MultiMerch Marketplace

Having two or more ways to do something can be useful, but it isn’t always the case. When it comes to OpenCart, there are four ways to modify its core functionality: vQmod, OCMOD, Override Engine and Event Handlers. Let’s take a quick look at vQmod and OCMOD and the differences between these two.

What is vQmod and How Does it Work?

vQmod (or Virtual Quick Mod) is the most widely used of the four override systems available today. If you’re using MultiMerch, you probably know that we only use vQmod for OpenCart core modifications.

It’s actually quite simple – search/replace code modifications are specified as separate xml files (see the syntax examples here). vQmod then parses the xml files during page load and applies the modifications to the target files. The result is saved as a temporary modified file, which is then loaded by OpenCart instead of the original one.

This means vQmod doesn’t make any direct changes to the actual OpenCart core files. Because of this, the modifications are non-destructive and the original files are left intact – you can always undo the changes by simply removing the xml file.

vQmod lets you apply multiple modifications to same files, making it possible to install multiple vQmod-powered extensions (usually) without conflicts. The system also has a variety of options for finding/replacing code, error handling, positions, indexing and more. If an error occurs, OpenCart will simply fall back to the original source file.

The drawback is that vQmod isn’t part of OpenCart – it needs to be installed separately. If you’re creating your own vQmod-powered extensions, you’ll need to make sure your clients have vQmod installed on their servers. If it’s not present, the extension will not work correctly. (The good thing is – the installation process is really simple: upload, run the installer, done)

Finally, even though vQmod was designed to use it with OpenCart, it can also be used separately – there is a standalone version of vQmod available for download that can be integrated into any custom project unrelated to OpenCart.

Is OCMOD a Better Alternative?

If vQmod is so awesome, why would you need something else? Well, the idea was to have something simpler built into OpenCart and available by default. Or, as Daniel Kerr, the main guy behind OpenCart, put it: “The problem also is vQmod, I just don’t like how there are a lot of unnecessary features.”

In fact, OCMOD is basically a stripped down version of vQmod system built into OpenCart. It works in a similar way – modifications are stored in xml files and uploaded to the store, then parsed and applied to OpenCart core code. Unlike vQmod, OpenCart has a built-in OCMOD modification uploader and manager. In addition to this, OCMOD allows you to specify extra SQL and PHP code to be executed during modification installation in separate install.php and install.sql files.

There are a few drawbacks compared to the original vQmod, though. This includes a few missing advanced search/replacement modifiers such as top, bottom, iafter and ibefore, as well as partial line matching and a few other things. In addition to this, OpenCart’s modification cache needs to be refreshed every time there are changes to OCMOD files, which may slow down development, and OCMOD log files aren’t as informative as vQmod’s.

Because of these differences and the lack of a clear benefit, OCMOD hasn’t received wider adoption (with some of the community calling it a “poor man’s vQmod”) and vQmod is still used by many OpenCart developers who are reluctant to spend time and effort converting their mods. (If you feel like converting, however, see a great vQmod to OCMOD conversion guide by an OpenCart developer rph here).

Conclusion

Both vQmod and OCMOD are meant to be used for the same purpose and both have their pros and cons (feel free to check this developer discussion thread on OpenCart forums). The choice is yours, though. We at MultiMerch still use vQmod – mostly because there are quite a bit of modifications in MultiMerch Marketplace. If you’re starting something from scratch, you may as well try OCMOD first since it’s part of OpenCart. You can always switch later!

vQmod
+ mature, stable and robust system – original version released in 2010
+ clear documentation
+ simple modification syntax and deployment
– not part of OpenCart core – needs to be installed separately

OCMOD
+ part of OpenCart core – no additional installation needed
+ modification installer integrated into OpenCart
+ “execute during installation” scripts
– a few features missing compared to vQmod
– relatively new system with no clear development roadmap

The post Modifying OpenCart: vQmod vs OCMOD appeared first on MultiMerch Marketplace.

How often do you see a shopping cart sitting abandoned in a supermarket aisle, laden with items that will never become purchases? Chances are it’s less than 75% of the time, but that’s the average proportion of ecommerce shopping carts which never made it to checkout in 2015.

So why do about three quarters of online shoppers take the time to browse, select, place items in their cart and then simply ‘walk away,’ and what are ecommerce retailers supposed to do about it?

Just browsing

According to Statistica, 37% of shoppers ‘were just browsing‘. There’s not much we can do to stop browsers from abandoning their carts as we too have all been there before.

However, these visitors often intend to buy in the future. So, you may want to consider sending them a reminder email if they do walk away, possibly offering them a coupon code to encourage them to complete their purchase.

Hidden charges

I’ve often paid more than the product’s retail value in postage costs just to get the thing delivered to my doorstep. (being located in Europe and ordering stuff from the US can be a bit pricey) . It didn’t always sit well with me, but the feeling that “that’s just what it costs” made it easier to justify.

High shipping costs are an obstruction in themselves, but that’s not the heart of the issue. Many retailers try to keep shipping costs hidden until a customer is interested in a product, then quietly tack on the extra charge at checkout. This is what turns that feeling of “oh well, that’s what it costs” into “damn, so that’s what it costs?!”, pushing customers away from their carts and ultimately damaging the way they see their relationship with the retailer.

Always make sure your customers have a way to find out what will it cost to ship the item to their location – don’t just throw the shipping fee (and any other hidden fees) in their face at checkout. If you don’t have a shipping calculator available, at least list the fees on a separate page and make it easily accessible. Your customers will thank you for that. I always do.

Coupon code incentives

Ironically, another problem which can instantly bounce customers away from the checkout is a coupon code feature. Simply being reminded of the possibility of discount may send shoppers searching for a code. At this point they’ve already left the site – if they can’t find a code, they may never feel like coming back. It doesn’t matter whether you have the best price on the market – the existence of discount codes in general can turn that empty field into a sort of failure.

One way to combat this is to email relevant coupon codes to customers who abandon carts which were eligible for discount, hopefully also re-engaging those who were just browsing or having second thoughts. There are various services like CartRescue that can do this for you and let you set up automated recovery email campaigns to contact visitors who left their baskets on the shelf.

Your virtual store layout

The way you lay out your checkout process is a huge part of ecommerce cart conversion. There isn’t a definitive answer to that, however – some sites perform better with single-step checkouts, some with multi-stage checkouts. According to Smashing Magazine, 28% of the top 100 retailers had a five-step checkout process, with only 1% offering a one-step checkout.

I personally love single page checkouts as they’re much more pleasant to go through. In either case, the main thing is simplicity. Often, basic design choices like proper use of negative space and bold input field outlines can enhance the impression of clarity and usability. Try both and see which works better!

Perceived level of security

Security is clearly an issue, but customers as a collective seem uncertain about this. Various surveys suggest that shoppers are both concerned with site security and frustrated by excessive security checks, both reassured and dissuaded by security logos displayed on sites.

So, definitely try out a few different options and see what works best for you. You may want to try running A/B split tests and look at how your customers interact with various security badges like McAfee Secure and Hacker Safe.

Payment options

When people want to give you money, make it as easy as possible for them. An analysis of conversion rates by SeeWhy found that conversion was up 101% for mobile users and 86% for desktop users where alternative payment was made available, making alternative options one of the biggest factors. If you ship internationally, use the customer’s apparent location to display prices in their local currency.

Level of support

If you can, offer support at checkout. You may want to stick a customer service number on the page or consider offering a live chat feature. If there’s a question they have, make it easy for them to get it answered.

Making sure your potential buyers get the information they need when they need is a big part of keeping them on the checkout form until they’ve hit ‘submit’.

Persistence in obtaining customer data

First, you do want that data. Almost every choice you make will be based on how well you know your customers. So, it can feel tempting to force registration and extract this information from your users. However, please don’t do that.

I can’t emphasize this final point enough. Some of the users might sign up and you’ll get some CRM metrics out of the process, but in general, forcing ecommerce customers to go through a time-consuming process which they know is unnecessary is one of the most toxic things a retailer can do. Identifying guest users is easy enough and there are various services to help you do that. For example, Rejoiner can identify guest users who enter an email but never hit submit. If you really want that data, encourage social login rather than sign-up.

Ultimately, bringing customers through checkout and actually taking their money boils down to ease of use, transparency and options. Simplicity and usability, though, are at the very heart of the online shopping experience. This is exactly what the fickle 75% of online shoppers abandoning their carts seem to be searching unsuccessfully for. Make sure you are easy to deal with and your customers will love you!

The post 8 Reasons Your Customers Fail to Complete Purchases appeared first on MultiMerch Marketplace.

Updated on 20/01/2016 for OpenCart 2.x

Even though it's 2016, you may still encounter the dreaded Blank Screen of Death or an Internal Server Error when moving your OpenCart store, installing new extensions or just performing a regular update. We've revised and updated this post to account for new version of OpenCart.

This post covers blank pages and internal server errors. If you're struggling with JSON.parse errors in OpenCart, see our other blog post.

First things first – find the actual cause

It is important to understand, that blank pages and internal server errors don't have a single common cause – it simply means something went wrong with your store somewhere, therefore it couldn't load. To find out the actual reason for this, you need to look into your server's error log and find the exact error message.

Since the location of the main server error log varies between hosting providers, you'll need to look up the documentation for your particular hosting provider. In most cases, however, you can also display the contents of the log through your server's administration software (e.g. CPanel).

If you've found the log, but it's empty, you'll need to make sure your errors are getting logged. To do this, make sure your log is writable and verify the values of the following PHP variables in your php.ini file: display_errors and log_errors. They are usually set to Off and On in production respectively, but you can change both of them to On for debugging purposes.

If none of this seems to work you can add the following lines of code to the beginning of your index.php file for this debugging session:

error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set('display_errors', '1');
ini_set('log_errors', '1');

Now when you have the error message, it's time to fix this!

Here are the most common issues for blank pages in OpenCart.

Broken configuration files

This is a common problem that can happen after you move your store to a different server.

OpenCart stores various pieces of its main configuration in two files: config.php and admin/config.php. If you're moving your store to a different domain or a different server, you may need to adjust some or all of them.

Double check your main store URL in HTTP_ and HTTPS_ variables, paths to your OpenCart setup in DIR_ variables and the database configuration in DB_ variables. All of them should match your new server setup.

Broken directory structure

Although this is a less common cause of blank pages in OpenCart, it is still worth mentioning. Both admin and catalog folders must follow the same structure in OpenCart:

/catalog/ or /admin/
  - controller
  - language
  - model
  - view

You may get a blank page with no errors if this structure is missing the controller/ folder. Just make sure the folders are in place.

Magic quotes

Even though it's 2016 out there, we still see servers with magic quotes enabled once in a while. This can cause all kinds of issues, including problems resulting in blank pages. Make sure to disable them once and for all.

Syntax errors of all kinds

Syntax errors can happen to anyone – an extra bracket, a forgotten comma or a broken extension or vQmod file can easily turn your beautiful store into a blank page. Fortunately, they're usually easy to fix.

This is what a common syntax error may look like:

[Thu Jan 21 12:48:37 2012] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '}' in /srv/www/dev/opencart/2101/index.php on line 47

Now all you need to do is open up that file and fix that error! Easy.

However, make sure the file name is now one of vQmod's cache files – they usually look somewhat like this: vqmod/vqcache/vq2-catalog_controller_checkout_cart.php. In this case, editing the file directly won't work as it will be overwritten by vQmod.

To fix this, you'll need to find the particular vQmod modification that's causing problems and disable it until you find a way to fix the error. We suggest searching for the particular piece of code from the error message inside your vqmod/xml/ folder (using Notepad++ file search, for example) and then disabling the broken vQmod file by changing it's extension to .xml_. This will bring your store back to life while you're writing an angry message to the developer of this particular modification.

Notice: Error: E-Mail to required!

This particular error can be caused by two things – a bug in OpenCart 2.0.2.0 or email missing from your store's configuration. If you're still using OpenCart 2.0.2.0, you should definitely update to the latest version available, otherwise make sure your email settings are correct in Admin > Settings > Your Store > System > Email.

Error: Table doesn't exist
Error: Unknown column in 'field list'

These errors mean OpenCart is trying to access a database table or a field that is missing. This is almost exclusively caused by third party modules and themes – and since the cause of this lies within the extension itself, the best way to fix it is to reinstall the theme or extension and contact the developers if this doesn't help.

Warning: fsockopen(): unable to connect to http://yourdomain.com:25/

This error indicates a problem with either your mail configuration in OpenCart or with your mailserver. Make sure that your mail settings are correct in Admin > Settings > Your Store > System > Email and that your mailserver is up and running.

These are the most common causes and solutions for blank pages and internal server errors in OpenCart. Hopefully by now you've fixed your issue, but if not – feel free to comment down below and we'll see if we can help.

The post Server Errors and Blank Pages in OpenCart: Most Common Causes appeared first on MultiMerch Marketplace.

Happy to see you in 2016, guys! We wanted to take a quick look at what OpenCart offers in terms of free themes in 2016. There are lots of excellent premium themes for OpenCart 2 out there, but if you're on a tight budget, you may want to go with a free one instead. They aren't always pretty, though. Here's the best free themes that we could find for OpenCart 2.

25+ Premium Themes from KulerThemes for Free (possibly a limited offer)

Update:

While doing our research, we've stumbled upon an offer that seems too good to be true.

It seems that the guys over at Kuler Themes are offering all of their 25+ premium OpenCart themes for free – you only need to sign up at their website and they mail you the links. We've reached out to them to make sure it's a legit offer, but they haven't yet responded. Still, the download seems to work fine for now, so go grab it while it is available!

In addition to this amazing offer, we came up with these other great looking themes for OpenCart 2 that will make your store much more beautiful at no cost.

Cosmetics Store

If you’re setting up a beauty & fashion store or something similar and are looking for a beautiful theme, this one will do just fine for you. You’ll also get Google Maps integration, some hi-res stock photos, social media boxes and a whole lot of useful and eye-catching features such as parallax, interactive search and shopping cart.

HotSpot Mobile Shop

Mobile Shop is a great free theme for OpenCart 2 with a clear and easy to navigate layout and a clean and modern color scheme.

ThemeGlobal Lite

ThemeGlobal Lite is a free version of the ThemeGlobal Pro business theme for OpenCart 2. It includes a neat carousel homepage slider, is fully responsive and offers multiple language support.

Kingstore Lite

KingStore Lite is a free, clean and minimal multipurpose theme for OpenCart 2. You can easily use it for all kinds of stores, no matter what you're offering.

This is what we could find so far. Let us know if there's anything else we missed. Also, tell us if you managed to get the Kuler offer, though – I'm really curious about that one!

The post Kickstart Your 2016 With These Free OpenCart Themes appeared first on MultiMerch Marketplace.

Since we don't have a feature in MultiMerch that would allow the store owner to define custom seller account fields, here's a quick tutorial on adding them manually in about 5 simple steps. A separate vQmod xml file is included in the end of the tutorial - use it instead of overwriting MultiMerch and OpenCart core files!

Let's say we want add a new text field called Phone to make it possible for our sellers to specify their phone number and display it in their profile.

1. Modifying the database

First we need to modify the database to include our new field. MultiMerch stores seller information in the ms_seller table, so we'll use phpMyAdmin to create the new field. Alternatively, we can also do it manually by using the following SQL command:

ALTER TABLE `ms_seller` ADD `phone` VARCHAR(35) NOT NULL ;

In case we ever want to reinstall MultiMerch and want this field to get created automatically during installation, we'll need to modify MultiMerch installation model and add our new field to the ms_seller CREATE statement:

admin/model/multiseller/install.php ~65

$this->db->query("
CREATE TABLE `" . DB_PREFIX . "ms_seller` (
     `seller_id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
     <..>
     `phone` VARCHAR(35) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
     <..>
     `commission_id` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`seller_id`)) default CHARSET=utf8");

This will create the new phone field will be created when MultiMerch is installed.

2. Adding the new field to the seller model

We've modified the database, but MultiMerch doesn't know about it yet, so we need to modify the seller model to read and write information to our new field.

There are 4 functions we're interested in: getSeller, getSellers, createSeller & editSeller. We simply add the new field to all of the functions:

system/library/msseller.php

public function getSeller($seller_id, $data = array()) {
     $sql = "SELECT CONCAT(c.firstname, ' ', c.lastname) as name,
         c.email as 'c.email',
         ms.seller_id as 'seller_id',
         ms.phone as 'ms.phone',

public function getSellers($data = array(), $sort = array(), $cols = array()) {
     <..>
     $sql = "SELECT
          <..>
          // default columns
          ." CONCAT(c.firstname, ' ', c.lastname) as 'c.name',
          c.email as 'c.email',
          ms.phone as 'ms.phone',

public function createSeller($data) {
     <..>
     $sql = "INSERT INTO " . DB_PREFIX . "ms_seller
          SET seller_id = " . (int)$data['seller_id'] . ",
               <..>
               nickname = '" . $this->db->escape($data['nickname']) . "',
               phone = '" . (isset($data['phone']) ? $this->db->escape($data['phone']) : '') . "',

public function editSeller($data) {
     <..>
     $sql = "UPDATE " . DB_PREFIX . "ms_seller
          SET description = '" . $this->db->escape($data['description']) . "',
              <..>
              nickname = '" . $this->db->escape($data['nickname']) . "',
              phone = '" . (isset($data['phone']) ? $this->db->escape($data['phone']) : '') . "',

That's it! MultiMerch now knows about our new field and will store and retrieve the new data from the database.

3. Displaying the field in the account template

We can now proceed to modifying the seller account template to tell our sellers about the new phone field they can use. We'll add the new phone field before the company field.

catalog/view/theme/default/template/multiseller/account-profile.tpl ~60

<div class="form-group">
    <label class="col-sm-2 control-label"><?php echo $ms_account_sellerinfo_phone; ?></label>
    <div class="col-sm-10">
        <input type="text" class="form-control"  name="seller[phone]" value="<?php echo $seller['ms.phone']; ?>" />
        <p class="ms-note"><?php echo $ms_account_sellerinfo_phone_note; ?></p>
    </div>
</div>

<div class="form-group">
    <label class="col-sm-2 control-label"><?php echo $ms_account_sellerinfo_company; ?></label>

As you can see, we're using language variables $ms_account_sellerinfo_phone and $ms_account_sellerinfo_phone_note to display field name and description. Let's add them to our language file:

catalog/language/english/multiseller/multiseller.php ~420

$_['ms_account_sellerinfo_phone'] = 'Phone';
$_['ms_account_sellerinfo_phone_note'] = 'Your phone number (optional)';
$_['ms_account_sellerinfo_company'] = 'Company';
$_['ms_account_sellerinfo_company_note'] = 'Your company (optional)';

Try refreshing the seller profile account page now – the new field should be visible.

4. Adding some validation to the account controller

Now let's add just a little validation. OpenCart (and MultiMerch) follows the MVC pattern that uses controllers to pass data from template to models. MultiMerch uses the jxSaveSellerInfo function in the account-profile.php controller to perform things like form validation, so we'll modify it a little.

catalog/controller/seller/account-profile.php ~90

if (mb_strlen($data['seller']['phone']) > 35 ) {
    $json['errors']['seller[phone]'] = $this->language->get('ms_error_sellerinfo_phone_length');
}

if (mb_strlen($data['seller']['company']) > 50 ) {

We'll also add the error message to the language file to make it translatable.

catalog/language/english/multiseller/multiseller.php ~237

$_['ms_error_sellerinfo_phone_length'] = 'Phone number cannot be longer than 35 characters';
$_['ms_error_sellerinfo_company_length'] = 'Company name cannot be longer than 50 characters';

This simple check will warn the seller if he tries to enter too much information in the phone field. You can use any of the phone number regular expressions available in the web instead for a more advanced validation.

5. Showing the new data in the public seller profile

Now our sellers can specify their phone number, so let's display it on their profile in store.

catalog/controller/seller/catalog-seller.php ~233

$this->data['seller']['phone'] = $seller['ms.phone'];
$this->data['seller']['nickname'] = $seller['ms.nickname'];

catalog/view/theme/default/template/multiseller/catalog-seller-profile.tpl ~71

<?php if (isset($seller['phone']) && $seller['phone']) { ?><li><?php echo $ms_catalog_seller_profile_phone; ?> <?php echo $seller['phone']; ?></li><?php } ?>

<?php if (isset($seller['company']) && $seller['company']) { ?><li><?php echo $ms_catalog_seller_profile_company; ?> <?php echo $seller['company']; ?></li><?php } ?>

catalog/language/english/multiseller/multiseller.php ~658

$_['ms_catalog_seller_profile_phone'] = 'Phone:';
$_['ms_catalog_seller_profile_company'] = 'Company:';

That's pretty much it! Your sellers can now specify their phone number and display it in their public profile.

You can use this guide to create all kinds of extra seller fields until we implement a separate feature to do this. Also, we strongly suggest you use vQmod to keep the changes out of Multimerch core files so that you don't lose them during upgrade. For this matter, we've created a ready-made vQmod file based on this tutorial for you to use – grab it here!

P.S. We also have our very own MultiMerch Community Forums - drop by and share your thoughts about this article and the rest of MultiMerch!

The post Creating custom seller account fields in MultiMerch appeared first on MultiMerch Marketplace.

While being one of the most popular and feature-rich custom themes for OpenCart, Journal2 by Digital Atelier is also known to have compatibility issues with MultiMerch out of the box. Lately, we've cooperated with Digital Atelier to create a MultiMerch integration package for Journal2 that makes it easier.

This guide briefly covers a complete installation of OpenCart, MultiMerch and Journal, so if you're only looking for the Journal2 integration package, click here to go to the relevant section. Please note that this is only applicable for the Journal2 theme for OpenCart2.

Installing OpenCart with vQmod

There's a lot of different OpenCart installation tutorials that cover the installation in detail, so we'll only outline the main steps you need to perform to install OpenCart on your server:

Download the latest version of OpenCart from the official OpenCart website.
Unpack the archive and upload the contents of the upload/ folder from the archive to your server.
Visit your server to run OpenCart's installation script and follow the installation procedure.
Download the latest version of vQmod for OpenCart from vQmod's repository on GitHub. Make sure you download vQmod for OpenCart, not vQmod Standalone.
Unpack the archive, upload the contents of the vQmod archive to your server and run vQmod's installation script by visiting the /vqmod/install/ link in your browser. Make sure index.php files and the vqmod/ folder are writable.

That will get you a clean installation of the latest OpenCart version with vQmod enabled.

Installing Journal2

Journal2 is a premium OpenCart theme so you'll need to purchase it from ThemeForest first. When you have the theme purchased, please see the official Journal Documentation for the installation procedure.

Once you've finished installing Journal2, you'll have a clean OpenCart store running the Journal2 template.

Installing MultiMerch with Journal2 integration files

When you have OpenCart with Journal running smoothly, proceed to installing MultiMerch for OpenCart. Our documentation covers the installation process in detail, so we'll only outline the steps required to install MultiMerch:

Download the latest version of MultiMerch from either GitHub, OpenCart Marketplace or MultiMerch website. If you have purchased MultiMerch Complete Package, download the latest version of the archive from your account.
Unpack the archive, rename/copy the default template folder to your theme's folder name and upload the contents of the multimerch_marketplace/upload/ folder from the archive to your server. For the Complete Package, also do this for every addon you want to install.
Enable your theme in vQmod's vqmod/pathReplaces.php file.
Download the latest version of MultiMerch-Journal2 integration file from GitHub. Please note that it's version-specific, so we'll be trying to keep it up to date with the latest versions of Multimerch and Journal2.
Unpack the archive and upload the contents of the upload/ folder to your OpenCart installation folder. Warning: this will overwrite two of MultiMerch's original vQmod files inside the xml/ folder (multimerch_core_productpage.xml and multimerch_core_sellermenu.xml), so make sure to make a backup of them! This also means you'll need to merge those two files manually if you have made any modifications to those files.
Install MultiMerch via Admin > Extensions > Modules > [Install].

That's it. When this is done, you should be able to see MultiMerch-specific seller information throughout your store, including:

Seller profile on the product page
Seller navigation menu on top of the page and in the account sidebar (if you have them enabled)
Link to the seller registration form on the login page
Various MultiMerch pages being styled properly

Here are some of the screenshots showing OpenCart2 with Journal2 theme and MultiMerch installed and working correctly:

If there's something else missing at this point, please let us know and we'll modify the integration files accordingly.

The post OpenCart with Journal2 and MultiMerch Marketplace appeared first on MultiMerch Marketplace.

While we're working on bigger MultiMerch features, I would like to ask – is there one thing we can do today to make your MultiMerch experience better?

Looking for a tiny modification to the list of sellers, perhaps? Waiting for a minor bug to get fixed or want that little extra field added to seller's profile? Or maybe there's a question we've somehow missed. If we can help – please let me know by filling out this simple form and I'll get back to you.

Thanks and have a great day!
Martin

The post How can we improve your MultiMerch experience today? appeared first on MultiMerch Marketplace.

Two of the biggest online shopping days of the year are just around the corner and both mean big sales for online merchants. Are you and your store ready to take full advantage of Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

Those who shop online in the next few days will receive all the benefits of Black Friday without worrying about the stampede going on at the local mall. Your customers will be happy in knowing they didn’t even have to lift a finger (unless you count clicking on the shopping cart) to get the best deals around. And those days aren't just for the big, high street shops – smaller stores can get their slice of the cake by using the time to attract more traffic, increase sales and ultimately bring in new customers.

That is, as long as they play it smart. Here are some tips to do just that.

Build Your Online Presence by Offering Discounts

There is no better way to turn attention (the good kind) to your online store this time of year than by offering hefty discounts. They won’t do any good however if your customers aren’t aware of them; a nice image of a product or service with BIG letters saying "20% off Everything on Black Friday!" or something along those lines will help turn heads your way. This is the one time of year when you shouldn’t be scared of giving large discounts. People are only looking for bargains on Black Friday and if you don’t provide them, someone else will.

However, don't do it just to clear your stock – make sure to provide value to your customers as well. Discounting products that no one needed in the first place won't build a lasting relationship with your customer.

Use the “Free Shipping” Paradox to Your Advantage

Did you know if you offer people free shipping worth $10, they are more likely to take it as an upfront guarantee than they are to take a discount of $15? This is an easy way for online stores to pad out their Black Friday and Cyber Monday deal offerings and a big “FREE SHIPPING” banner will look great at the top of your store page.

Offer Gift Cards

Especially this time of year, online customers are generally shopping for presents for friends and family. What will they buy if they're not really sure what to buy? A gift card. By offering gift cards you can take advantage of the shopping spree twice with every purchase. If the gift receiver has a $30 gift card and finds something on your site for $60, they get their desired item for half price while you still receive your asking price. And a happy customer is a loyal customer!

Get Creative

Time to put on your thinking cap and get creative! Replace the regular banner and images in your store with something festive. If you want to promote your sale, spice things up a bit. When was the last time you updated those product images? Make sure they're tip-top for Black Friday and Cyber Monday! This means high-res, high quality and, above all, professional.

You only have one opportunity to catch a potential buyer’s eye, so make it count. Stock photos are fine if you don’t have anything better, but again – quality is key. If graphics are just not your forte, you can always find someone to help you with this on Upwork.

Whip Your Customer Service into Shape

It's good to have a professional looking contact page, but it won’t help your customers much if there’s no answer from the other side. There will inevitably be questions only you can answer – question about your products, promotions, coupons, discounts, shipping – you name it and they’ll ask it. You need to have someone to answer their calls and emails quickly, especially on Black Friday.

Remember, people are in a rush to buy something and they won’t wait long for your answer. Reply quickly and gain a happy customer. Worried about the surge of questions? Sign up for a support system and put out a FAQ to answer the questions you hear the most – all at once. If you're looking for one, be sure to check out Groove – we at MultiMerch use Groove for our support and Knowledge Base and Groove team incredibly helpful and friendly.

That’s all there is to it. Keep these tips in mind and your store will be ready for November 27 and 30 – and you’ll be on track to end 2015 with a bang!

P.S. We'll shortly start offering Black Friday discounts at MultiMerch as well. Stay tuned!

The post 5 Tips to Prepare Your Online Store for Black Friday and Cyber Monday appeared first on MultiMerch Marketplace.

Hi guys,

I would like to thank you for still being with us! We haven't always been at our best, but we're improving. Thanks to the great response to our improvement suggestion email we've been able to focus on things that are most important for you.

First, we are redesigning both the MultiMerch website (to finally make it useful) and the MultiMerch Marketplace itself. Seller account areas, product forms and profiles haven't been updated for a while and we're finally at it. In a short whileMultiMerch will become much easier and more pleasant to use. The same goes for the new features – a few days ago we've released MultiMerch 7.2 with the core of a new system for seller settings, invoices, filters and other things. I'll also be getting in touch with those of you who requested a few other features – so that we can discuss how they should work.

Second, we'll soon start publishing articles related to OpenCart development and running an online store in general. This includes various guides & tutorials, useful tips and things like that. If there's anything you'd like to know in particular, please let me know.

Finally, we're starting our Black Friday & Cyber Monday campaigns. For at least a week starting today you'll be able to sign up for MultiMerch Complete Package at a discounted rate. In addition to this, we'll be happy to assist you with the installation, configuration and minor adjustments in case you run into issues.

If there's anything else I can help you with, feel free to comment on this article.

Meanwhile, have a great weekend!

The post Black Friday at MultiMerch appeared first on MultiMerch Marketplace.

Having two or more ways to do something can be useful, but it isn't always the case. When it comes to OpenCart, there are four ways to modify its core functionality: vQmod, OCMOD, Override Engine and Event Handlers. Let’s take a quick look at vQmod and OCMOD and the differences between these two.

What is vQmod and How Does it Work?

vQmod (or Virtual Quick Mod) is the most widely used of the four override systems available today. If you're using MultiMerch, you probably know that we only use vQmod for OpenCart core modifications.

It's actually quite simple – search/replace code modifications are specified as separate xml files (see the syntax examples here). vQmod then parses the xml files during page load and applies the modifications to the target files. The result is saved as a temporary modified file, which is then loaded by OpenCart instead of the original one.

The drawback is that vQmod isn't part of OpenCart – it needs to be installed separately. If you're creating your own vQmod-powered extensions, you'll need to make sure your clients have vQmod installed on their servers. If it's not present, the extension will not work correctly. (The good thing is – the installation process is really simple: upload, run the installer, done)

Is OCMOD a Better Alternative?

If vQmod is so awesome, why would you need something else? Well, the idea was to have something simpler built into OpenCart and available by default. Or, as Daniel Kerr, the main guy behind OpenCart, put it: "The problem also is vQmod, I just don't like how there are a lot of unnecessary features."

There are a few drawbacks compared to the original vQmod, though. This includes a few missing advanced search/replacement modifiers such as top, bottom, iafter and ibefore, as well as partial line matching and a few other things. In addition to this, OpenCart's modification cache needs to be refreshed every time there are changes to OCMOD files, which may slow down development, and OCMOD log files aren't as informative as vQmod's.

Because of these differences and the lack of a clear benefit, OCMOD hasn't received wider adoption (with some of the community calling it a “poor man’s vQmod”) and vQmod is still used by many OpenCart developers who are reluctant to spend time and effort converting their mods. (If you feel like converting, however, see a great vQmod to OCMOD conversion guide by an OpenCart developer rph here).

Conclusion

Both vQmod and OCMOD are meant to be used for the same purpose and both have their pros and cons (feel free to check this developer discussion thread on OpenCart forums). The choice is yours, though. We at MultiMerch still use vQmod – mostly because there are quite a bit of modifications in MultiMerch Marketplace. If you're starting something from scratch, you may as well try OCMOD first since it's part of OpenCart. You can always switch later!

vQmod
+ mature, stable and robust system – original version released in 2010
+ clear documentation
+ simple modification syntax and deployment
- not part of OpenCart core – needs to be installed separately

OCMOD
+ part of OpenCart core – no additional installation needed
+ modification installer integrated into OpenCart
+ "execute during installation" scripts
- a few features missing compared to vQmod
- relatively new system with no clear development roadmap

The post Modifying OpenCart: vQmod vs OCMOD appeared first on MultiMerch Marketplace.

How often do you see a shopping cart sitting abandoned in a supermarket aisle, laden with items that will never become purchases? Chances are it's less than 75% of the time, but that's the average proportion of ecommerce shopping carts which never made it to checkout in 2015.

So why do about three quarters of online shoppers take the time to browse, select, place items in their cart and then simply 'walk away,' and what are ecommerce retailers supposed to do about it?

Just browsing

According to Statistica, 37% of shoppers 'were just browsing'. There's not much we can do to stop browsers from abandoning their carts as we too have all been there before.

Hidden charges

I've often paid more than the product's retail value in postage costs just to get the thing delivered to my doorstep. (being located in Europe and ordering stuff from the US can be a bit pricey) . It didn't always sit well with me, but the feeling that "that's just what it costs" made it easier to justify.

High shipping costs are an obstruction in themselves, but that's not the heart of the issue. Many retailers try to keep shipping costs hidden until a customer is interested in a product, then quietly tack on the extra charge at checkout. This is what turns that feeling of "oh well, that's what it costs" into "damn, so that's what it costs?!", pushing customers away from their carts and ultimately damaging the way they see their relationship with the retailer.

Always make sure your customers have a way to find out what will it cost to ship the item to their location – don't just throw the shipping fee (and any other hidden fees) in their face at checkout. If you don't have a shipping calculator available, at least list the fees on a separate page and make it easily accessible. Your customers will thank you for that. I always do.

Coupon code incentives

Ironically, another problem which can instantly bounce customers away from the checkout is a coupon code feature. Simply being reminded of the possibility of discount may send shoppers searching for a code. At this point they've already left the site – if they can't find a code, they may never feel like coming back. It doesn't matter whether you have the best price on the market – the existence of discount codes in general can turn that empty field into a sort of failure.

Your virtual store layout

The way you lay out your checkout process is a huge part of ecommerce cart conversion. There isn't a definitive answer to that, however – some sites perform better with single-step checkouts, some with multi-stage checkouts. According to Smashing Magazine, 28% of the top 100 retailers had a five-step checkout process, with only 1% offering a one-step checkout.

I personally love single page checkouts as they're much more pleasant to go through. In either case, the main thing is simplicity. Often, basic design choices like proper use of negative space and bold input field outlines can enhance the impression of clarity and usability. Try both and see which works better!

Perceived level of security

Payment options

When people want to give you money, make it as easy as possible for them. An analysis of conversion rates by SeeWhy found that conversion was up 101% for mobile users and 86% for desktop users where alternative payment was made available, making alternative options one of the biggest factors. If you ship internationally, use the customer's apparent location to display prices in their local currency.

Level of support

If you can, offer support at checkout. You may want to stick a customer service number on the page or consider offering a live chat feature. If there's a question they have, make it easy for them to get it answered.

Making sure your potential buyers get the information they need when they need is a big part of keeping them on the checkout form until they've hit 'submit'.

Persistence in obtaining customer data

I can't emphasize this final point enough. Some of the users might sign up and you'll get some CRM metrics out of the process, but in general, forcing ecommerce customers to go through a time-consuming process which they know is unnecessary is one of the most toxic things a retailer can do. Identifying guest users is easy enough and there are various services to help you do that. For example, Rejoiner can identify guest users who enter an email but never hit submit. If you really want that data, encourage social login rather than sign-up.

The post 8 Reasons Your Customers Fail to Complete Purchases appeared first on MultiMerch Marketplace.

25+ Premium Themes from KulerThemes for Free (possibly a limited offer)

Update:

While doing our research, we've stumbled upon an offer that seems too good to be true.

In addition to this amazing offer, we came up with these other great looking themes for OpenCart 2 that will make your store much more beautiful at no cost.

Cosmetics Store

HotSpot Mobile Shop

Mobile Shop is a great free theme for OpenCart 2 with a clear and easy to navigate layout and a clean and modern color scheme.

ThemeGlobal Lite

ThemeGlobal Lite is a free version of the ThemeGlobal Pro business theme for OpenCart 2. It includes a neat carousel homepage slider, is fully responsive and offers multiple language support.

Kingstore Lite

KingStore Lite is a free, clean and minimal multipurpose theme for OpenCart 2. You can easily use it for all kinds of stores, no matter what you're offering.

This is what we could find so far. Let us know if there's anything else we missed. Also, tell us if you managed to get the Kuler offer, though – I'm really curious about that one!

The post Kickstart Your 2016 With These Free OpenCart Themes appeared first on MultiMerch Marketplace.

If you're just starting out with online marketing, it can be tough. There's just so much of it: SEO, content, emails, social media, conversion optimization, paid advertising and more, and each is a whole new science in itself.

So, do you really need all of it? Heck, do you need any at all if you're just running a small online store?

When I first started looking into online sales and marketing, I was overwhelmed with all the information. Being a programmer was easy, but this was a completely new world. There are tons of great and even more mediocre marketing articles out there, but it makes this even more difficult for someone just trying to get started. Then I found one resource that helped me get my head together that I want to share with you.

It's an amazing article called The Noob Guide to Online Marketing by Unbounce & Moz. It consists of two parts: the huge 15,000,000 pixel infographic (shown below, click for the full version) that lays out all different areas of online marketing in a clear way and a 6 month marketing action plan for you to follow.

Basically, this is all you need to know about online marketing if you haven't done it before. You'll probably not need some things for your small local online store, but I'm absolutely sure that even following the plan loosely you'll be much better off than with no marketing at all.

That's it for today, let us know if this was helpful and have a great and productive Monday!

The post What's Online Marketing Exactly? appeared first on MultiMerch Marketplace.

Search Engine Optimization is a great way to make your ecommerce store even more effective. Therefore, we tried to find you some of the popular (and free!) SEO extensions for OpenCart. If you’re looking to optimize your store, you'll want to check these out!

Admin Enhanced 2 Tools Free

This SEO plugin is a real lifesaver for any OpenCart admin, who often need all the breaks they can get. The Admin Enhanced 2 Tools Free offers quick links, the ability to highlight tabs, extend sessions and a whole lot more all without costing a penny!

Super SEO Multilingual and Friendly URLs

The Super SEO Multingual and Friendly URLs extension for OpenCart allows you to write friendly URLs for your route URLs as well as add a prefix to a URL that you have previously specified in Admin > Panel > Settings > Localisation. The extension works both with an OpenCart installation on root and without.

Automatic SEO URL with Multilanguage Support

Automatic SEO URL with Multilanguage Support replaces the default SEO URL management tools and makes generating SEO-friendly URLs a breeze for any OpenCart user. All links are created using just 4 queries which helps make this extension very fast. What’s more, it allows for the continued use of the default SEO keyword in your product/category/page info admin pages.

Google Rich Snippets

Google Rich Snippets will help bring in more customers who are already searching for the best site from which to purchase a product. Not only that, this extension also controls your product info, allowing you to always be relevant and have accurate and fresh product information and descriptions

Display Categories in Product Page

The name says it all! With this theme you can display categories in the product page and make your customers much more interested in browsing and ultimately buying from your OpenCart store.

SEO Articles

Let’s say that you want to publish articles in your OpenCart store, but don’t know how to best go about it. Well, this free and powerful OpenCart extension can help you with that. SEO Articles supports Google Authorship, displays authors, multiple languages, human-readable URLs, contextual links and even lets you spice up your articles with images using your own preferred dimensions.

Some of them are not yet available for OpenCart 2, but we hope they'll be updated for the new version soon. If you know some other free SEO extensions for OpenCart that we've missed, share them in the comments below!

The post 6 Free OpenCart SEO Extensions appeared first on MultiMerch Marketplace.

Creating an OpenCart 2.x extension is a fairly simple process and there are many different resources available out there to help you with this.

Today I would like to share the MultiMerch way of doing this. This is how we create our OpenCart extensions and MultiMerch addons.

This is the first part of the tutorial – I'll try to make it as simple and easy to understand as possible.

Displaying a custom page in OpenCart is fairly easy, but in most cases you'll need more than that. We usually need our OpenCart extensions to have at least the following parts (in addition to the main logic):

a simple way to install and remove them
configuration/settings (and a simple interface to change them)
database tables to store and retrieve data (and a way to create and delete them without asking the user to run SQL scripts manually)
support for multiple languages (OpenCart has quite a multilingual user base)

Let's create a simple extension skeleton that will allow us to do all of this. Today we'll cover the admin-area part of the extension without settings (I'll talk about them in Part 2).

You most likely already know that OpenCart is based on a fairly straight forward MVC architecture plus a set of language files. The Models store the database procedures, the Views hold the HTML code of pages and Controllers fetch the data using Models and use it to render Views.

In addition to this, OpenCart's main code is split in two separate parts (admin/ and catalog/, each containing an MVC structure) along with common files and libraries under system/.

Today, we only need the admin/ part. OpenCart usually stores its extension files under the module/ subfolder inside each of the MVCL folders. Let's stick to this and create the following folder structure in our workspace:

OpenCart Extension Folder Structure

Great! This structure will hold our models, views, controllers and languages.

Note that we've placed our structure inside a separate upload/ folder with a readme.txt file outside of it. This isn't mandatory, but it makes it easy to separate what needs to be uploaded to OpenCart installation from everything else.

Now let's start adding files.

Most users expect the newly uploaded extensions to appear under Admin > Extensions > Modules. OpenCart will display our new extension on this page automatically, but it needs two files to be able to do it: language file (to display the title) and controller file.

Let's start with the language file.

Create a new file called multimerch_skeleton.php under admin/language/english/module/ and add the following code to it:

<?php

$_['heading_title'] = 'MultiMerch Skeleton';

?>

Now create a file named multimerch_skeleton.php under admin/controller/module/ consisting of this empty class:

<?php

class ControllerModuleMultimerchSkeleton extends Controller {
}

?>

Make sure that file names and class names match. OpenCart uses this to determine what to load and where to find it.

You can now upload the contents of the upload/ folder (not the folder itself!) over to your OpenCart setup root and look into Admin > Extensions > Modules:

opencart extension skeleton admin

Neat, our Skeleton is there! It doesn't do much more than that, but it's already visible in the admin area and can be installed and uninstalled through OpenCart's own system.

Now, what if we also need a table in the database for our extension? Let's make OpenCart helps us do it!

First, we need the following multimerch_skeleton.php model file inside admin/model/module/:

<?php

class ModelModuleMultimerchSkeleton extends Model {
   public function createSchema() {
      $this->db->query("
      CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `" . DB_PREFIX . "multimerch_skeleton` (
      `field` VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT NULL
      ) DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8");
   }

   public function deleteSchema() {
      $this->db->query("DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `" . DB_PREFIX . "multimerch_skeleton`");
   }
}

?>

Here we have a simple database table with a single field that we want created and removed when Skeleton is installed/uninstalled. The DB_PREFIX constant holds the table prefix that was selected during OpenCart installation. Don't forget it when working with the database!

Now we need to tell OpenCart to call these functions. Let's add the following code to the multimerch_skeleton.php controller file inside our ControllerModuleMultimerchSkeleton class:

<?php

class ControllerModuleMultimerchSkeleton extends Controller {
   public function install() {
      $this->load->model("module/multimerch_skeleton");
      $this->model_module_multimerch_skeleton->createSchema();
   }

   public function uninstall() {
      $this->load->model("module/multimerch_skeleton");
      $this->model_module_multimerch_skeleton->deleteSchema();
   }
}

?>

These two controller functions are called by OpenCart automatically when you install and uninstall the module through Admin > Extensions > Modules.

Now we can upload our files and test them out!

Let's try installing MultiMerch Skeleton via Admin > Extensions > Modules to see what happens.

opencart extension successfully installed

opencart extension skeleton table

Awesome! Now our Skeleton extension is installed and the table is there. It will be removed if Skeleton is uninstalled via Admin > Extensions > Modules.

That's it for today, hopefully this helped you learn something new about OpenCart extensions. In Part 2, we'll cover configuration, settings page and a few other important things.

Meanwhile, let me know in the comments if I've forgotten something or if you have any questions!

The post How To Create An OpenCart Extension: Part 1 appeared first on MultiMerch Marketplace.

The new version of OpenCart – OpenCart 2.2 – is heading towards the release. The beta version (2.2.0.0_b1) is available on GitHub already.

Whether you're a store owner or an extension developer, you probably know what this means – lots of changes (both good and not so good ones – OpenCart updates tend to break things once every while).

So, what to expect in OpenCart 2.2? In short – lots of things.

Some of them are:

separate admin area for theme-related settings
even more directory structure changes (moving classes around)
function code changes (e.g. loading views, languages and generating links)
even more modifications to OpenCart's Event Handler.

Last month, our fellow OpenCart developer Vladimir Stasiuk (sv2109) did a thorough review of the changes in OpenCart 2.2.0.0_a1 with code excerpts and examples. You'll definitely want to check out his blog post and take a look for an in-depth look at what's coming up!

Meanwhile, we've released an update to MultiMerch Core with invoices, settings and lots of other things. See our Facebook post for more information and have a great day!

The post What's New in OpenCart 2.2 appeared first on MultiMerch Marketplace.

As you may already know, we have a Twitter account where we regularly share the most useful articles on various topics.

Many of them include ecommerce marketing, search engine optimization, lead generation and everything else that we think will help you drive traffic, increase revenues and make your store even better than it is now.

Here we've compiled 13 (+1) of the most popular articles we've shared in March – you definitely want to take a look and see how you can apply it to your store – whether you're using MultiMerch or not yet.

How to Create Content That Earns Engagement, Trust, and Loyalty for Your Brand by Ronell Smith at Moz
4 Design Decisions That Hurt eCommerce Conversions by Vince Sevilla at Lemonstand
Hijacking Your Competitors’ Campaigns by Matthew Barby at Hubspot
5 Big Reasons To Have A Solid Social Media Marketing Strategy by Brad Friedman at Social Media Today
How to Boost Your PR with Brand Monitoring by Anna Lebedeva at SemRush
How to Use Hosted Blog Platforms for SEO & Content Distribution by Rand Fishkin at Moz
Top 6 Most Powerful and Latest SEO Strategies Infographic by Irfan Ahmad at Social Media Today
5 Things You Need to Know About Social Media & SEO by Chloe Mason Gray at Kissmetrics
eCommerce Essential Guide to Compete and Beat Amazon by Kunle Campbell at 2xCommerce
6 On-Page SEO Checks for Better Search Engine Rankings by Keller Tiemann at Business 2 Community
Twitter Marketing Tips: The Complete List by Josue Valles at Social Quant
3 Content Marketing Tips to Optimize Engagement and Connect with Influencers by Bob Carver at Social Media Today
5 Smart Strategies to Make Your Content Go Viral by Jeff Bullas
9 Smart Ways to Stay Motivated All Day by Leslie Ye at HubSpot (this one's about something different, but it doesn't make it less useful!)

In addition to this, don't forget to drop by our Facebook page for the latest MultiMerch development updates, screenshots, feature discussions and more!

The post Top 13 SEO, Marketing & Social Media Articles From MultiMerch Twitter in March appeared first on MultiMerch Marketplace.

Starting an online marketplace has never been easier. But do you really want to start one?

As much as we'd love to have you as our client at MultiMerch, managing a multi vendor marketplace is not for everyone – and is much more than just setting up a website.

To run a marketplace successfully, you also need passion to do it, people who will use it, a team to help you manage it and finally software to power it.

Last week I've written a blog post at iSenseLabs for those who're considering starting their own marketplace – check it out and let me know if it was helpful!

The post Want to start your online marketplace? Consider this! appeared first on MultiMerch Marketplace.

Hi, Martin here.

The new Alpha2 version of MultiMerch 8 for OpenCart 2.2 is now available for testing and pre-order!

MultiMerch 8 is a major upgrade combining MultiMerch Core and MultiMerch Premium functionalities. These are some of the new features that are available in Alpha2:

OpenCart 2.2 support
Updated vendor dashboard and product listing
Updated layout designs
Updated customer account pages and menus
Support for Google Analytics for vendors
Support for Disqus Comments for vendors and products
HTML email templates
Various smaller updates

These are the features that are still in progress and will become available in MultiMerch 8.0 or 8.1 Stable (within the next few weeks):

Improved vendor balance and product returns
Vendor ratings
Custom payment methods
Custom shipping methods (MM Shipping rewrite)
Improved SEO system
Third party theme integrations

Here is a small preview of the Alpha2 updates running the default OpenCart 2.2 theme:

MultiMerch Premium (Complete Package) users who purchased MultiMerch after January 1, 2016 will receive the new MultiMerch 8 automatically in their MultiMerch accounts.

Those who purchased MultiMerch before this date are eligible for an upgrade discount should you decide to switch to MultiMerch 8. In this case, please contact us at sales@multimerch.com.

All MultiMerch 7 updates are still free of charge and a stability update (7.7.5) should be available in your accounts shortly.

MultiMerch Core will not be available as a separate version starting with MultiMerch 8. Therefore, existing Core users will need to upgrade to one of the paid plans (Developer, Store Owner or Business) to switch to MultiMerch 8. Please contact us for more information and MM8 upgrade discounts available to Core users.

Note that MultiMerch 8 is still in Alpha stage and is to be tested on a clean OpenCart 2.2 setup.

If you have any questions about MultiMerch 8, don't hesitate to contact us at sales@multimerch.com.

The post MultiMerch 8 Alpha2 available for testing and pre-order appeared first on MultiMerch Marketplace.

Orpheus_Logo_OK2 (1)

I've always said that partnerships between companies are a great way to combine the best traits of different teams to produce amazing results.

Today, I'm happy to announce that MultiMerch is partnering with Orpheus Media Ltd. for custom MultiMerch development. We have been working with Orpheus Media in the past, so this is the next step in the cooperation.

Orpheus Media is a web development studio offering a full range of web related services such as e-commerce development, SaaS applications, CMS integration and generic web development and consulting, as well as several types of digital advertisement services.

As Deyan Yankov, CEO of Orpheus Media put it, "Multi vendor plugins and extensions have been of great interest for online store owners lately as they provide extra opportunities for both customers and entrepreneurs. MultiMerch has years of development and a solid team behind it and we've found it to be perfect for this purpose – this is why Orpheus Media use MultiMerch in their e-commerce projects."

Therefore, Orpheus Media are offering 30% off their hourly development rate exclusively for MultiMerch clients. So, if you're looking for custom MultiMerch development or need something else done, feel free to contact Orpheus Media through http://orpheus.bg/ or via info@orpheus.bg and mention the MultiMerch partnership.

We are also open to other partnership opportunities. If you are interested, get in touch with me at martin@multimerch.com.

The post MultiMerch partners with Orpheus Media Ltd. appeared first on MultiMerch Marketplace.

What is vQmod and How Does it Work?

Is OCMOD a Better Alternative?

Conclusion

Just browsing

Hidden charges

Coupon code incentives

Your virtual store layout

Perceived level of security

Payment options

Level of support

Persistence in obtaining customer data

Updated on 20/01/2016 for OpenCart 2.x

First things first – find the actual cause

Broken configuration files

Broken directory structure

Magic quotes

Syntax errors of all kinds

Notice: Error: E-Mail to required!

Error: Table doesn't exist Error: Unknown column in 'field list'

Warning: fsockopen(): unable to connect to http://yourdomain.com:25/

1. Modifying the database

2. Adding the new field to the seller model

3. Displaying the field in the account template

4. Adding some validation to the account controller

5. Showing the new data in the public seller profile

Installing OpenCart with vQmod

Installing Journal2

Installing MultiMerch with Journal2 integration files

Build Your Online Presence by Offering Discounts

Use the “Free Shipping” Paradox to Your Advantage

Offer Gift Cards

Get Creative

Whip Your Customer Service into Shape

What is vQmod and How Does it Work?

Is OCMOD a Better Alternative?

Conclusion

Just browsing

Hidden charges

Coupon code incentives

Your virtual store layout

Perceived level of security

Payment options

Level of support

Persistence in obtaining customer data

Error: Table doesn't exist
Error: Unknown column in 'field list'