The market is swarming with e-commerce sites. The reason behind this is the growing demand for shopping on-line, when one is on the go and has little time to visit the physical stores to hunt for their shopping needs. An ultra-busy shopper would rather pick up a thing over the internet and have it delivered at his doorstep. This modern mentality gives a heavy boost to the e-commerce market.

While considering the different PHP open source options for ecommerce development, many businesses turn to options such as Zen Cart or Magento. It is true that these dedicated platforms have matured to offer everything that is required to build out a full suite of commercial requirements. However, Drupal still has an advantage over the others, as it provides a distinct benefit in terms of its backend CMS and flexibility.

Modern retailers keenly look to expand their sites beyond direct commerce to increase traffic, provide heartier user experience, and build more content rich sites. Thus, for the developers who are looking for an e-commerce solution that scales, Drupal provides a perfect choice.

As compared against the other shopping carts, Drupal is more search friendly, easier to secure, flexible and it integrates very well with a variety of open source libraries. As Drupal is a fully open source system, you aren’t locked down to a set of hosting solutions and users are able to access a wide variety of commercial tools and software. On top of this, many common carts such as Os Commerce, Uber Cart and Zen Cart feature integration with Drupal so you can run the e-commerce engine natively or as part of the larger app.

Drupal- advantage for Commercial Sites

Drupal core offers a flexible structure which is perfect for e-Commerce development. With Drupal’s flexible nodes, you can easily create a content class for products in addition to posts and pages, such as adding custom fields for popular product attributes like weights, SKUs, prices and colors. This means that you can actually build out a complete e-Commerce engine for almost every industry or retail type.  Though, many developers like to use a dedicated commercial engine linked to a CMS, there are actually a lot of advantages of using a single backend to manage both the content and the checkouts.

The present-day retail is driven by social media and content as much as by the actual shopping cart. Drupal provides a development library so you can integrate a complete set of modules and features into your e-commerce engine. Its extensive library of custom fields makes calculations much easier while connecting with your existing user database so you can build out a newsletter or shopping preferences. Taking a lesson from the major companies, the site can allow you to build out a social community with a focus on commerce.

Ubercart, Drupal’s most popular commercial solution connects to Drupal natively. This module allows you to fully leverage the site’s security, database and content management features while hooking into a complete e-Commerce engine. A lot of blue chip companies are using this amazing combination for development including the Warner Brothers and a different other renowned media companies.

A fully functional developer community continues to issue new releases, features, patches and compatibility. This results in the cart to be fully compatible with a wide range of solutions including most SSL certificates and payment gateways. Moreover, Ubercart benefits from a combination of commercial developers focusing on its premium versions and support, which enhances the solution constantly to improve its technological and user friendly features.

Drupal thus, still rules when it comes to choosing a platform for e-commerce development. Drupal is truly the all-in-one solution that can take care of all of your business requirements.

Valuebound is a leading Drupal Development Company providing Enterprise Drupal web solutions. For more information on Drupal Development, contact us at info@valuebound.com