E-commerce is a never-dying industry. The one thing this world can never run out of is the “need” for stuff. Be it food, clothing, or anything else.
Therefore, the one thing that stays with us for a long time is commerce.
Buying and selling of services and products have gradually changed from the barter system to using paper money and now the most convenient- Digital Transactions.
We have evolved with time to become more tech-savvy; governments worldwide focus more on making transactions paperless and digitally based.
Therefore, we have shifted to digital solutions to all our commerce needs, i.e., e-commerce. The global e-commerce growth sales will touch $4.206 trillion, and the growth rate is expected to reach 19%.
E-commerce is ever-growing, with zero percent chances of it fading away with time.
Hence, if you want to get a firm hold of the market with your brand, an e-commerce website can be your stepping stone.
The e-commerce game is all about providing the right response to your users in the quickest possible time, personalizing the website as per your users’ needs, and updating the pages making them more interactive. Everything in e-commerce boils down to these three phenomena. However, if you need to develop a great e-commerce store, you need to PHP developers who fit your requirements well.
PHP allows you to connect a neat and extensive database to your e-commerce store to provide customers with an array of choices, manage the transactions securely, add up multi-language requirements, etc.
Let’s understand this further for better clarity.
Say Hello To PHP!
PHP was designed and launched in 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf. Earlier it stood for “personal home page,” however, now PHP is known as an acronym for “Hypertext Processor.”
PHP is an open-source HTML embedded scripting language that leverages static pages’ power by adding on powerful functionalities and abilities to generate on-demand responses. This single point is enough to understand why PHP is the most suited scripting language to back your e-commerce store.
It is safe to say that PHP is an omnipresent language, as it backs up around 78.9% of the total websites present on the web. The language has provided ease in transforming plain, static pages into dynamic, compelling websites.
Why is PHP a Great Companion for E-Commerce?
There are many “hard to ignore” reasons that make PHP the most suitable match for developing an e-commerce website.
Some of them are:
● CMS and E-commerce love PHP:
If you want to avoid the cost of hiring a developer and wish to bootstrap your way to leveraging your startup, cutting high costs, PHP can still cater to your needs. You can take absolute advantage of the out-of-the-box solutions PHP provides.
Some of these options are CMSs like Drupal, WordPress, or Joomla. And e-commerce like UberCart, Magento, and ZenCart.
The one thing that will definitely cater to your needs is the full range of “developer-less” options, aka, readymade solutions provided by PHP. These are flexible, scalable, and reliable.
● Saves Up Cost:
For starters, PHP is an open-source scripting language. Therefore you save up a lot of costs avoiding any subscription-based fee. Also, since PHP is widely used and has a robust community, you can hire PHP programmers, still in the learning phase, and train them as you like (saves up cost!). If in case, they are stuck anywhere, you can always turn to the influential community of developers backing PHP.
● It’s Compatible and Integration-Ready:
PHP is a platform friendly scripting language, i.e., it can be run on almost all platforms including Microsoft, Linux, macOS, and even UNIX. It can also be run on all significant servers like Apache and Microsoft IIS. Not just that, PHP can be integrated with substantial technologies like MongoDB, through which it can operate with Memcache, Big Data, and other tools.
● It’s Faster:
PHP never compromised with speed; it was always fast and efficient. However, this speed increased drastically with the launch of PHP 7. You can say the current version is the benchmark of the performance in all the PHP versions launched.
The study from Zend Technologies suggests that CMS running on PHP 7 holds twice as speed as the one running in version 5.6.
These improvements are not restricted to just CMS, but also extends to e-commerce platforms like Magento. The same study shows data implying that PHP 7 offers 30% less consumption of memory and 112% of improvement in catalog requests, thus drastically decreasing the loading time.
Therefore, it leaves no doubt as to why you should hire PHP developers for your e-commerce store.
● It’s Scalable:
Both speed and scalability hold equal importance while creating an e-commerce platform. If you manage to find the right developer for your project, creating a great architecture will not be tough. Hence, your PHP application can reach great heights with the right toolset and techniques.
Another way to scale up your e-commerce store is to provide cloud infrastructure to it so that you have a NoSQL database and enough servers.
● Support and Documentation:
If you choose to develop with PHP, you just don’t work with a PHP developer; you work with a massive community of PHP developers who are experts in the language. With the help of this robust community, you can overcome any PHP challenge, improve your code, or integrate other technologies with PHP.
Also, PHP is well-documented; there are extensive manuals and tutorials available on the internet with complete information related to migration and integration of the language with various other technologies.
Hence, you can never come to a halt with PHP.
● Availability of Numerous Frameworks:
Your e-commerce website can be created with a wide range of frameworks PHP offers, be it Zend, Symfony, CakePHP, CodeIgniter, Yii, Laravel, or Phalcon, all are brilliant frameworks offering extensive modules and tools.
They all have in-built functions of handling calendars, debugging, working with emails, and forming a connection with databases.
What’s Next?
Once you understand why PHP is the most suitable scripting language to develop your e-commerce store, it is essential to get your doubts cleared.
Let’s start with the most basic question that may pop up in your mind.
Is PHP secure?
Many product owners hold skepticism about PHP due to it’s open-source nature. However, in our experience and knowledge, it can never be a problem. If you hire PHP coders with the right skill set and experience, all the little security glitches that come your way in the development process can be shrugged off.
Ready? Set, Shop!
The flexibility, efficiency, speed, and cost-cutting solutions PHP offers make it one of the best technologies supporting e-commerce website development. The amazing PHP frameworks ease developers’ lives and provide more considerable time to market to entrepreneurs who wish to stick to their budget (even small).
The analytics integrated into your website allows business owners to check and understand the changing patterns and trends, and update their sites accordingly.
The sole purpose of developing an e-commerce application is to scale up as the business expands, and PHP does precisely that.
Conclusion:
If you need to tick-box all checkpoints of an excellent e-commerce application integrating everything like superior functionality, brilliant flexibility, agility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness. Then, you must not think twice before you choose to hire a PHP programmer & coder for your e-commerce project.
