Virtuemart - A complete webshop in Joomla.

VirtueMart is a complete and user-friendly e-commerce system, for both beginners and specialists. Managing products, discounts and promotions is easy. The store can be fully customized to your needs. Virtuemart is only available in 1 (free) version and works exclusively on Joomla. It is an extension for the Joomla platform, but VirtueMart itself is extensible. In this article, I will give an overview of the features that you can find in VirtueMart.

VirtueMart is an open source e-commerce solution for Joomla. This webshop extension was developed in 2009 by Sören Eberhardt-Biermann, based on the standalone system: phpShop e-commerce suite. Currently, more than 269,000 businesses use VirtueMart. It was developed by a small team of developers, working mainly on the core system of this project. Financial support comes from sales of VirtueMart extensions, which add functionality to the component.

Managing products

Virtuemart has standard product management features that you would expect from an e-commerce tool with a catalog feature (such as simple product editing, product lists and categories). You can also add custom fields so you can easily enter product details. You can also edit taxes and calculation rules so that, depending on their location, users see prices excluding sales tax, including sales tax, and so on.

Product searches

VirtueMart includes many different features designed to make it easy for you and your visitors to find what you are looking for. You can list your products and organize them as you like. VirtueMart makes it very easy to create as many categories as you want and categorize your products this way.

Integrated product reviews

A big advantage of online shopping is being able to see product reviews. Research shows that 88% of consumers read online reviews before making a purchase. VirtueMart makes it easy for people to leave ratings and reviews for the products you sell.

Inventory Management

To help you manage your inventory, VirtueMart is equipped with inventory management.

Orders and shoppers

The backend tools also have the ability to handle discount coupons for product discounts, order management and shopper management. In particular, the customer management utility lets you segment your customers - you can manage groups of customers and then, using the policy/rule features, show the groups of customers different prices, tax rates, shipping costs, and so on.

Finally, VirtueMart tracks data and provides reporting features so you can automatically generate data for tax purposes.

Order Statuses

To keep customers informed of order status, VirtueMart has a total of six default order statuses, as listed below.

• Pending
• Confirmed by customer
• Confirmed
• Cancelled
• Refunded
• Sent

The Pending and Sent statuses cannot be changed, but site owners can add or change any number of statuses.

Manufacturers

VirtueMart provides a set of functions for Manufacturers, which you can associate with products, with descriptive information and contact details. Use of these features is optional, but it is an easy way to enter information once and display it multiple times with different products.

Store

In the store section, you can change the display details for your store, including the name, primary currency (and any secondary currency you accept), photos/business logos, terms of service, and so on. You can also change the payment methods you accept, as well as the shipping methods you want to offer your customers.

Customizable shopping cart and payment process

The shopping cart and checkout process are fully customizable. In addition to the traditional multi-step process that requires user registration, you can also implement a guest checkout or onepage checkout. Support for SSL certificates ensures that your customers' data remains secure.

Form fields

Your customers can provide their data using the forms provided. Form entry fields vary depending on whether the user is registering, checking out as a guest or setting up shipping options. They can certainly choose a registration-free checkout process, but registered users get access to an address book, set their default billing and shipping addresses, and store their payment information for later use.

If needed, you can manage your orders manually, including changing status, offering returns, and so on.

Support for multiple languages

VirtueMart can be used in a number of languages, so if you are targeting a global audience, this may be a good option. You can add additional support for languages other than English by installing VirtueMart expansion packs.

Tools

The tools section contains the features developers need to set up their stores. As an open source product, you can modify any part of the software package, including the underlying code.

VirtueMart Extensions

In the VirtueMart Extensions Store and the Joomla Extension Directory, you can find plugins, components, modules and templates for your VirtueMart shop. If you are ever looking for something that is not included by default in the VirtueMart component, you will probably find an extension here that adds the functionality to your store. VirtueMart extensions include zooming effects of product images and links to accounting apps, for example.

There are more than 190 extensions available for VirtueMart users.

VirtueMart Essentials extension

One of the most popular extensions for VirtueMart is their Essentials package, which allows users to create a wish list, compare products and view them quickly with the click of a button. Site owners can also generate reports on wish lists with this extension.

Prices

Pricing tools allow you to implement dynamic pricing; this allows you to charge different groups of customers at different prices. You can also use the dynamic calculator to offer discounts based on time, product category, shopper group, country or province. This calculator can also be used for tax calculations and import duties or customs fees.

VirtueMart has a global focus, so you can display prices and perform transactions in many different currencies.

Paying with iDEAL

In Virtuemart, you can add capabilities through the use of plugins. This allows developers to incorporate specific customer requirements into the webshop. This is also the case with payment plugins. Virtuemart has more than 70 payment plugins such as: bank transfer, Credit cards, PayPal standard and Pro, Authorize.net, MoneyBookers, etc. Besides the standard plugins, there are 2 major links for iDEAL with Hikashop. These are RO Payments and CCiDEAL. In terms of functionality and price there is almost no difference in these links.

They allow you to connect your online store to iDEAL through your own bank or an iDEAL payment provider such as: Sisow or Mollie (only €0.29 per transaction!). The advantage of these providers is that you do not pay any connection fees or fixed monthly costs and they are therefore also suitable for small and medium-sized webshops

SEO tools

To ensure that your store is found by as many people as possible, VirtueMart comes with built-in SEO features that allow you to set the metadata for your product pages. This includes the ability to add microdata and rich snippets.

Cost

As open source software, the basic version of VirtueMart is 100% free to use. You only pay for purchasing additional features / extensions and development.

Technical support

VirtueMart support is limited to the provided documentation, public knowledge base and community forum, where you can find answers to your questions and implementation ideas.

The VirtueMart documentation center offers four types of documents:

• Manuals: explains how each feature works
• Tutorials: guides you through processes, such as creating products or working with layouts and templates
• FAQ pages: the most frequently asked questions about VirtueMart
• API documentation: documents for developers who want to interact with the VirtueMart API - although not required to use the product.

There are multiple community forums serving customers who speak different languages.

Summary

There is a lot to like about VirtueMart. As an open source product, it is constantly changing and improving, and its extensibility allows you to easily add to the base product to create an e-commerce solution that fits your business needs. However, it is not the easiest product to use, so if you are not put off by the technical challenge of getting VirtueMart up and running, there are simpler solutions available. Remember: VirtueMart is only available to Joomla users. Rather than learning an entirely new CMS, it is probably easier to use an all-in-one tool from another vendor if you are already uncomfortable with Joomla.