerce in Joomla! is not only limited to selling products, but it can also adopt other forms of e-commerce activities such as running affiliate shops, charging money for access to premium content, running an auction site, and so on.

Affiliate carts are one form of e-commerce where you show products from other shops or catalogs. Visitors to your shop can browse the products on your shop and buy it from that shop or catalog. You don’t need to manage the inventory, fulfill the orders, process the payment, and such things. You get the commissions for each sell you generate through your affiliate store. For example, Amazon has a great affiliate scheme which you may be familiar with.