Book Review: osCommerce Webmaster's guide to Selling Online

Disclaimer: I got a review copy from this book from the publisher, Packt Publishing, with the request of doing a review. I'm still free to say whatever I think of the book.

This book is meant for people who already have an osCommerce installation, or don't need help setting one up, as this book doesn't cover doing that. It does cover just about everything else though. It talks at length (60 pages) about optimizing osCommerce, giving you the URL's to each and every addon you need to do that, and explains some basic SEO as well.

It's sometimes a bit off the mark, and although published in December 2007, already a bit dated. For instance, it it talks about supplemental result tags, and those are, as you probably know, removed from the SERPs. But 95% of it is great though and very actionable, as is all the other stuff in there.

Some of the other topics the book covers: advertising an online store, building customer confidence, design to sell, increasing order value, etc. etc.

This really is a must-read for those doing business with osCommerce, and I think that even if you're quite experienced with it already, you'll find some new addons which can really help you. In my eyes other shopping cart engines were gaining on, or had already overtaken osCommerce, but this book clearly made me see that there's quite a vibrant community around the package.

So if you work with osCommerce, I can only say: go buy it, it's $40 well spent!