Ultimate Guide to Developing an eCommerce Website using PHP

With technology and development working in tandem, the eCommerce business has grown immensely in the last decade or so. The rise in online sales has established the need of having an eCommerce platform as an indispensable phenomenon in the business world. How about capitalizing on the digital explosion and raking in big sales numbers that you have always dreamt of achieving? Your desire to have an eCommerce web platform will lead to one big question. 

How to make an eCommerce website? If you plan to learn a programming language, you can never learn too much. There are endless possibilities, endless ways of shaping up something unique and spectacular. Then comes the simplest but most intriguing question to the fore. Will this platform contribute directly and positively to your ability to generate revenue? 

While it is true that technology has a fluid nature, the fundamentals of good website development are constant. Investment in developers with solid core principles regardless of technology stack will always pay good dividends. In turn, any code created will be able to stand the fluid nature of the emerging tech. 

How to develop a PHP eCommerce Platform? 

In the last few years, the retail industry has seen the rise of PHP open-source eCommerce platforms. These platforms have made things easy for developers. Just point, click, drag, and there you are, your store is ready to see the daylight. There comes the pertinent question with a trailing one. How to make an eCommerce website in PHP? Then, are you confident about relying on the pre-built PHP eCommerce shopping carts? If yes, you’d be avoiding an excellent learning experience. It will be great learning if a discussion on “Scratch Development” occurs. 

A simplified chronological order will show you the path:

• Frame a well-defined scope.
• Create a project in a test or staging environment. 
• Search for a free e-commerce Bootstrap template in HTML. Such readymade templates look fantastic and are very simple to modify. This action will optimize the design efforts to a great extent. 
• Select a PHP-based MVC framework. These are in good numbers – be it Laravel, CodeIgniter, Zend, or CakePHP. 
• To begin with, create a MySQL database, and the basic pages like add product, add categories for administration and show product, search product, cart and index page for the front-end. These are just six pages which will be sufficient for a startup e-commerce store.
• Integrate PayPal or Stripe, or any other payment gateway of your preference. 
• Test the site on the staging server after uploading some test data. 
• Deploy the site on the live server and implement the UAT. 
• Optimize the website content for search engines optimization (SEO). SEO helps in making a website visible to the public. The typical SEO targets are page titles, image descriptions, URLs, and natural keywords. Social media could be another essential tool for website promotion and digital marketing for traffic and sales conversion.

There are a plethora of Open-Source PHP eCommerce platforms that you can browse through and select one that best suits your business needs. 

• Magento
• WooCommerce
• Bigcommerce
• Drupal
• Joomla
• Virtuemart
• Opencart
• Prestashop
• OsCommerce
• Zencart
• X-Cart

Benefits of Developing an eCommerce Website

The benefits of building an attractive, user-friendly, and fully functional eCommerce platform are many. Let’s understand a few.

• The World is Your Marketplace.

You will become an integral part of the world markets. No demographic limitations can stop you from selling your products and services in the market globally. 

• Meets the customers’ needs

There is nothing more significant and valuable than a satisfied and smiling customer. It is possible only when the eCommerce platform meets the customers’ needs.

• Enhanced Visibility

The best optimization techniques help to enhance your site’s visibility. Thus, maximum traffic is attracted, and conversions to your website also experience a sharp exponential growth.

• Complete information about Business Offerings

Prospective shoppers are offered all the necessary information about their products and services. Thus, their shopping experience turns pleasant. Accurate product information, specifications, and pictures reach them from the product gallery or catalog. Complete knowledge ensures that they have made the right selection. 

• No Time Constraints

There is no boundary for time. Having kept your webshop open all day, you can sell products and services around the clock with your solid web presence. Customers can search for what they require even when they are asleep. This feature allows you to coin money even when you are not awake. 

• User-Friendly Features

You can enjoy the user-friendly features like currency support, language, shopping cart, and calculator from the regular eCommerce platform offerings. The integration of a payment gateway and shipping facility makes it more fulfilling when the customers receive their orders safely and securely.

• Easy Inventory Management

Efficient management of orders, stocks, inventory, and even customer data complements the other eCommerce offerings. You, as an owner, are in complete control of your business. Your elevation in profits, expansion, and growth is exemplary.

• Beneficial To Any Business

An eCommerce website brings forth a World of benefits, regardless of your business type or offerings

Wrap Up

In the current environment, it is pretty challenging to allocate a specific budget for IT for its unpredictability. So, it is of paramount importance to know what you are building. There should be a well-defined, well-articulated, well-outlined eCommerce web development scope. You need to dedicate some budget to research and development to unveil this. That’s an area that companies usually ignore or show a blind eye to. 

Lack of R&D has steered many companies in the wrong direction. A well-documented scope will finally help you decide whether to take the custom way or the route to the open-source, ready-made PHP eCommerce platforms.

So, are you planning to build a high-performing PHP eCommerce website that integrates advanced functionalities? Reach out to experts like Capital Numbers. With a strong portfolio bearing clear testimony to our experience and skills, we at Capital Numbers can develop powerful PHP & Bootstrap webshops with scalability, dependability, and adaptability. We offer end-to-end solutions from design to development to maintenance and support for eCommerce platforms. For details, book a call with our experts today!