Ecommerce – online stores – shopping cart systems, are all terms that refer to direct selling with a credit card enabled online display of products or services.

There is a massive movement toward online sales and away from High Street shopping in many market areas. Some types of business have already become almost entirely Internet based, such as insurance of many kinds. The advantages are so many and varied that a list would take an entire page; the disadvantages are fewer and tend to apply in specific areas where online sales will never compete. It is tempting to start listing these exemptions, with fruit & veg for example; but then supermarkets have even started trading online now, so even these types of goods are not exempt.

There are some clear divisions between the types of applications available; the classes of products that are sold; and the types of seller.

Products can physically exist and be shipped to the purchaser; or are services; or consist of digital and information products that can be downloaded. Sellers can be divided into B2C and B2B traders: that is, businesses selling to customers, i.e. end users, or to other businesses.

Applications - the server-based website software that displays and sells the products - can be bought or leased, and are also available free. Free applications are normally ‘open-source software’, or OSS, which are projects run by a community of developers. They build these programs for a hobby, or earn a living by customising them for people who need specific tasks enabled.

It is important to realise several points about any web-based application:

All programs, however well established, however expensive, have faults and room for improvement. Therefore, there is no disgrace in an application being described as a ‘project’. All properly developed applications (software, programs, apps) are projects, since they are all (or should be) undergoing continual improvement.

Good support, in all its forms, is vital. Web applications are now so complex that full backup is required in every area.

An excellent clue to the quality of an application, and its support, is the support forum. Go there first, before anything else.

Open-source web applications are often equal in every way, or are even sometimes better, than commercial rivals. This is because the best brains in the world can work on them. In fact the Internet is based on them, since the Linux operating system and Apache server (both OSS) account for the majority of servers.

An online store system may be free or cheap, but other costs tend to be the larger factor anyway, such as development and implementation. Even where expensive commercial solutions are used, the software cost is not necessarily the major element in a very large and custom-designed project.

An excellent trading model is to lease a good commercial application, on a server at a first-rate hosting company who specialise in that type of software. Commercial applications that have a solid history are a good bet, because there is one source of support, and generally a reasonable user community.The site hosts can be a critical factor here.

On the other hand, if reliable direct support is available to the user, OSS can be an economical alternative. Remote support in this field is based on community resources, which can be comprehensive if the application is popular enough. These types of support certainly require an expert to make use of.

On the next page (see the menu link on the left navbar) we look at all those questions you need to ask potential suppliers first.