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How to build an ecommerce or complex database driven online business
This purpose of this article is to serve as a very basic introduction to web development. Unfortunately as a consumer, and in this case a consumer would be a business owner, right now building an online business is often anything but a transparent experience. When I refer to online business I am really referring to any complex database driven website, this could be an ecommerce site, dating website, job postings site etc.
I have read a few articles like this on the Internet and the tone of many suggest that all agencies are a bit of a rip off and that you can set up an ecommerce store for £500. Well you can set up an ecommerce store for £500, which will constitute a good solution for a certain sector of businesses. This type of business is often the type of business for which a websites serves primarily as transactional tool and little more. However for any serious online business a website needs to serve not only as a transactional tool, but also as marketing tool which converts customers, builds loyalty and gives you a platform that can grow, evolve and react with your business.
If your business is more the latter you will need to be prepared to invest... "How much?" is really an arbitrary question. That's the same as saying how much is a car? It will depend on your needs... it might be that a small Fiat will get you from A to B and serve your needs perfectly, but for guy who's got a wife, 3 kids and 2 dogs... it's probably not going to work. The difference however when buying a car is that most of us have a reasonable idea of our needs and are able to make a pretty informed decision based on these needs and the car options that we are presented with... Sadly with web development many people just don't understand their needs or the solutions that they are buying.
The truth is there are still a lot of cowboys in the web development industry, but there are also a large number of talented, educated and well informed developers. Both however still often supply businesses with the wrong solutions and at the wrong price. The only way to avoid this as a consumer is to understand exactly what it is you're paying for...
What are you paying for? Well... Every Online Business (ecommerce, dating, job posting - database driven site) consist of essentially two parts.
1. The "Back end" or database.
2. The "Front End"
In the case of an ecommerce site, the back end refers to the part of the site which stores product and transacts payment.
The front end is the part of the site which is rendered "client side" in the users browser. The front end is built using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. HTML and CSS are essentially just a way of arranging images and formatting text. JavaScripting is used to do the clever bits on the front end like moving and sliding parts of a web page. It can also be used to make calculations and make decisions. Recently I used JavaScript to render an "invoice page" one of two ways depending on the outstanding vlaue of the invoice. If an invoice was paid (ie. the outstanding value was = 0) I rendered the site with a green theme and printed the text "Payment received with thanks", but if the value was over 0 ie. the invoice was not settled, I rendered the page with a red theme, printed the text "Outstanding Invoice" and displayed a credit card form to pay the invoice.
This means that any web development job (building an online business) consists of essentially 3 parts.
1. Building the back end.
2. Building the front end.
3. Integrating the two.
If you are building an ecommerce site there are very very few cases indeed where you could justify building a back end from scratch. When I started out in ecommerce 10 years ago it was common place to build your own proprietary piece of software, but now unless you are Amazon.com it's as crazy as saying "I've got money coming in and out of my business... so I'm going to build an accountancy package". You just wouldn't do it, because 1. It's so complex, but 2. It's been done properly so many times before by people like Sage, SAP, Netsuite etc. etc. who have invested so much more money that you could dream of investing and they offer a solution to you at an accessible price with support. Ecommerce is now no different, there are now many excellent pre-written platforms. If you are looking for an ecommerce site, whether you are a small start up or a multi-million pound business, and it's suggested to you by an agency that they build a custom piece of software... Walk away, this agency is either over charging you by placing you on a pre-written platform and charging you development costs for a build that they haven't done or they are completely deluded or incompetent... non of which are desirable qualities in an agency responsible for delivering your online business.
Building the front end. There are 2 parts to the front end. First you will need a design produced by a graphic designer. This design then needs then to be reproduced in CSS and HTML markup using JavaScript for any clever bits you want. What's really important to note at this point is that until these two parts (the front end & back end) have been integrated they are two completely separate parts and broadly speaking any front end can be implemented with any back end and any back end with any front end. This means that as long as you have invested in getting good quality front end code produced, if you choose a platform which proves inadequate down the line, assuming you're happy with the design of the site you can take the front end and just integrate it on to another platform (back end), meaning the work on your first site is not entirely wasted, which is another good reason not to write your own back end, because if you've built it yourself and it doesn't work as you wanted you've either got to reinvest in a flawed system or waste all the the money invested in the system (if you are currently in this situation... walk away it will only get worse and the reality is the money you spend trying to patch holes and make fixes is probably comparable to what you would need to spend getting a new working system up and running).
This is how I would go about producing a site;
Start by sourcing a platform (back end). If it's for ecommerce search for "ecommerce platform", there are many different platforms available. Read reviews, look at other sites produced using this system and draw parallels where posible with what you are looking to achieve. Make sure it's not a template based platform make sure that you or your designer has full creative control over the front end. There are pre-written platforms for all types of online businesses. Even if your idea is a bit novel and needs a custom web app produced there are platforms on to which you can build these custom web apps which will drastically reduce development costs.
I would advise looking for a hosted solution. This gives you one less thing to worry about. Getting hosting right can be very difficult. Many businesses either pay over the odds to build in redundancy for when their site receives a peak of traffic or run the risk of their site crashing when they're featured in a bit of editorial. Many hosted solutions let you pay for bandwidth as you use it so your site is always up, but you only pay for what you use.
Once you've decided upon a platform contact the company or platform distributor and ask them whether they have a list of approved developers. It's good practice if possible to get a few so that you can compare their work and quotes. At this point map out with the developer what pages you need to produce for the site and if possible get them to quote you on a per page basis so that you know exactly what it is you're paying for. If the developer you are using offers graphic design services and you are you are happy with their style then let them quote for the whole job. If however you don't like their design work or have a designer in mind there is no reason why you can't get your designer to do the graphic design work and then hand the project over to the developer.
By managing the project like this yourself you may be able to save some money, but the important thing really is that you understand the process and exactly what it is you're paying for. As long as you understand this it might be worth letting either your developer of designer manage the process, it will cost you slightly more, but it's a stress free way of working and by the time you've managed the project yourself you've wasted the same amount of money in your time.
iShopAdmin is an ecommerce and online business platform onto which you can build any database driven website. Click here for more details.
iShopDeveloper offers development and integration services. iShopDeveloper works primarily with designers and design agencies. Click here for more details.
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