subject: Article on e-commerce website development [print this page] Electronic commerce enablement widely known as E-commerce website development is one of the most common software development activities in IT industry. Most of the businesses are moving towards e-commerce model to expose their products to wider customer base.
E-commerce website can be realized through custom software development or using off-the-shelf e-commerce products. There are number of open source (freely available) and commercial e-commerce products available.
Some of the widely used e-commerce products are:
osCommerce: osCommerce is freely available open source PHP based solution under General Public License (GPL).
Some of its main features are:
* Browser based installation and upgrade procedure
* Allows easy integration with existing sites
* Support for multilingual with English, German, and Spanish provided by default.
* Support for most of the payment gateways like PayPal, 2CheckOut, Authorize.net, iPayment.
* Support for shipping integration with real-time quotes available from UPS, USPS, FedEx etc.
* Support for different taxes for different products.
VirtueMart: VirtueMart is another open source PHP based e-commerce solution that goes well with Joomla content management system.
Some of its main features are:
* Support for multiple currencies, languages and countries.
* Support for shipping management.
* Support for flexible tax models include EU Mode (Store Owner based Tax Calculation when Customer comes from an EU Country).
* Support for online-catalog by turning off price display.
* Powerful web administration.
Zen Cart: Zen Cart is another freely available e-commerce shopping cart
Some of its main features are:
* Support for multiple customers mode
* Unlimited category depth
* Support for multiple advertisements management
* Support for gift certificates
* Support for featured products and quantity discounts
Magento: Magento is another poplular e-Commerce solution available. It comes with three editions: Magento Community, Magento Professional and Enterprise with annually subscription fee. Professional and Enterprise versions provide some crucial features
Some of its main features are:
* PCI Data Security Standard (PA-DSS) Compliant
* Strong Data Encryption
* Private (Club) Sales including Events, Invitations and Site access permissions
It is always wiser to decide upon an e-commerce solution that suits your requirements as closely as possible as no off-the-shelf solution will suit all of your requirements. If the gap is too much, a custom solution can also be developed using suitable technology.
Some of the important areas that should be considered while developing e-Commerce website solutions are as follows:
* Provide Helpful Customer Review and Rating System for products: In order to help customers make decision faster, enable customer reviews along with product information so that customers can share and view opinions about the product.
* Security and reliability: It is one of the most important aspects for e-commerce solutions. Keep your site secure and reliable in order to make sure customer feels comfortable in providing sensitive information (e.g. credit card, personal information etc).
* Shopping Cart Visibility: Shopping cart should be visible to customer all the time on every page. This is to make sure that customer can view his shopping basket with single click.
