What features to be included into an e-commerce system?

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heinrich.rostock
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What features to be included into an e-commerce system?

Post by heinrich.rostock »

Hi,

we are planning to buid an e-commerce system in php. We will not ship the products but offer them as download.
What, in your opinion, are the technical must-haves of such a project? (databases, php modules, server ...).
Links and other resources are likely seen, too!

Thanks very much for your suggestions and tips ;9
best, heinrich
alex.barylski
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Re: What features to be included into an e-commerce system?

Post by alex.barylski »

Just use Magento or osCommerce or OpenCart
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Darhazer
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Re: What features to be included into an e-commerce system?

Post by Darhazer »

Are you going to build it for yourself / your store / your organization or it will be distributed / sell to other stores?
In the first case, your needs define what features should be included in the e-commerce system. If you sell only downloadable products, you can limit the number of features, but some times it's great to have real products (printed copy of ebook, CD with the mp3s, etc.).

Marketing tools, such various kind of discounts (including pay 3 mp3s of the same artist, download 5 for examples) are the most important for the store.

You can check the features list of the mainstream shopping carts, both free and paid ones.
josh
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Re: What features to be included into an e-commerce system?

Post by josh »

If you can't clarify what you need, that is, if you can't write the spec... you're going to have an uphill battle programming it. Almost every design starts with identifying the entities at play, for e.g. are you modeling products and their prices? Are you modeling a complex or unique price structure, etc...
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