Best E-store platform for muti-lingual sites?

DBMark

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May 7, 2008
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Hi. I'm looking into an eCommerce venture, to sell in several European countries (but the main language and target market will be English speaking). Which of the ZenCarts, Shopifys etc is best for multi-language purposes?
 

antropy

Business Member
  • Business Listing
    Aug 2, 2010
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    West Sussex, UK
    www.antropy.co.uk
    Hi! There are a lot of good E-store platform when it comes to functionality. It really depends on what you are trying to achieve. For me, OpenCart performs very well. I came up a review for some of the best platforms, feel free to compare and decide which one to choose.

    http://www.antropy.co.uk/blog/shopping-cart-review/

    Hope this helps and good luck to your new venture.

    Kind regards,
    Paul :)
     
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    ChrisMaj

    Free Member
    Aug 3, 2012
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    Hi. I'm looking into an eCommerce venture, to sell in several European countries (but the main language and target market will be English speaking). Which of the ZenCarts, Shopifys etc is best for multi-language purposes?

    Try IdoSell.com - you can use almost any world language you want, just provide translation (easy process on xml-based xliff files), upload it and voila! Store translated. You can use multiple languages in single store or follow a simple rule "one language=one store".
    Example? my-dress.ch - three-language store.
     
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    MartCactus

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    Sep 25, 2007
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    with most of the good open source solutions giving you the option, I think the key is getting good translations.

    I've had good results with Zencart over the years.

    I'd agree most carts support this now (ours does, and has done for years). It can be a bit tricky if you want to support Arabic and Chinese... Arabic in particular can have some localisation issues besides just language (we even support the Islamic calendar in our software - in places like Saudi the calendar is totally different to our one based on the birth of Jesus).

    Another issue is making sure you can deal with customer support issues in other languages. Or if someone in Saudi Arabia orders and puts their address in Arabic, can you read enough to make sure the package sent to them is addressed correctly for the english postie?
     
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    Magento would be the obvious first choice due to it's unprecedented flexibility and control options, as well as wide community, free extensions and translations. Although, admittedly, earlier versions did have some performance issues, these can be solved with appropriate optimisation relatively easily and I wouldn't generally worry about those.

    If you e-store requires more complex content management solutions then VirtueMart (Joomla shopping cart component) is another product that you might wish to consider. It has all the features of major e-stores, as well as multi language support and free translations to major European languages. Their website can be found at virtuemart.net, and I believe that it can definitely be an excellent solution for more complex projects.
     
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    DBMark

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    May 7, 2008
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    Thanks for all the comments. I'm now trying out Presta Shop 1.5 on my development server, and so far am impressed by language/localization options, as well as all the rest. I appreciate a few here have recommended Magento, but the performance and complexity issues have put me off - there seems to be plenty of features to play with in Presta Shop.
     
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    M

    Mark Bolitho

    Hi

    Several platforms fit the bill and will enable the ability to roll out store after store, but I think it's really important not to look just at one feature in isolation.

    It may be a key factor in helping you make the choice but take care to ensure all your other boxes are ticked too.

    It will also depend on more fundamental questions; are you looking to take ownership of this in-house, or via an external agency, perhaps with their own proprietary system?

    If you're looking to outsource that opens up a whole new set of questions...

    Mark.
     
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    terryuk

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    Jan 26, 2007
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    Magneto is nice if you like ten thousand features in my opinion, in other words rubbish imo.

    I would say any system which can preload language templates are good enough, yet versatile so you can easily hook it into a central database for scalability after all you will be dealing with 7 countries not one. Meaning different payment vendors, shipping and so on.

    A friend uses a custom platform to cut out the crap basically, I would follow too.
     
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