What is e-commerce

E-commerce is defined as the use of the web to conduct businesses online. A “normal” website, or “brochure website”, contains predominately images and text; while a website empowering e-commerce would include additional features like an online shop or booking system.

There is  a wide variety of e-commerce systems for every business type, such as online shops, online booking systems, online schools; as well as more advanced e-commerce systems like online banking or online tax returns.

E-commerce systems are developed with either one or both of the following objectives:

- Increase sales: using a variety of online tools and hooks

- Reduce costs: improving the efficiency with which a business deals with its clients, sales team, and data.

 

Off the Shelf System

An “off the shelf” system is a web application created by specialist e-commerce companies (e.g. Google, Paypal, Constant Contact, etc) designed to address a particular business need.  These systems can be purchased and installed on any website as a “plugin”. The key here is to find and choose the one that best suits your business, CustomIT works with a number of  such applications depending on the needs of the client and system.

 

Customised System

A customised e-commerce system is one designed & coded specifically for the needs of a particular project. Such systems require three core features: Backend database which manipulates and logs the information, the frontend web where the client enters relevant data, and the backend admin where the business can review client activity.

In reality, many e-commerce websites use a combination of  an “off the shelf” components working in conjunction with customised database and client interfaces.

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How CustomIT can help

Once the system is defined and options reviewed, Custom IT will prepare what is called a “wireframe”:  this defines what the system will do, how it will do it, and how it is to be implemented. It will also define the customised and off the shelf elements to the system. E-commerce systems are designed to be very user friendly; nonetheless, the CustomIT team can also provide training in using new systems as well.
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Contact Us today and get an understanding of how an e-commerce system could benefit your business.

The Technical Stuff

Custom IT build object-oriented web applications, specifically MySQL databases and the PHP classes and functions that enable a web front-end to utilize them for the storage, retrieval, and usability of data, as well as to control the level of access that is given to that data by different types of users.

We also administer the underlying Linux-based server systems (or similar) required to support these applications, including web and database server configuration.