E-Commerce website development has been one of the fastest growing retail segments. It may seem obvious to anyone who has ever shopped online, but the size and speed of the boom was truly astounding. There are already hundreds of thousands of online stores around the world and by some estimates; sellers open new e-commerce windows every week.
The popularity of the online market is showing no signs of slowing down, so now might be the perfect time to start selling online. There are more options for building an ecommerce website than ever before. You can work with an e-commerce platform provider to build an online store, or you can let web professionals handle the design and development of your site from start to finish.
E-Commerce website development working with such services offers some convenience, but if you need additional flexibility and control, it is best to create your site yourself. With a little know-how and some easy-to-use tools, you can create an ecommerce site that looks and functions exactly the way you want it to better serve the needs of your customers and your business.
In this guide, you will learn what happens to creating your own e-commerce website, from choosing the right tools and services you will need to create your web pages, choosing the best hosting provider and a payment solution that's right for your business, to determine the best security for your site.
Choosing web design tools
Once you've developed your business plan and are ready to focus on your new online business, it's time to start building your ecommerce website. The first step is to choose the tools that you want to use to design and code your site.
You can start from scratch and code everything by hand, but this requires a good knowledge of HTM-L, PHP, MySQL, and other programming languages. To cut the learning curve, you can invest in web design software such as Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression Web. Depending on which version you buy, these programs can run anywhere from. If you don't have the budget to spend on software, there are also several free open source options to choose from, including While they may not offer all the difficult features that paid software does, these open source programs are still powerful and easy to use.
Everyone loves different web tools for different reasons, so it's hard to say which one will be the best program for you. However, there are some key elements that you should look for in any software. An easy-to-use interface is important, especially if you are less familiar with HTM-L and prefer to work with a application HTM-L editors allow you to design your site by clicking and dragging elements and inserting text and links just like in a word processing program. While you are developing your website, the editor will generate HTM-L code for you. Many of these editors will allow you to switch between visual layout and site code, giving you the flexibility to customize your HTM-L to see how it affects the page layout, and vice versa.
If your site is small and simple, HTM-L / CSS is fine. On the other hand, if the content or structure of your e-commerce site is going to change frequently, you might want to consider an open source content management system (CMS) like Joomla and Drupal. CMS is software that allows users to add new web pages or change content on existing pages - quickly and easily. With a CMS, you don't have to worry about coding new content into HTM-L, because the system does it for you.
