Web Development
GUIDE

Ecommerce Websites

Description: Different websites sometimes need to use different web applications to make them work at their best. One good example of this is in the case of websites that sell goods.

Designing a website is one thing. Designing an ecommerce site is quite another. Just because you have experience in creating standard websites you may not necessarily be confident enough to create an ecommerce site.

Why is this? Quite simply it's because of the extra work that's involved to make sure the site is a secure one. Security is a very hot topic online nowadays and if people don't feel that their details will be secure when they place an order with any specific site, they are very likely to go elsewhere.

Some people start their journey towards building an online ecommerce business by trying to build their own website or buy a do it yourself site that purports to do the same job. While this may be ideal for a very small venture, it doesn't usually work for larger businesses.

This is why it pays to get an expert to design your site; and more precisely, someone who is experienced in using the various applications available for creating an ecommerce website.

In its basic sense a web application uses information, so it is obvious therefore that a very precise set of reliable applications need to be used in order to build a reliable and user friendly ecommerce site.

The most obvious one that immediately comes to mind is the shopping cart. This allows visitors to your website to browse the site and place items they like into their shopping cart (or basket). The cart will update every time they place a new item into it, displaying the correct number of items and the total each time. The visitor can then carry on shopping, and if they wish they can save the contents of the basket, leave the site and return later to carry on.

This requires a series of web applications running in conjunction with each other, not only making it easy to select products and save them if necessary, but also to allow the customer to create an account and save their data securely without fear that anyone else will be able to access it.

This is where the issue of security rears its head. Any ecommerce site should be built to incorporate an SSL - secure socket layer - that allows for transactions to be securely processed over the web. Many webmasters create payment gateways which send customers through to a trusted payment site - such as PayPal for example - to process the actual transaction.

But while paying securely is obviously very important, there are other issues with an ecommerce site which require specific web applications to make the whole site work much more smoothly.

Firstly you need to be able to view and update the product information and pricing details quickly and easily. For this reason using active server pages (ASP) works well because they give you the versatility to be able to amend pages and details as and when your visitors enter information into the required areas on your website, such as requesting particular products to order for example.

Bearing all this in mind you can see why it really is worth paying a professional to design an ecommerce site which is put together properly, using the right programs and applications. It can also be designed to suit your own unique needs, which could well ensure that your business performs better than its competition.