The development of E-commerce Website has been around for quite long as more and more e-commerce websites are being launched everyday. However, is it worth developing an e-commerce site from scratch or is it better to use a ready-made or open-source script?
Developing an E-commerce System from scratch
It could be something very interesting to develop an e-commerce website from scratch. This will include creating the design, coding all the required features and testing if everything are running smoothly before using it on a live site. Such development will require a team of coders, designers and testers, several months of coding and testing. Even though going through all of the above, bugs are inevitable. Many will only be discovered while being used on a live site. Some of these bugs may not be as serious as other ones but the serious ones could negatively impact sales and even the reputation of the company. That is why many will prefer to go for an open-source e-commerce website script with all required features where no or very little customization work will be needed. This solution will also save you the lot of spending, time and investment for developing such a site from scratch having to pay the coders, designers, testers and other related expenses.
Developing your E-commerce Website using Open-source
As recommended by many developers and coders, using an already developed E-commerce website script is the best solution. Most of them already include all the required features needed to run a fully functional E-business site. Features like products’ categories, descriptions, prices, images, payment system, VAT, invoices etc… are already available and just need to be set up to be used.
E-commerce Website Development Prices
As already mentioned above, development from scratch is expensive and could vary from $1000 – $5000 or more depending on the complexity. Premium ready-made e-commerce scripts are also available from $250 – $2000 as each company set their own price for their products and services. The open-source scripts are free and even though free, they are extremely powerful and additional features could be developed and added. My recommendation regarding E-commerce website is to go for a reliable open-source system like osCommerce, VirtueMart, ZenCart, TomotaCart and many others.
Other Simple E-commerce Website Solution
Other simpler alternative are available where you don’t really need to be techie to set things up. Payment Companies like PayPal, AlertPay etc… offer e-commerce solution by simply adding some lines of code automatically generating by filling a form with your product details and pricing information through their websites and people can just click on an ‘order’ button on your website to be redirected for payment. However, in such solution, you are not the one hosting your e-commerce online business.
Now it’s up to you if you want to waste a lot of money to develop an e-commerce website from scratch!