PHP (Hypertext pre-processor) is a server side scripting language. Dynamic websites are made rather easily using PHP. The best part about building your website using PHP is that it has a lot of frameworks suitable to each of the various categories such as CMS, e-commerce and the complete code structure that is open source. Having said that, here are some of the reasons why you would like to base your next website project on PHP:
Benefits of using PHP
Open source & easy to learn
As compared to all the other languages, it is easier to learn and implement PHP, it being an open-source language. So, if we know a basic language such as C, we can implement all the PHP functions easily.
Platform independent
PHP supports almost all the web browsers including Windows, Linux, and Mac OS and this makes it a platform independent language.
Offers better control over the code
The use of PHP makes it a lot easier to control our code as we implement logic using just a few lines of code using PHP, as compared to the other languages wherein the same logic requires more lines of the code to be written. So, it goes without saying that the modifying or changing the code is also easier in PHP.
Cost-efficient as well as code efficient
As we know PHP is an Open Source language, one can develop a project without the involvement of huge costs and efforts. It is also coded scalable and reliable making it easier to work even on a lot of web pages.
Offers documentation & access support
Millions of people are working for the past 2 decades on the available and the fast-emerging PHP frameworks and plugins etc. So, over this long period of time, a large PHP community has developed that offers support proactively in case we get stuck with any technical issue.
Supports all webservers
It supports all the web servers including Apache,Netscape,Microsoft IIS etc.
Reduction of work load &speed improvement
As we know PHP uses its own memory, it helps reduce the workload on servers which automatically reduces the development time & this is useful especially for the projects that require CRM or E-commerce development.
Offers Security & Trust
With its different layers of security to ensure the protection of the websites as well as web applications and backed by a community of millions of people who have extensively worked on this technology and who vouch for it, PHP is a proven choice of technology in terms of security and trustworthiness.
Additional benefits
- Easy manipulation of MySQL databases, especially on the WAMP/MAMP/LAMP stack - just type the mysqli_connect() function and you're good to go!
- Simple embedding with HTML. With the <?php ?> tags, embedding PHP code between HTML is trivially easy.
- Integration with JavaScript and other technologies, allows you to create real-time updates more easily.
- Easy use of HTTP methods, with the $_GET and $_POST superglobals.
- Last but not the least, easy set up – even a non-programmer could set up a WAMP stack in less than an hour and be ready to start programming.
PHP is an open source, simple, flexible and simple to learn language when compared with any other programming languages available in the market. Besides that, what makes PHP a smarter programming language is the fact that a large fraction of people (mostly developers) contribute to its extensions, advancements, open libraries and APIs. The advantages of using this expedient language for your next project are immense and no wonder why this resulted in major market share for PHP development. So, it is hands down one of the most preferred technology for your upcoming website project, considering all these points.
From the introduction of new Android versions to significant additions in the field of app development, 2016 has been an influential year for Android app development. The number of Android users has significantly increased between 2016 and 2017
A website is believed to be the most useful internet marketing tool. It requires barely any maintenance, once it is designed. Another awesome benefit of having a site is that it is, accessible for your prospective customers all day, every day and 365 days a year.
Moreover, the reach of the website is not restricted to one single nation, rather it can get to anybody on the earth. An information laden and intuitive site can enable you, to win customers, to hold them and in this manner, create windows for your business to create extra income.
Furthermore, since the cost related with website marketing is fundamentally, lower than some other kind of promoting, your net revenue will be very high. If your business is not an online one, still, having a website will make a great impression with your customers.
Website Designers help reduce work loads
What is more welcoming, is that getting a fully functional business website or e-commerce store, is not that hard any longer. That have become possible, on account of outsourcing, which is not in any case costly these days.
Some people furthermore consider developing a site for themselves, with DIY tools. Be that as it may, in this competitively active online marketplace, having a DIY site is not enough any longer. Furthermore, since you can get a designer's website with a couple of hundreds dollars, it is smarter to get an official one, from the very beginning of your web voyage.
Also, when you engage website designers, they generally offer an entire package for you. It will include designing of site, registering the domain and setting everything up for you. Also, the website designing package these days even incorporates, search engine optimization. Which, in the event that you attempt without anyone else's assistance, would not be simple and will devour a considerable amount of your time, energy, efforts.
To be able to offer your customers an attractive looking, functional website you should look for, expert support. Also, if you go to the outsourcing market, the final cost and efforts required for your website creation, will decrease by a significant amount.
Website Design for most online enterprises perpetually need outsourcing
Notwithstanding, it is needed to find an outsource website design provider or a team who, have the experience and have a transparent set of project terms. You need to check their past portfolio and request a sample design to see, whether they can provide what you need from them. There can be new designers too, who will be ready to carry out your job and you will really, have better negotiation terms with new ones.
Choosing between experienced and new talent
In any case, while working with a new designer, you need to ensure that the project is, going without difficulty and if you require to give extra feedback. The experienced designers, then again, will be fast, brief and productive.
The deal is dependent upon you, based upon your budget and needs. In particular, you need to have the capacity to keep up a clearly defined tasks guideline. Furthermore, put in place the terms and conditions and a transparent collection of directions. So that you can relish a stress-free time while the task is going on.
The concluding part is that hiring an outsource website design company the entrepreneur, can pick up a better understanding of the tremendous possibilities that internet business, can offer to grow their businesses.
Moreover, this also serves to activate the creative energy and develop the vision of the persons involved. Furthermore, the designer gets the chance to be a part of the vision and passion of the business, he is creating that website for.
Ecommerce software review and Ecommerce website builder reviews
Looking to determine the best ecommerce platform and an easy ecommerce web site builder in 2016 to sell products online. You have come to the right location for the best shopping cart reviews. While you can sell stuff on ebay, you do not establish your own branding like building your own. So the question is which is the Best Ecommerce Software Reviews? Look at the Infographic below for steps to choose a best ecommerce solution. The reviews are as follows -
The Top Ecommerce Website Builder Ratings are as follows:.
#1 - Shopify
Shopify is the #1 ecommerce software website builder in 2016. It is very popular and can be used to quickly develop ecommerce sites with great customer support. You can easily integrate Shopify with a large number of external shipping and payment systems. A user asked for the review of shopify ecommerce software and this started the journey of reviewing ecommerce products.
One area where Shopify easily beats is competition is with awesome add-on apps. Just like your smartphone, Shopify has many applications that you can download and install on your store, which extend the default or introduce new functionality. Their entire app process is set up much better than the competition and they have the most available apps, too.
Shopify starts at only $29/mo and is less expensive than its competitors. And if you use their credit card processor, you will only have to pay the standard 2.9 percent + 30 cent rate. If you upgrade to a higher plan, the per-transaction fee is lower. Shopify allows you to have a free trial that lets you try the system before you commit to it. This is a huge advantage over other competitors thatrequire to pay upfront.
Comparing shopify vs bigcommerce, there are distinct pros/cons in choosing the shopify software.
Pros
- Great customer support. Support is available during weekends.
- User friendly and can develop complex ecommerce sites.
- Provides integration with shipping companies such as Fedex and USPS.
- Provides Inventory Management and Discount codes
- Hosted in the cloud and lot of templates available for customization.
Cons
- Digital products require third party add-on
Look at the decision tree graphic in the bottom of the page and then pick your choice.
- Amazing New features include - Now Shopify includes advanced IPhone/IPad support, Email marketing, Integrate your products to sites like Nextag, Yahoo Shopping, PriceWatch, PriceScan, Shopzilla, Pricegrabber, Shopping.com. So now your sites can access customers from the largest market in the world using Mobile marketing and not only internet marketing. This is the biggest advantage Shopify has over its competitors.
Most people try to go with some free package, but remember that it is not by chance that Shopify is winning awards and acccolades. If you are serious on your internet business and don't worry about how technology is moving, Shopify is the leader. They also allow for easy upgrades for their software and therefore, it is our #1 recommendation.
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>>> #1 - Click on the Shopify link to see a live demonstration now..
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#2 - Bigcommerce
BigCommerce is voted #2 easiest-to-use ecommerce software in 2016, so let’s look at some of the reasons why we believe they attracting such a large customer base of both new online retailers and those who are switching from other platforms. BigCommerce can not only setup a professional online store, but you can also sell your products on Facebook, eBay, Shopzilla, Google Products directly - all from BigCommerce. Bigcommerce has recently hired executives from Paypal, Amazon and Ebay to fuel their growth,
Unlike 95%+ of providers out there, BigCommerce provides online retailers with everything they need to sell online, including a dead simple to use (yet extremely feature packed) hosted shopping cart, a merchant account (so you can accept credit cards online) and custom ecommerce website design services.
You can start by signing up for a 15 day free trial (no credit card required) so you can experience everything BigCommerce has to offer. Bigcommerce indicates that 50,000+ online store owners are using Big Commerce, which speaks itself about the quality, reliability and advantages of the program. You can setup promotions, view 25+ business intelligence reports, unlimited carts and choose from over 50 built-in store templates which have been professionally designed using the best ideas from Amazon, Zappos, and other highly profitable online stores.
Features include,
- Publish thousands of products in seconds
- Abandoned Cart Server - This allows you to win back customers who already was ready to purchase your product but abandoned it. This feature allows you to conduct email campaigns and win them back. It has a massive success as 15% of the time, you are able to get back the customer using this feature.
- Shipping and PCI Compliance - Accept credit cards and handle shipping with links to Fedex, UPS. BigCommerce is only amongst a handful of PCI compliant e-commerce providers and compliance means you can rest easy when it comes to dealing with security and fraud with credit card purchases.
- Integrates with ecommerce marketplaces such as Doba, Ebay and 150 other applications.
- Loyalty marketing and ability to offer discounts, coupons, gift cards etc
- Google Analytics integration
- Easy import from Excel and other platforms - BigCommerce supports importing tens of thousands of products at once – either from another platform or for bulk editing.
- Integration with Paypal, Google checkout etc and other 60+ payment options.
- Chat Client Integration - oLark is a chat application that takes just a few clicks to integrate into your BigCommerce store.
- SSL support and RSS feeds
- Dropshipping via Ordoro - It’s easy to integrate BigCommerce orders with your favorite dropshipping provider thanks to the integration with Ordoro.
- BigCommerce is only one of the few ecommerce packages that has included social media - Integration with Facebook, such that any of facebook fans or friends can purchase from your ecommerce shop online. The application is called Social shop. This is a huge advantage for any ecommerce marketer.
#3- Volusion
Volusion.com is #3 shopping cart website builder software site that offers a 14 day trial period and seems to be pretty comprehensive in their support.
Features are as follows
- Shopping Cart and payment integration checkout with paypal and google checkout
- Shipping-UPS integration
- Inventory count
- Quickbooks integration is a wonderful way to tie up with your existing accounting package.
- Volusion support is great
It allows for the following - Large scale product volume support - Product Promotion - Cross-selling ,Gift certificates, Affiliate Programs - Paypal processing and links to shipping affiliates - Uploads product data and imports a product database
Here is the brief comparison between bigcommerce vs volusion-
1) Volusion uses templates to customize the stores which make it a pain to manage or change the template.
2) Volusion cannot be customized using HTML and CSS, which is the standard way of editing websites unlike Bigcommerce which supports editing HTML.
3) Pricing of Bigcommerce is definitely better starting at $24.95 vs Volusion that starts at $29.95.
4) Volusion support seems to be slightly better than Bigcommerce. Both offer live chat features 24/7.
#4 -
Yahoo Merchant Solutions - Great Ecommerce website hosting provider
Another ecommerce software solution of Yahoo is called Yahoo Merchant solutions, though not free ($25.97/month - starting price), is a very respectable program. Yahoo Merchant ecommerce solutions include their hosting and merchant solutions designed for internet merchants. It may be businesses of varying sizes from those who are just starting out and have negligible sales to those who have over $700,000 in sales.
Yahoo Store has potential to grow your online business rapidly and also have advantage to sell your products in Yahoo Shopping. Yahoo is a proven leader in online e-commerce, hosting 1 in 8 online stores.You can add up to 50,000 products to your online store irrespective of which Yahoo plan you opt for.
When comparing Shopify vs Yahoo Stores it is notable that Yahoo stores have better tracking tools than Shopify. The tracking system of Yahoo stores enables it to create different reports and analysis that allow the business owner to understand their exact location. On the other hand Shopify offers basic reports which could be of assistance to the small scale customers. In case one would want a better tracking of the business progress, it is better to use Yahoo stores.
#5 - CoreCommerce
CoreCommerce is one fast growing ecommerce providers that is reviewed with loads of functionality that rival the top contenders. It has a 93% customer satisfaction rating. CoreCommerce v7.8 , the latest version of ecommerce software has awesome features such as a new logo design tool, matching price feature and more easy-to-use features designed to put Fortune 500-style functionality in the hands of small business merchants. Core Commerce is a scalable system that can be distributed that provides high availability and load balanced configurations.
It also has features like
- Shipping provider integration
- Facebook integration
- Ebay integration
- Quickbooks integration
- SEO integration.
This is definitely a serious player in this industry. Check the site for more details and a demo trial offer.
#6 - ProStores
Another ecommerce website builder review is of ProStores, which is an Ebay owned company. ProStores rich feature set ranges from simple wizard-driven Website and e-commerce capabilities to sophisticated site design tools, advanced e-commerce functionality and high-end e-business management. ProStores' design templates aren't exciting, but they do the job. ProStores Plug-ins are code snippets that can be added to a ProStores store to provide additional features and functionality.
Prostores Business is the ideal customizable e-commerce solution for small businesses that are perhaps just getting started as an online merchant or store. ProStores® is completely automated with the Shipwire Store-Sell-Ship™ Platform. ProStores Business also offers UPS and FedEx shipping compatibility as well as sophisticated tax calculations. ProStores Business also offers integration for your accounting software. ProStores Business understands many people have websites already; for these customers, they offer a tool that lets you build onto the website you already have. ProStores Business understands many people have websites already; for these customers, they offer a tool that lets you build onto the website you already have. These features will compare ProStores vs Volusion and Prostores vs yahoo.
- Easy-to-use Design Templates
- Logo Generator
- Customize Basic Design Settings
- Theme builder and HTML design editor
- Advanced Customization
- Merchandising
- Shopping Cart Cross-Sell/Upsell Merchandising
- Run Promotions
- Coupon Codes
- Member Promotions and Merchandising Programs
- Related Products Merchandising Yes Yes
- Downloadable Products
- Integration With eBay
- Free Shopping Site Submission of your product catalog to Google Base™, thefind.com, and - Nextag.
- Managed Shopping Site Feeds
- Manage catalog feeds to shopping search engines including Yahoo!® Shopping ™, Shopping.com®, Shopzilla ™ and Google Base ™.
- Search Engine Optimization
#7 - Eshops from 1and1
Recently a user highlighted to me about the eShop package from 1and1.com and I decided to review this further. 1&1 eShops comes in three flavors: Business, Professional and Developer, which is priced from $9.99 to $49.99 a month. The main distinguishing factor between the three package is the web space and transfer bandwidth..
The main advantage of this package is the,
Free webhosting for first 3 months. This is definitely a good deal and good time period to evaluate the software
However, the disadvantages of this package include,
a) Difficulty in usabilty of the website and the setup wizards. The setup wizards don't seem to be very user friendly and bulk product building is difficult.
b) The shipping setup seems to be cumbersome
c) Lack of help and FAQ
Read more of detailed review at: http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/article.php/3483381/Review-11s-eShop-Robust-But-Not-for-Newbies.htm?comment=34816-0
Custom Ecommerce Software Development
One the best custom ecommerce software development framework is provided by
#1 - AspDotNetStorefront
If you like developing custom ecommerce sites or plan to outsource this work, aspdotnetstorefront will give you the framework for developing such custom ecommerce sites. This is only recommended if you need special features which is not available in the commercial software builder sites out there, as shown above.
This allows you to build sites using asp.net. It boasts of the following features
a) AJAX support
b) Built-in SEO optimizer
c) Shipping support - Fedex, UPS and DHL
d) Accounting software integration and Paypal support
e) Mobile browser support
Obviously, it seems to lack Facebook support but I am sure future versions will address it.
Another hubpage I like is - Design Ecommerce website because provides 11 excellent tips on designing ecommerce websites or commercial websites and blogs.
Unranked Ecommerce Software Reviews
1) ShoppingCartElite.com (SFElite) - As suggested by one of the users and comments, I went ahead and looked at this ecommerce software. It seemed to have a lot of features that one would desire especially the export feature to Froogle. However it did not have any user forum supporting it.Also I did not see any social media integration with sites like Facebook.
Also I found a blog critiquing this software - http://groprojectscam.com/. Users might want to look at this before making their decision for purchase of this software.
2) Fortune3.com - Another user recommended me looking at this ecommerce software. So here is a review of Fortune 3.One of the good things about this software is Good integration with accounting software and supports multiple currencies. But I did not see any social media integration with sites like Facebook. Also it has a PC based wizard and not an online wizard, which means you cannot access it if you travel and need to make changes to the website for other computers. Also there is no integration with sites like Froogle.com or shopping.com.
Ecommerce Software Tips and Tricks
1) Google Wallet Checkout is a useful feature to consider when developing an ecommerce website. Google checkout is nowadays commonly used in android
2) Make your ecommerce website mobile compatible as more and more users are going mobile and making your store mobile compatible provides a big advantage over other stores.
3) Sell your products not only using your website but leverage the power of amazon, sears, ebay and other partner stores that can market your product for you. Sure, they will take part of the commission but it might be worth it.
List of E-Commerce Software Directory
Here is a list of ecommerce shopping cart vendors. This list provides a comprehensive directory, in case you would like to evaluate other ecommerce providers and give us your feedback.
- 3dCart
- AbleCommerce
- Auctiva
- AFCommerce
- Captures
- CardinalCommerce
- Cart2Buy
- Cart32
- CartManager
- ColdFusion
- ChannelAdvisor
- CS-Cart
- DesignCart
- DPD - Digital Product Delivery
- digiSHOP
- E-junkie
- Easy Store Creator
- eCartsoft
- Ecommerce Templates
- eCRATER
- FatFreeCart
- Flying Cart
- Globant
- GoECart
- iBuilder
- Infopia
- Kyozou
- LC E-Commerce Solutions LLC.
- LiteCommerce
- Magento Commerce
- Make-a-Store
- Marketworks
- Mercantec
- Miva Merchant
- NetSuite
- Network Solutions
- PayLoadz
- Pinnacle Cart
- ProductCart
- ShopSite
- ShopVisible
- SmartCart.com
- SpotMerchant
- SunShop
- Top Muffin
- UberCart
- Vendio
- X-Cart
- Zoovy
Other Ecommerce Vendors that provide ecommerce hosting and shopping cart solutions includes
- Prestashop
- OsCommerce
- NopCommerce (.NET based cart)
- Zen Cart
-OpenCart
- LemonStand ecommerce
Pay Per Sale Ecommerce Builder
Square Market is another ecommerce website builder tool that allows the businesses to setup an mobile ready online storefront and launch a quick store that supports online merchant payment and accepts credit cards. There is no monthly processing fee but users are charged 2.75% for each sale that is made. You need to make a decision whether to pay for each sale or have a monthly fixed fee would be good for your business.
How Should I Choose A Shopping Cart and Ecommerce Vendor? This Flow Chart will help -
Ecommerce Website Development
Custom Ecommerce Website Development is another option for ecommerce websites. Though is option is, more labor intensive, if you are looking to hire somebody or develop yourself, then for Ecommerce Website development, the best tool I recommend for this is:
ASPDotNetStoreFront - This tool allows for Complete C# or VB.NET shopping cart development using Asp.net 2.0 technology and SQL Server 2005. It can also use AJAX functionality for .NET pretty easily.
The store can be developed with pretty high sophistication with features that you decide are important for your ecommerce website.
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