Ecommerce Website Development
Electronic Commerce is exactly analogous to a marketplace on the Internet. Electronic Commerce (also referred to as EC, e-commerce eCommerce or ecommerce) consists primarily of the distributing, buying, selling, marketing and servicing of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. The information technology industry might see it as an electronic business application aimed at commercial transactions; in this context, it can involve electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, e-marketing, online marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), automated inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. Electronic commerce typically uses electronic communications technology of the World Wide Web, at some point in the transaction's lifecycle, although of course electronic commerce frequently depends on computer technologies other than the World Wide Web, such as databases, and e-mail, and on other non-computer technologies, such as transportation for physical goods sold via e-commerce.E-Commerce according to Person Halls book E-Commerce started in 1994 with the first banner ad being placed on a website.
According to the October 2006 Forrester Research report entitled, "US eCommerce: Five-Year Forecast And Data Overview, "Nontravel online retail revenues will top the quarter-trillion-dollar mark by 2011. The driver of this growth? A segment of the most active Web shopping households that is approximately 8 million strong. This group of consumers is extremely comfortable with technology and values convenience above all else in the online retail experience. As retailers begin to wade through their copious data warehouses and understand the who, what, when, where, why, and how of this segment, they will benefit from targeting these customers."[1]
CRE Loaded is an open source online store management and shopping cart system for e-commerce from Chain Reaction Ecommerce. It is based on osCommerce and runs on LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) web environment. CRE Loaded has an aggressive release schedule, numerous industry partnerships and an active international community of users and developers that help support its growing customer base.
The Standard version of CRE Loaded is available for a small fee. The Pro and Pro B2B versions with expanded feature sets and support cost more.
CRE Loaded also maintains separate websites for Project Developers and for freelancers:
- CREForge is the Development center, where all of the CRE Loaded publicly available files and support tools are maintained. Developers can create projects for collaborative development using version control (CVS or Subversion), track issues and feature requests, and post their own files for use by the community.
- CRELance is a skills exchange website where freelance programmers, coders, and marketing specialists with expertise in CRE Loaded offer their skills on a freelance basis. Interested parties can browse freelancers or projects, or post projects on which freelancers make bids.
CRE Loaded also offers public creloaded support forums to aid the user and developer communities