We focus on small business websites for ecommerce, rather than affiliate or ad income generating sites. Websites can be built badly or well. We look at one good option, a database-driven ecommerce website.
This page comes under the section E-Commerce and Small Business.
The database driving the website will be a products database, with pictures, sales copy and pricing details. The website would be a product catalog and can also serve as a sales outlet accessible from all over the world. Such a website brings all orders direct to headquarters, unlike physical sales outlets located at different locations.
Let us first set the context. Then it will be easier to understand the significance of database driven websites.
Websites consist of pages that you upload to the Web server. You can create a page about each product and then upload each to the server. Now, if you change any details about a product, such as price information, you have to edit the relevant product page and upload it again. Otherwise, your web pages will get out-of-date.
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There is also another relevant issue. The people who create web pages and upload them to the Web server are Web specialists. These specialists might not be aware of all the details about the products and prices. On the other hand, the persons familiar with products and prices are not likely to be able to create Web pages.
Now let us look at how these problems are solved by opting for database driven websites.
A database driven website takes its page information from a database, such as MySQL, and creates a webpage each time it is called for. The Web page creation is done automatically by a program, say, a PHP program.
So what happens is that the Web specialist writes programs that takes current data from the database and displays the Web pages. The Web specialist also makes it easy for non-Web specialists to work with the database and keep it updated.
The managers dealing with products and prices can now update the database when any changes in product or price information take place. This would be a simple task requiring no specialist Web page creation know-how.
This has two major consequences. First, while the Web specialist attends to web pages, the persons familiar with products attend to keeping product information updated. Second, the time required to maintain an updated website is dramatically reduced because updating the database is a comparatively simple task compared to editing Web pages.
The small business sales website does not simply display product and price information. It also has facilities to
These functionalities are provided by a piece of software called shopping cart software. The shopping cart software works with the database of product details, and also the payment mechanism we discuss next.
Letting customers pay online for their purchases also requires some advance preparation. Customers might pay by credit card, or using other options such as PayPal or Google Checkout. (They might also be given the option of paying "offline" by telephoning their credit card details.)
Providing online payment option is not difficult with PayPal and Google Checkout. You open an account with PayPal or Google Checkout, and use the facilities provided by them to let customers pay you.
However, if you wish to let customers pay by credit card, you would need a merchant account with a bank, and payment gateway. These are rather complex and comparatively expensive requirements. Alternatively, you can opt for a third party service provider who has the required merchant account/payment gateway facilities, and will let you open an account for accepting credit cards. However, this will push up transaction costs, as the service provider will charge a higher commission.
Just building a website with all the above facilities will not generate a flow of customers. You need to promote your small business website actively to bring it to the attention of prospective customers. You also need to include persuasive sales copy on the Web pages the the visitor sees. Website Promotion and sales copy are discussed in separate articles.
An effectively promoted website with up-to-date product and price details and persuasive sales copy can produce wonders for your small business.
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Together, PHP and MySQL form the most widely used open source database and scripting technologies on the Web today. As a budding Web developer, you need to learn and master PHP and MySQL. Build Your Own Database Driven Website Using PHP & MySQL is a hands-on guide to learning all the tools, principles, and techniques needed to build a fully functional database-driven Web site using PHP and MySQL.
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