Let's keep this simple. E-Commerce is obviously an easy way to increase the revenue of a current business or a way to sell a new product. But there are things that are commonly overlooked by people that can kill your dreams of E-Commerce from ever succeeding. Here is part one of a multi-part blog/guide to go through before you ever approach someone about E-Commerce.
Where do you start? Your base, your foundation, your platform, the software you are going to build everything on.
What platform is going to be best for you? You have many options:
You want a product that is open source from start to finish. There is no reason to think that open source is a bad thing at this point in time. Drupal for example is completely open source, but has strong community support and even a security team. Open source puts the power in your hands, if you want to you can walk away from any one developer and still have a product that can be developed, you are not tied to anyone shop. If you want to change the core of the code, you can, you have the right to take this product and change anything you see fit. I recommend picking a project that has ways for you to do this, without changing the core code, but its your options and thats the main point. You have the power to do with it what you will and need.
Open source products are built by the community. You want a strong community without this, you get no growth or development.
Let's take Drupal again as the example. There is huge commercial and government support behind Drupal. These governments and companies then turn around and pass their high level developed code back to the community. The United States White House website is a perfect example of this. Being built on Drupal, they spent a good amount of time in development on security and then passing this back to the community.
Most likely nothing is perfect for you out of the box. Your product will most likely have something that sets it self apart and the site might need to adjust for this. These products that you are looking at are trying to hit the needs of the masses. This is where custom development comes in. You want to look for a product that allows custom development to easily be added and contributed.
Now, this is a hard conflict for some people. You spend hard earned money and lots of time planing and then you are asked by the development company to submit your development back to the community. Let's put some perspective on this. You take something like Drupal, then add Ubercart to it, and leverage a bunch of community contributed modules, and out of the box you have saved thousands of hours of development costs. The goal of the open source community is that we want to keep this ball rolling, if things go well for you, you will want to grow your site, you give back, and people will leverage what you did and then give back to you! People will take what you give back and make it better, they will test it, they will find bugs and security holes and all of the sudden, you have received hundreds of hours of free development and new feature releases for free. This all happens because you give back. Most development shops will give you some kind of discount or sponsor listing for such development but in the end, if you are growing your site, then you will gain from the user base giving back to you after you give to them.
Be careful of the bait and switch products. There are products that claim Open Source where they have a lightweight version of their real product that is “Open Source” that leads into an Enterprise version. I would tell you to be very cautions of these types of products. The community will be very commercially, the product will be completely geared to keep you wanting more so that you switch to the paid model. I would say a good example of something like this is Magento http://www.magentocommerce.com/product/compare . Open Source to a point, and their goal is to get you to that point and switch you to their 12K USD or 45K USD paid version a year. Let's just be simple and say that out of the box, you don't and should not do that.
Online Malls are great and bad. It really depends on your product. You going with an online mall will put yourself in an instant traffic place wich is good, but you will also be putting yourself in direct connection with competitors, bad. If your idea is unique, but not hard to duplicate, you will be notifying your competitors right away of a good idea. If your price is not the lowest, but your services is high, most likely this type of environment can be bad. Good thing is the startup cost is very low, bad news is the cost is always there. You don't have to build the platform, you also don't own the platform. The mall can change settings at anytime and you have to adjust. If the mall goes under, so do you. I don't think Malls are bad, but I don't believe this should be your main area of E-Commerce unless your product really sells well in this type of environment. I see online malls as a complementary aspect of your E-Commerce presence on the web.
Auction sites can be great. They can be a great place to start. The only bad thing about this is the same as with online malls. Direct competition, you don't own it, you are always at the mercy of the auction site. This too I see as a complementary aspect to your E-Commerce presence.
Go open source and go with something solid. We recommend Drupal with Ubercart or with Drupal Commerce depending on the version of Drupal you go with. But no matter what you decide for your platform make sure you check into the platform as this is what you are building your future on, you want to do this portion right the first time.
Where do you start? Your base, your foundation, your platform, the software you are going to build everything on.
Platform:
What platform is going to be best for you? You have many options:
- Stand-alone E-Commerce Site
- Online Mall
- Auction Sites
- Fully Open Source
- Strong Community
- Strong Commercial Backing and Support
- Nothing is Perfect, Easy to Add Custom Solutions
- Fully Open Source
- Strong Community
- Strong Commercial Backing and Support
- Nothing is Perfect, Easy to Add Custom Solutions
Fully Open Source:
You want a product that is open source from start to finish. There is no reason to think that open source is a bad thing at this point in time. Drupal for example is completely open source, but has strong community support and even a security team. Open source puts the power in your hands, if you want to you can walk away from any one developer and still have a product that can be developed, you are not tied to anyone shop. If you want to change the core of the code, you can, you have the right to take this product and change anything you see fit. I recommend picking a project that has ways for you to do this, without changing the core code, but its your options and thats the main point. You have the power to do with it what you will and need.
Strong Community:
Open source products are built by the community. You want a strong community without this, you get no growth or development.
Strong Commercial Backing and Support:
Let's take Drupal again as the example. There is huge commercial and government support behind Drupal. These governments and companies then turn around and pass their high level developed code back to the community. The United States White House website is a perfect example of this. Being built on Drupal, they spent a good amount of time in development on security and then passing this back to the community.
Nothing is Perfect, Easy to Add Custom Solutions:
Most likely nothing is perfect for you out of the box. Your product will most likely have something that sets it self apart and the site might need to adjust for this. These products that you are looking at are trying to hit the needs of the masses. This is where custom development comes in. You want to look for a product that allows custom development to easily be added and contributed.
Open Source Gives Back:
Now, this is a hard conflict for some people. You spend hard earned money and lots of time planing and then you are asked by the development company to submit your development back to the community. Let's put some perspective on this. You take something like Drupal, then add Ubercart to it, and leverage a bunch of community contributed modules, and out of the box you have saved thousands of hours of development costs. The goal of the open source community is that we want to keep this ball rolling, if things go well for you, you will want to grow your site, you give back, and people will leverage what you did and then give back to you! People will take what you give back and make it better, they will test it, they will find bugs and security holes and all of the sudden, you have received hundreds of hours of free development and new feature releases for free. This all happens because you give back. Most development shops will give you some kind of discount or sponsor listing for such development but in the end, if you are growing your site, then you will gain from the user base giving back to you after you give to them.
Bait and Switch, Open Source to a point:
Be careful of the bait and switch products. There are products that claim Open Source where they have a lightweight version of their real product that is “Open Source” that leads into an Enterprise version. I would tell you to be very cautions of these types of products. The community will be very commercially, the product will be completely geared to keep you wanting more so that you switch to the paid model. I would say a good example of something like this is Magento http://www.magentocommerce.com/product/compare . Open Source to a point, and their goal is to get you to that point and switch you to their 12K USD or 45K USD paid version a year. Let's just be simple and say that out of the box, you don't and should not do that.
Online Malls:
Online Malls are great and bad. It really depends on your product. You going with an online mall will put yourself in an instant traffic place wich is good, but you will also be putting yourself in direct connection with competitors, bad. If your idea is unique, but not hard to duplicate, you will be notifying your competitors right away of a good idea. If your price is not the lowest, but your services is high, most likely this type of environment can be bad. Good thing is the startup cost is very low, bad news is the cost is always there. You don't have to build the platform, you also don't own the platform. The mall can change settings at anytime and you have to adjust. If the mall goes under, so do you. I don't think Malls are bad, but I don't believe this should be your main area of E-Commerce unless your product really sells well in this type of environment. I see online malls as a complementary aspect of your E-Commerce presence on the web.
Auction Sites:
Auction sites can be great. They can be a great place to start. The only bad thing about this is the same as with online malls. Direct competition, you don't own it, you are always at the mercy of the auction site. This too I see as a complementary aspect to your E-Commerce presence.
Conclusion:
Go open source and go with something solid. We recommend Drupal with Ubercart or with Drupal Commerce depending on the version of Drupal you go with. But no matter what you decide for your platform make sure you check into the platform as this is what you are building your future on, you want to do this portion right the first time.
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