Setting Up an Ecommerce Website using Open Source Technologies

Today is it very much necessary to have an online representation of your business. As the number of Internet users rises so does the revenues coming in from the ecommerce websites are rising. It is a global trend wherein people are opting to shop online rather than physically visiting the shop in the real world. To optimally utilize this opportunity it is suggested that one should have an ecommerce website setup and hosted. Now a question arises as how much the ecommerce development will cost. Well, there are many costlier options to get a state-of-the-art ecommerce websites, but every business needs to consider their own budgets and every budget is unique, so the costlier options do not suit every business. Thus there is a universal option that is inexpensive, delivers adequate ecommerce development solutions, and above all is easy. It is open source ecommerce. Open source software is freely available and all you need to do is use the open source ecommerce development tools and build a fully functional ecommerce website. When the website is ready to be deployed the only thing remains is hosting your ecommerce website and reaching out to a big multitude of potential market and customers.

First let us solve the mystery of domain name and web hosting. Web hosting is really easy and you need to do some research before you go on to buy a hosting account on any website. First get clear which hosting is best suited for your ecommerce website – shared hosting or dedicated hosting. Select a web hosting plan and register a domain name that matched your product type on the ecommerce website. Keep to the basics and get a domain name that goes along with your company name and brand image. Since we are discussing open source ecommerce development we shall refer to a web hosting plan that provides PHP and MySQL capabilities. Though there are some open source .Net tools for ecommerce development, the ones build on PHP are much more poplar and effective such as osCommerce, Magento, X-Cart, Zen Cart, PrestaShop, and so on. Once you have a domain name registered and a hosting account you are ready to go and launch your ecommerce website online.

Next you need, as mentioned before, a suitable and effective open source ecommerce development tool. There are plenty of them out there but Magento has being stealing the show in past few years. There’s no restriction, choose whichever you may but be sure to know the tool inside out to utilize its powerful features and functionality optimally. When you have chosen an ecommerce development tool you need to install it on the server where your website is running. With each tool there is a door opened to a wide resource of plug-ins, add-ons, themes and much more to be used with your ecommerce development tool. This is the biggest advantage of going open source – you get an uninhibited resource pool of the open source community members who extend the capabilities of the tool continuously. Get some of these functional packs installed with your tool online to suit your needs and usage.

Now that your open source ecommerce development tool is installed you can easily post your products online. Lastly, get accounts registered on popular payment gateways that you will be putting up on your ecommerce website. It can also process cash transactions, in which case you have to approve each order manually.

Following the above procedure you are a webmaster of a state-of-the-art ecommerce website. Through this website you can easily sell your goods and manage an online business. When orders are placed on the website you get emails to keep a track of your customers, and manage inventory. With a fully functional ecommerce website ready all you need to do is do some SEO for your website and steer visitors to your site. More traffic means more productivity and hence superior ROI. Hence open source ecommerce development is the best way to generate a solid online representation and make money online with minimum investment.

The author of this article is a specialized open source developer at eTatvasoft. eTatvasoft is a professional PHP development company and provides cost effective open source ecommerce development solutions.

Article Source: http://www.marketingarticlelibrary.com

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