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What Are The Options For Ecommerce Storefronts?

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What Are The Options For Ecommerce Storefronts?

E-commerce store fronts provide a framework for online businesses to display and transact goods and services. The e-commerce store front provides the functionality to add, edit and delete goods from the website. Depending on the nature of the solution, the store front may be a plug-in shopping cart or a custom solution.

A custom e-commerce online store is tailored to the business requirements of the site and is usually more expensive than a pre made solution. This is because the scope and development takes careful planning and labor resources to design code and implement. Custom solutions also need to consider the website architecture, platform and payment gateway protocols that the store front will need to interface with.

Usually custom e-commerce store solutions are for bigger e-commerce projects that have specific requirements for backend and front end integration. Online transactions that transfer funds directly into the sites bank account need to be rigidly tested for robustness and security considerations. Unless a small business has a considerable budget and the additional functionality of custom development can justify the cost, the organization is usually better off to use commercial grade shopping cart software that has been pre-made.

There is a plethora of pre made e-commerce store software that can be plugged into an existing site. Most hosting providers now provide the shopping cart software as a standard or add on feature to most hosting accounts. The software has already undergone extensive commercial testing for robustness and security. The software comes with ready-made templates for product display, a secure socket layer certificate, payment processor and merchant account. No knowledge of coding is necessary because the software takes the end-user through a series of wizard screens. During this stage you will need to provide a payment processor and business bank account. The software may have default settings that you can modify by following the instructions.

Another alternative to e-commerce storefront software is to use a service such as PayPal. This type of payment processing requires both the seller and the merchant to have an account. Money is shuffled from the purchasers account and deposited into the vendors account. The payment is conducted using PayPal's secure payment gateway.

The merchant can then transfer the funds directly into his/her bank account. The upside of this type of payment mechanism is that it is very cost-effective and simple to implement. Although it is accepted in a wide range of countries, some companies are excluded from using this service which means you can't transact with residents from countries that are not approved. The payment transfers to a local bank account are subject to prevailing market currency conversion rates.

E-commerce storefront solutions are now widely available and it is simply a matter of isolating your feature and budget requirements. Doing business online is become a necessity for all businesses as more and more people access the web and become comfortable with purchasing online. That's why a business should consider having an e-commerce storefront to cater to the growing market for online commerce.

WebX360 Inc. is a Southern California website design company. WebX360 offers a comprehensive menu of professional custom ecommerce web design services.

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