E-commerce Website Development - Open Source Customization and Solutions

By using an open source solution you don't have to reinvent the wheel and build everything from scratch and all these solutions can be customized to give your online store a unique look.

Magento has grown much faster than osCommerce during the past 2-3 years so it's reasonable to assume that Magento is a more popular choice among those with no prior experience of ecommerce website development, while there is a group who is sticking to osCommerce, probably because they are used to the system.

Magento

Magento is a modern ecommerce solution featuring with the following advantages:

Advantages:

• Table-free, div-tag-based design which is easy to modify and search engine friendly.
• Built on the model-view-controller (MVC) framework, Zend Framework, which provides clear separation between presentation layer and the logic (code).
• Supported by a company and not a non-profit organization. The company owning Magento is active in fixing bugs and supporting the shopping cart.
• The system is neatly designed and looks very modern.
• SEO friendly URLs from the get-go.
• Advanced features such as abandoned shopping cart reporting, shipping estimator without logging in, set up of multiple stores from one admin login and more.

Webshop - Changing Online Shopping Experiences

Ecommerce is taking the world of business by a storm. The way we conduct business, market and shop is all changing and going online. Reduced supply chains and value chains are adding to business's bottom line and top line, giving businesses the much-needed money for growth and expansion. World economies and customers are shopping online to save money and get a whole range of products and services at highly affordable prices. While, the whole concept of online shopping is still finding new and new admirers each day, this whole economy is greatly influenced, supported and promoted by the webshops.

When customers are shopping online, they have to be able to see product designs and lines to choose from, add to their list of liking and finally make a payment to complete the order. Webshops are nothing but a virtual shopping place for the users, where they can search for products, add them to their wish list or shopping carts, and proceed to make bill payments through secure billing desks. Webshops or shopping carts account for the customer's feedback and expectations and satisfaction when it comes to online shopping.

Magento Re-Platforming Specification

If you want your e-commerce business to succeed today, you need to offer your prospective clients the best shopping experience. Therefore, migrating your existing store to Magento platform makes sense as this will help you increase the level of customer satisfaction. However, migration itself is a complicated process, as there is a lot of data to be transferred and some of the features will need to be developed along the way.

Plan Your Magento Re-Platforming Project

Start with assessing your current store and listing all the features it has. Please note that some of the development on your current website may not be compatible with the Magento platform. To solve this problem you may need some custom development to create Magento-based solution from your current code. In this case, the functionality of the solution will remain the same.

Next, study the list of all the features offered by Magento and list all of the features you would like to be integrated in your new Magento store. Take careful notes to ensure you don't forget anything important.

Now that you know what you currently have and what you want to have, you can move on to creating a re-platforming plan and checklist. The former is necessary to organize the process and help it go smoothly, and the checklist will ensure you don't forget any important feature or data during the transfer.