A complex website having immense scope is generally a result of using multi-tier web applications. Generally, there are 3 tiers that are commonly used to ensure that a website is efficient and has all the features necessary to make it more scalable and extensible.

The three layers are:

• Presentation Tier
  
  This can also be called the User Interface of the website. When you access an ecommerce website through your browser, all that you see on the web page is a result of presentation tier. Let’s put it this way; whatever information that is available on the site including its catalog of products and services, right up to the shopping cycle that you see on the site, is a part of the presentation tier. Even if you wanted to; you won’t be able to see any behind the-scene processing.
  
  All that the source code will show is CSS, HTML, and JavaScript and in some cases you will be able to see Java Applets. But that’s it.
   
• Business Logic or Application Tier
  
  At the heart of your ecommerce site and its functioning would be the application tier. All your processes will be governed by this Tier. This layer contains all business logic, the business rules, as well as, the logic that governs the various functional processes. Your classes, source code, methodologies, properties, function, procedures etc will all be defined within their tier.
   
• Data Access Tier
  
  An ecommerce website is more about the exchange of data than anything else. This is the layer that stores all the data and helps simplify the access. One of the critical reasons why data is stored in another layer altogether is that various client modules can be developed with a high degree of conceptualization. What this layer helps does is that it allows you to keep the code that helps access your data store, separate from that of the presentation and the business logic code. You don’t have to rewrite the whole code if you want to make some data modification or update.

Benefit for your Ecommerce Site

Let’s not get too technical with the benefits, but the long and short of it is that it will help your ecommerce website perform better. More importantly, it makes the website scalable and helps you handle improved customer demand and rapid business growth.

Say your webpage needs to be made more sales oriented than it was earlier. Instead of rewriting the whole code, all you need to do is make the necessary changes to the presentation tier. The business and data tiers remain as is. This means faster modification and development, without the complexities of creating a new code. Likewise, if you want to make any changes to the business logic, it’s not going to affect the data or presentation tier.

When it comes to ecommerce, it’s of paramount importance that you are able to adapt to the changing needs of the market and the challenges posed to you by your competition. A multi-tier architecture of your website, keeps your site active even if there are some major changes taking place on your website.

Did you know 'Magneto' has now turned into a hero? Before you widen your eyes in disbelief, let me clarify. I am not talking about the X-Men villain. My focus of attention is the up and coming ecommerce platform of the same name.

It’s turning into a real here for small and enterprise businesses.

Knocking on the doors of Popularity

The future for Magneto looks very bright. It’s becoming the new buzzword amongst ecommerce website developers. In spite of, the availability of more popular ecommerce shopping cart platforms, Magneto is slowly but surely become the platform of choice for developers and businesses alike. The story of Magneto’s success can directly be linked to the success of the online businesses that are using this platform.

There is still a long way to go before it breaks the monopoly of some of the other open source shopping carts, but it’s getting there. Now, before you think, I am writing a promotional piece on Magneto, let me clarify that I just want businesses to make an informed decision while choosing Magneto or any other ecommerce solution.

Small Business Benefits

What are small businesses looking for, when it comes to an ecommerce platform? They are looking to make a mark with their products and services by harnessing the power of the World Wide Web. But, they don’t want to get caught up in its functional complexities.  Magneto offers a variety of modules, tools and widgets that ensure your business is run the way you want it to be run.

Here are a few Magneto features on offer that can help your business offer an improved shopping experience:

• Design that is category specific
• Customization of Search Results
• Professional Themes
• Choice of Shopping languages such as English, French, German etc
• Availability of store themes that are language specific
• An array of marketing and promotional offers

This is a very small sampling of the features on offer for small businesses. Choosing the features that best suit the requirements of your website, will help your business achieve the online success it’s looking for.

Enterprise Level Business Benefits

You need a powerful ecommerce platform to meet the demands and requirements of enterprise level online stores. Magneto’s robustness and a high degree of flexibility is the perfect choice in this regard. It offers online business merchants the scope of improving their sales and taking it to the next level. The eCommerce needs of large businesses are complex and only customization can offer a fruitful experience for both merchants and customers.

Magneto brings together the benefits of web enabled APIs, database and code-level access as well as, a choice of thousands of extensions that can help immeasurably in online store modification.

Magneto features for enterprise level businesses include:

• New Payment Gateways that promise enhanced security
• Gift Registry and gift options
• Order tracking every step of the way right from New to Complete
• Upgrading and downloading extensions with Magneto Connect
• Call Center Feature
• Enhanced sales and marketing through Customer Attribute Management

Again, these are just some of the many features developed by Magneto to improve the eCommerce experience of large businesses and their customers.

You must use it to your Advantage

In order to make the best use of Magneto, it’s important that specific features come together to make the ecommerce website better suited for accomplishing all business goals.  As a business, you need to take the help of Magneto experts for this purpose. It’s only expertise on the Magneto platform that can help you get the eCommerce experience that you are looking for. There are plenty of web design and development companies offering their services in this regard. Choose the company that best caters to your needs and requirements.

The security of an ecommerce hosting plan assumes tremendous significance because of the nature of the ecommerce website. It’s a website that is going facilitate online shopping and the sale of products and services. This means there is going to be an exchange of sensitive data in the form of credit card information, order notes, etc. If the hosting isn’t secure, there is a good chance of such data falling into the wrong hands.

So, what are the serious threats to ecommerce hosting? Identifying these threats will help develop a security measure that neutralizes the specific threat.

The Threat to Financial Information

People are going to buy products and services from the ecommerce website. In doing so, they are going to share their financial information with an ecommerce website. Such data exchange is constantly under threat. Hackers are constantly on the lookout for an ecommerce website that doesn’t have stringent security standards in place. Insecure hosting, more often than not, results in an attempt to access website data without requisite authorization.

The Malware Attack

Such attacks are a part and parcel of the life of every website. How often have you heard that a site has been a victim of a virus attack? The result is that the site needs to shut down for maintenance. In the case of an ecommerce website, this leads to tremendous loss of revenue.  This is one of those critical security threats that ecommerce website owners pray that they don’t have to face. For this reason, it’s important that the ecommerce hosting needs to be malware proof. It’s impossible to protect your website against all kinds of virus attacks, but what you could do is make it less susceptible.

The threat to Identity

An 'identity' is crucial when it comes to buying products and services on an ecommerce website. It includes personal information, interests and preferences and also detailed financial information. Every ecommerce website targets a specific audience and demands a set of information from that audience. At times, the demand is for a comprehensive set of information that creates an online identity for a particular person. If this identity is compromised, the unauthorized user can use the stolen identity for ‘n’ number of nefarious purposes.

The criticality of these threats cannot be pushed under the carpet. You ignore them at your own risk. If you want to offer your customers a successful ecommerce experience, it can only be possible with secure ecommerce hosting.

Small businesses were the first to realize the immense potential held by the World Wide Web for furthering their business growth. They realized that if they were to compete with the big players and within an increasingly saturated business domain, they had to break out from the clutter.  The first step was to develop an online presence in the form of a website. 

These days every small business has a website and there are plenty of small businesses who are not the traditional brick and mortal businesses. They only have an online presence and sell products and services through their website, which essentially is an ecommerce website. One of the vital components of such sites is the shopping cart. Now, one could go for custom shopping carts that are built from scratch or the other option is to use open source Ecommerce shopping carts.

If you are a small business, an open source option is always a better option. Here’s why:

It’s a budget solution

Let’s face it; if you want something developed right from scratch, it’s going to turn out to be expensive. But, if you already have a foundation in place and need to build around it, the costs go down. This is the advantage offered by open source ecommerce shopping carts. The modules are all ready in place and all one needs to do is customize the module to suit specific needs and requirements. This brings down the development cost appreciably.

For small businesses, this reduces the overheads and improves their bottom line. Money saved can be invested in other revenue generation activities.

Tremendous Scope of Improvement

The fact that it is open source means that there is plenty of improvement happening. Developers are churning out add-ons and widgets regularly. So, if you have an open source ecommerce shopping cart, you can make continuous improvements to it. Say, you come across a widget that you think is going to better the shopping experience for your customers. All you need to do is get it integrated within your existing site; and all this without modifying existing content and more importantly without shelling out a whole lot of money.

The fact that you can update your shopping cart regularly helps you keep pace with the changing demands of your business, its growth and also its customers.

To optimize the benefits of open source shopping carts you will need to work with the right kind of Open Source Ecommerce Shopping Cart Website Design and Development Company. This is the kind of company that will listen to what you have to say regarding your need and requirements and propose a solution, accordingly. The perfect company is one that can not only integrate such a shopping cart solution into an existing ecommerce website but can also develop a whole new open source shopping cart solution based on your intrinsic business goals.

Online businesses are facing stiff competition. It’s a buyer’s market out there, and sellers are trying to use many different ways and means to go one up over their competition. If you are an online business selling products on the World Wide Web or are thinking about the same, a shopping cart is definitely something that you want in your ecommerce website.

Now, there are plenty of ecommerce shopping carts available out there, and you will need to choose the right one that meets your requirements to the letter. The best option for you would be a shopping cart that is high end and customized to suit whatever needs and requirements you have.

The bottom line is that a custom ecommerce shopping cart will take your sales figures to a new high.

For better customer experience

Your customer is king. You must try everything and anything to improve his/her shopping experience. The best way to help make this possible is by integrating customized ecommerce shopping solutions in your website. You need to be well aware of what your prospective customer expects from your site and must cater to those requirements. Using an off-the-shelf ecommerce shopping cart might just not create the right impression in the minds of your customers.

To ensure you get the results you are looking for

So, what is the result you want from your ecommerce shopping carts – There is just one answer. You want to make a sale. Your ecommerce shopping cart must be persuasive enough to ensure that a customer buys your product. Some online businesses get it wrong by choosing assembly line shopping carts that don’t fit into the requirements of their site, but are forced to fit in their site. What this does is that it takes away the ‘persuasion’ element. It might also increase the completion time of the shopping cycle. All this, isn’t good news for your sales figures.

The integration of a custom ecommerce shopping cart ensures that you give the customers what they are looking for. You can customize the shopping cart to meet all your customer requirements. At the end of the day, all this is going to help improve your sales.