You should have the ability to control the look and feel of your store. With that in mind cpCommerce is easy to customize. You can change the layout design, the colors, and the text by editing no more than 5 files.

Every aspect of cpCommerce is a module. To put it simply, anything you do not want can be removed from view without causing problems to the store as a whole. If you do not want the 'Manufacturers' list to be shown on your store front, you can simply take it off and it will not harm anything else.

New to v0.07, cpCommerce has reports that are easy to choose from and even easier to process. They are written on a 'Request' basis, meaning, unless they are asked for it is not available. Currently, cpCommerce displays the 'Current/Pending Sales', a 'Stock' report of all Products and a 'Web Traffic' report.

With a store of vast size you may need several people updating the store's content and the products you sell. cpCommerce has two levels of ownership. One, the Administrators, who have access to every aspect of the store, and Two, the Store Staff who only have access to certain specific areas. The main areas the staff cannot go to are the 'Configuration', 'Purchase History', 'Customer Viewing', and 'Reports'.

This gives you control over the "major" sections, while making it so you do not have to do "all" of the work.

Viewing a Customer's Information is as easy as clicking your mouse. In cpCommerce, you can view all details of a customer. You can also mark a customer account as "Inactive" or "Active", or you can "Delete" an account.

Viewing a popular store's purchase history can be a real eye sore, which is why cpCommerce allows you to sort the history by several different columns allowing you to see the most current purchases, the purchases marked as invalid or pending, at the top instead of having to scroll down or search several pages to find them.

A variety of Payment Methods is the key to good ecommerce software and cpCommerce is grabbing several of the popular ones to start off with and will then venture to the less popular. Installing a payment method is a easy as choosing to "Activate" it.

Like other ecommerce packages, cpCommerce allows you to easily organize your products using Categories and SubCategories. However, unlike some of the other packages, cpCommerce lets you make an unlimited amount of Categories and SubCategories. In fact you can also make an unlimited level of tiers. Such As:
    Main Category > SubCategory 1 > SubCategory 2 > SubCategory 3 > etc...

Another feature regarding the Categories in cpCommerce is you can set them to "Invisible", meaning they are not viewable on the Store Front by your Customers. However, the store lets you see them if you are the Administrator that way you can ensure everything is displaying as it should be.

Most products have a Manufacturer and cpCommerce requires that each product you enter be given a Manufacturer. Whether each product has the same manufacturer or a different one has no affect to the software. The Manufacturer value of a product is primary used for organization and for searches processed on the store front.

Through cpCommerce you can create a variety of different products. Products with Options, such as, color and size, Products that are Downloadable after Purchase, Products with Options that are Downloadable after Purchase (each set of options having its own downloadable file), etc.

Each product can also have a Full Size image and a Thumbnail image attached to it for display on the store front. These options and many more make cpCommerce a great choice when needing to provide flexibility among products.

Putting certain products or certain set of product options on sale is also included in cpCommerce. Not only can you specify the sale start and finish dates, but you can also specify the time the sale starts and finishes.

When you combine this with the "Sales" report, you can even see how many days, hours, and minutes are left in the current sales.

All emails that are sent by cpCommerce are stored in the database as templates. They can easily be exported for backup purposes, and modified through the Administration Area to fit your specified needs. When a new email template is required by the software, it can easily be imported into the database and if it finds a relatively close match, it will ask you if you want to "Replace the Matched Template", "Insert the Import Template as a new Template", or "Do Nothing".

The email template system is smart and will recognize a variety of variables to be replaced making it easy to send out professional emails without hard coding a lot of the details.

Posting announcements for customers to read, is very easy. cpCommerce allows you to quickly write up a professional announcement and tell it the date range to be shown.cpCommerce also enable you to attach an image to the announcement to make it more professional.

cpCommerce allows you to create Plain Text or HTML newsletters to send to your customers. Realize that customer's have the ability to turn off the receiving of newsletters and cpCommerce will go based on their settings to decide who is sent the newsletters.

With the owning of a store, you are likely to have Shipping Information, a Terms of Agreement, and other policy documents regarding your company. cpCommerce allows you to make these documents quickly and easily through the Administration Area, and like the Announcements, you can include an image to add professionalism.

When working with customer's you need an easy way for them to communicate with you and/or your staff. cpCommerce allows you to build your own 'Contact Form' for customers to fill out regarding issues they are having or questions regarding your company's policies.

All of the phrases used throughout the Administration Area and the Store Front are stored in two files appropriately named 'english.php'. This allows you to translate the phrases to a language more suitable to your store and your target customers.

In the same situation it also allows a customer to change which language they are viewing the store in, if you have multiple language files stored in your 'language' folders. This now increases your target audience and will hopefully increase your sales.