Veedesign – All Things Internet

Ecommerce continues to grow rapidly with nearly 20% of all spending now done online. This is projected to increase significantly with exponential growth expected over the coming years. “Bricks and mortar” establishments are now realising that it is not just sensible but critical to extend their reach by developing online shipping solutions to compliment traditional sales avenues.

Veedesign specialise in the development and ongoing management of online ecommerce solutions in Derby and the East Midlands for a wide variety of local businesses, small and large.

As with all internet technologies, there are a number of options you can use to get your business trading online – we will review some of the popular ones here:

Full ecommerce solution:

This is essentially a piece of software written to handle all aspects of online trading, from organising and managing a catalogue of products, displaying them on the web with a suitable shopping cart through to the administration of customers and orders through a secure administration facility. Typically this software is bespoked by your web designer to match your business identity and resides on a server managed by your isp, web designer or hosting partner. Many different ecommerce platforms exist and we will review a couple of them here:

JShop Server– JShop is a professional commercial solution which is very highly functional and rapidly becoming the solution of choice by many companies who trade online. Unlike some solutions it is not free but for a few hundred pounds you can purchase one of the best ecommerce solutions available. JShop is highly customisable, easy to use, very search engine friendly and supported by a team of professional developers. JShop is our preferred solution and comes highly recommended.

Oscommerce – this is a very popular free cart but its development has stalled somewhat in the last couple of years. It is not so easy to customise as JShop and although it has many users who contribute through an active internet forum, support is ad hoc. We no longer recommend Oscommerce as a sustainable ecommerce platform.

Zen Cart – this is an Oscommerce off-shoot or “fork” and consequently has many similarities (and also weaknesses) to Oscommerce. Some suggest that the Zen Cart development project still has momentum but we would not recommend it for anything other than hobbyists.

Magento – another free cart and quite promising. However, the jury is still out on this solution as it is a relative newcomer and some report instabilities in the production environment. One to watch for the future.

Actinic – this cart has had many ups and downs over the years and allegedly almost disappeared due to financial problems a few years ago. However, it has recently been redeveloped and now supports a large number of online traders both large and small. Unlike the other carts we mentioned, Actinic requires software to be installed on your home PC to create product categories and product pages – these are then uploaded as static pages to your web hosting server. This is a viable solution but we consider it to be “clunky” and hence do not recommend it.

Paypal:

For simple online selling it is possible to add Paypal buttons to your website which allows users to purchase items from you. This is a very simple solution and does not provide any administration facility for customers or orders. Paypal is an option but somewhat rudimentary and perhaps only suited to small scale selling from a hobby website.

Ebay store:

It is also possible to sell your products through an Ebay store – this is typically quite restrictive and also difficult to customise if you need your storefront to be in keeping with the rest of your business.

Summary:

There are a number of ways to begin trading online – a few of the more popular options are summarised above. For a long term, sustainable and scalable solution, our recommended ecommerce platform is JShop Server. We specialise in customising JShop to match your existing brand and business identity. For not much over a thousand pounds, we can develop an online ecommerce store for you and help you manage and maintain it as your business grows.

Please contact us for a no obligation quotation for an ecommerce store. Veedesign has developed many successful ecommerce stores for Derby businesses – please check our portfolio for more information.