4 Tips for E-Commerce on Drupal

In order to compete in today’s fast-paced marketplace, businesses need to put some serious thought into moving from brick-and-mortar to an E-commerce storefront.Once a business is ready to pursue the sector of the online market,the next step is acquiring an E-commerce website.

One of the most state of the art open sourced, E-commerce solutions available is Drupal. This robust CMS platform was designed with flexibility in mind, enabling designers to be able to build and manage their site(s) intuitively.

There are several advantages to using Drupal to build an E-commerce store, such asit is highly scalable, has a secure and tested framework, advanced user management, thousands of available plug-ins and support.

Here are 4 tips for E-commerce on Drupal that will help in the development and launch of an e-Commerce store:

1. Get Familiar With The Tools
There are two E-commerce tools which can be used with Drupal to provide E-commerce functionality, Ubercart and e-Commerce. Business that are after an out-of-the-box solution that offers multiple payment methods, shopping cart and zero coding automated workflow should consider using Ubercart. The e-Commerce tool offers a more simplified system with components needed for e-commerce functionality. Note, the use of the e-commerce tool will involve a significant amount of development for programmers.

2. Avoid Modifying Modules
Tempting as it may seem to go flexing ones programming fingers to alter Drupal’s coding, it isn’t recommended. Altering coding should only be done once careful research has been done through Drupal’s technical documentation. Failure to follow the best practices for modifying modules could wreak havoc on modules.

3. Ensure E-Commerce Security
Security of an E-commerce site is essential in order to provide secure transmission of sensitive customer information. With the use of the secure pages module, along with SSL, configuring pages via the administration module enables the ability to safeguard all paths to an E-commerce website.

4. Testing
To ensure that the E-commerce store is ready to go without error it is important to test its functionality. Do a trial run by placing orders from beginning to end, noting any hiccups along the way.

These Tips for E-commerce on Drupal provide some insight on what to consider when setting up a CMS. Companies seeking further information can find other helpful tips via online video as well as informative forums.

Businesses interested in trying Drupal for their E-commerce needs can download it at http://www.drupalcommerce.org/download.