Products/Categories:

• Add as many Products and Categories as you want
• Can also be used just as a catalogue (without cart features)
• Unlimited Category/Subcategory depth, products can be assigned to multiple categories
• Sort your Categories the way you like
• Sell downloadable Products like MP3s, Templates, Videos or Software
• Add a Thumbnail and a full size Image to every Product via your Browser
• Add Attributes like Size or Color to your Products to offer product variations
• Use Product Discounts (percantage/total, time limited or not)
• Show Details & images for every Item
• CSV Upload, (CSV Import & Export)
• Manage the Stock Level for Products and Items
• Automatically Notify Shoppers when a Product is back in Stock
• Feature specific products by setting them "on special"

Shopper Groups / User Management

• Add Shoppers and assign them to different shopper groups
• global Shopper Group Discounts
• multiple prices can be added to a Product, each for an own shopper group or a quantity range
• Restrict "Display prices" to specific user groups
• Access Management: assign users to user groups like "admin", "storeadmin", "shopper" or "demo" to allow the administration by other users
(assign products to vendors and allow those vendors to maintain only their products)

Easy Configuration / Customization

• Manage your shop through an easy and completely Joomla/Mambo-integrated interface
• A "Welcome Screen" shows your daily Shop Statistics: A Summary with "number of customers", "number of orders", "5 newest customers" and so on
• capable of Frontend Administration (without having to login into the Backend of Joomla/Mambo)
• global Price/Currency Display Formatting
• Templates for Product Display Pages
• Extend the Shop with other Modules and Functions
• Manage different Currencies, Countries

Shipping Addresses / Rates

• Shoppers can add individual Shipping Addresses
• Fetch Shipping rates live from Intershipper, USPS, UPS, Canada Post, ...
• Write your own Shipping Modules using the Shipping API

Tax Rates

• Product prices can be displayed "including tax" or not (set for each shopper group)
• Choose between Shipping-Address-based tax calculation (city/state & country/region)
OR
• Store-Owner-based tax calculation (e.g. in european countries)
• Add your own shipping carriers and shipping rates

Payment

• Use safe SSL encryption (128-bit) and Shared SSL
• Capable of live credit card processing
• Supported Payment Providers:
  • authorize.net online Credit Card Processing (AIM)
  • 2Checkout
  • PayPal (with IPN gateway)
  • Paymate
  • NoChex
  • WorldPay "IPN"
  • PayMeNow
  • eCheck.net
  • eWay (XML transactions)
  • eProcessingNetwork
  • and more...
• Payment Module API for custom payment modules...

Order Management

• Complete Order Management
• Automatically notify your customers when the Order Status changes
• See who has ordered: IP address storing
• Extend the pre-defined order statuses with your own ones

"Nice" Features for Customers...

• Let your customers easily search for products through a search form
• Shoppers can see, in what time a product will usually ship, on product-details page (with nice images!)
• Shoppers can manage their user accounts
• Shopper can view all their orders (and order details)
• Order Confirmation mail (customizable!) is sent to shopper and store owner

Joomla! / Mambo Integration

• Registration while checkout automatically registers the user to the global user table (registration is necessary for purchasing items)
• Complete integration of the layout using Joomla!’s standard CSS styles
• Easy installation / uninstallation using the Joomla/Mambo Installer

Free VirtueMart hacks/tweaks/modules

• Zone Shipping Module from Zephware.com
• Flypage Admin Link for phpShop
• Latest Products for phpShop (as a seperate module)
• Mini Cart for phpShop (also available as a separate module)
• Random Products for phpShop (as a seperate module)
• Featured Products for phpShop (as a seperate module)
• Special Products Manager for phpShop
• Report Basic (for statistical purposes)

Reference:VirtueMart
This text is available under the terms GNU Free Documentation License.