October 21, 2013

Point of Sale and Magento
One of the most popular narratives around eCommerce in the media focuses on how eCommerce is disrupting and destroying the traditional brick-and-mortar store. It’s a narrative firmly rooted in reality. eCommerce offers consumers an unbeatable value and convenience, and brick-and-mortar stores have significant costs that just aren’t an issue for most online retailers. However, some of the efficiencies inherent in eCommerce can be put to work to the advantage of brick-and-mortar store owners, particularly when it comes to the technology they use.
A point-of-sale system is at the heart of any retail venture. Traditionally, point-of-sale systems have been slow, inelegant, and proprietary, running on hardware with strictly limited capabilities. In the modern world, that needn’t be the case; cheap computing power abounds, and there is excellent software available to that works as well on an iPad as on the traditional PC.
Using Magento for point-of-sale allows store owners to smoothly integrate their online and off-line selling and offer customers the same sort of personalized and convenient retail experience that they have come to expect from buying online.
There are a number of POS solutions for Magento, but we would like to highlight three that are particularly well designed and useful for owners of brick-and-mortar stores that use Magento in their operations.

In-Aisle Selling By PayPal

While this isn’t a fully fledged POS solution, it’s worth looking at for store owners who want to dip their toe into the idea of using Magento on the shop floor.
In-Aisle selling makes use of the PayPal Here Magento integration to provide a “concierge sales tool.” Sales staff can access the Magento store with a mobile device like an iPad with PayPal Here installed and take payment using a variety of methods, including PayPal, check, credit cards, and cash. Sales are sent to Magento and processed in the usual way. The software also provides an interface for collecting customer details with delivery and invoicing.

IWD POS System


IWD POS is much closer to traditional point-of-sale system than PayPal Here. It is a well-featured, simple-to-use Magento integration that works with mobile devices and desktops. IWD provides a streamlined checkout process with easy-to-understand product navigation and shopping basket features.
You can check out a demo of IWD POS over on their site.

X-POS

X-POS is another POS system for Magento that attempts to provide a comprehensive solution to store owners. It features a decent touchpad navigable interface for mobile device users and integrates well with Magento, allowing for quick searching through stores inventory, barcode searches that are compatible with standard USB scanners, inventory updating, and cashier authentication.
Usefully, X-POS also supports PayPal here.
Using the same POS for online and offline sales can bring significant benefits to a business in the form of reduced cost and complexity. If you’re a store owner that uses a Magento integrated point-of-sale system, let us know about your experiences in the comments below.
Image Credit: Jo Jakeman

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Nexcess

Nexcess, the premium hosting provider for WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento, is optimized for your hosting needs. Nexcess provides a managed hosting infrastructure, curated tools, and a team of experts that make it easy to build, manage, and grow your business online. Serving SMBs and the designers, developers, and agencies who create for them, Nexcess has provided fully managed, high-performance cloud solutions for more than 22 years.


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