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.