Online shopping (eCommerce, e-commerce, shopping cart) is all the rage for 2009; Citi Investment Research projects US retail eCommerce sales will grow 4.4% in 2009 to $141 billion dollars and jump to 16.5% growth for 2010. Needless to say, if you feel you have a product viable for online consumption, I highly recommend exploring an eCommerce solution immediately.
I deal strictly with 3 open source eCommerce software written in a PHP / MySQL environment: Magento, VirtueMart, and osCommerce. Each one is fully compatible with payment gateways Authorize.net, Google CheckOut , and PayPal. These 3 major payment methods have been proven to provide the most satisfying service for customers and are the only services I currently support.
Which software is used depends on your current web hosting solution and whether or not you’re willing to upgrade your hosting service to be suitable for high performance eCommerce. Each application will have its own package of features requiring a different level of website hosting. There is no best ecommerce solution for everyone; an eCommerce website must be custom built to your needs.
There’s also no such thing as a cheap eCommerce or cheap eCommerce hosting. Bear in mind that the function of an eCommerce website is your storefront online, processing credit card transactions, receiving confidential, personal customer information over the internet; it’s well worth the cost to build a turnkey solution that is secure and reliable.
However, I’m an affordable experienced ecommerce website designer capable of designing you a custom ecommerce shopping cart solution personalized to fit your business and its needs, providing you with a secure, hosted package. You won’t be sold a free ecommerce template; I’ll build you a professional ecommerce theme ready for market and high traffic business to consumer activity.
I ask that you shop around; research and compare the different ecommerce applications I’ve mentioned as well as research other ecommerce developers and website designers. I know it’s very tempting for a small business to want the cheapest ecommerce solution available, but I assure you, building an ecommerce website is not something you want to take lightly; build the best you can afford.
