Ecommerce businesses have needs that many websites do not. Whether the site is a content management system (CMS) that has thousands of pages with advertising on them, or a shopping cart, or a member only site, the site will one day reach a level of success that forces the company to reconsider their platform.
Platform
A platform is the system the ecommerce business is built on. it could be something simple like a MS FrontPage generated static website. Or, It could be a Drupal content management system, with all the bells and whistles, including shopping cart, chat rooms, newsletters, and a podcast.
Many ecommerce businesses start with wizard or template generated sites. This type of short sited thinking can be extremely costly in the long run.
Every business should assume they will need a bigger platform. A small business may not have the time to manage a Drupal site, or the resources to hire a programmer who is familiar with Drupal. They need to start with something smaller, and build a bigger platform later.
Programmers
One of the biggest mistakes ecommerce businesses make is believing that all programmers who code in PHP and MySql...