Ecommerce web site design solutions

Ecommerce systems

eCommerce software and E-business solutions are available with project lead times of as little as 35 days for mid-size products. This means that you can be earning money from your ecommerce system before you know it. You can opt for anything from a simple web shop to a full front and backend ecommerce solution with products, customers and sales administration facilities. Packages are available in PHP/MySQL on Apache web server or ASP on an IIS web server.

Our eCommerce software solutions provide secure payment facilities, CMSs and shopping carts, and work always to W3C and WAI guidelines for coding and accessibility ensuring that you reach as close to 100% of your potential prospects as possible. Search Engine Optimisation can be built into your ecommerce site for an additional fee (find out about search engine optimisation - SEO).

With one of our eCommerce packages you can:

1. Payment gateways and shopping carts enabling order taking and processing secure online credit card payments
2. increase engagement with your customers
3. dynamically manage relationships with your workforce and suppliers
4. reduce the time it takes to bring your products and services into the marketplace
5. grab more of the market share cost-effectively
6. benefit from the security provided by authorisation and access control
7. enjoy a consistent, automatic, accurate and timely flow of information
8. update and edit your products and web site content using a straightforward CMS (Content Management System)

We can also provide you with:

1. website design and development
2. website content management systems
3. portal solutions
4. web enablement of legacy applications
5. e-mail systems automation and custom-built e-mail applications
6. website maintenance and enhancement
7. corporate intranet systems for business processes and workflow automation

We can also design property sites, business directories and dating sites, as well as conventional online shopping sites

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Critical Differences between Web Design and eCommerce Development

and why ecommerce costs more than web design

Designing a static website and developing an ecommerce site are two quite different disciplines. They use different technologies, require different skill sets and different levels of organisation.

A web designer might be able to produce a decent-looking web site for you with little more than an understanding of HTML, CSS and maybe also Photoshop, and he should really also have some understanding of search engine optimisation, industry standards coding and web accessibility issues (although many still don't). Of course, for a professionally designed website, all these criteria are essential.

However, your ecommerce site, in order to be developed competently, requires not only these skills, but also the ability to design and build a backend database and to connect to that database and query it using a scripting language such as asp or php. For the ecommerce project to be successful it will require more formal planning and design, a business case and a unique selling point, and a proven ability to optimise for search engines is also vital if you are to see a return on your investment (ROI). If you are selling products online, then you will also need a content management system, or at very least some form of backend product management. You may also require integration with accounting software built in. This means that your specifications will include a backend for your site as well as a front end.

A properly deployed ecommerce solution should really use a formally managed project team, not just a single person. This is because the product needs design planning and implementation, development planning and implementation, testing and QA, and project coordination which can all be peer-reviewed. The scope of a small static website might require only one person to do all this, but an ecommerce site is highly likely to fail if the lines of responsibility aren't clearly demarcated between different individuals who are specialists in their fields. This provides a more secure guarantee of success, since however wide the knowledge of an individual designer, a one-man operation is more prone to make mistakes, less likely to notice them prior to implementation and more likely to have critical knowledge and skill gaps than a team of specialists.

Further reading: How to find a good web designer or eCommerce developer.

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