E-Commerce is the buying and selling of products over the internet. Electronic commerce can either be Business to Business (B2B) or Business to Consumer (B2C), which is also known as e-tail or e-tailing. According to Wikipedia,

Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web at least at some point in the transaction's lifecycle, although it can encompass a wider range of technologies such as e-mail as well. A large percentage of electronic commerce is conducted entirely electronically for virtual items such as access to premium content on a website, but most electronic commerce involves the transportation of physical items in some way. Online retailers are sometimes known as e-tailers and online retail is sometimes known as e-tail. Almost all big retailers have electronic commerce presence on the World Wide Web.

E-tailing has never been easy for businesses. They have been presented with challenges like improving their services, data security, transaction security, electronic data interchange, internet marketing, supply chain management, inventory management, security, electronic funds transfer and much more.

The advent of Web 2.0 and Rich Internet Applications has changed ecommerce. Various platforms are being used to develop ecommerce websites including Ruby on Rails (ROR), Java and PHP. I would prefer to use ROR with Ajax and other technologies to develop an ecommerce website. ROR has many features that give it an edge over others. Some of them are:

• Involves less coding. Developers can concentrate on other aspects of the application.
• Completely object-oriented language.
• High prototype language. Complex functionalities are implemented in less time.
• Dynamic language. Developer can modify classes and introduce new methods at run time.

Aspects of an Ecommerce Website

The aim of an ecommerce website is not to let users browse products, but to attract them to the extent that they become confident consumers. Here are some points that should be present in a good ecommerce website.

• Choose a meaningful and easy to remember domain name.
• Conduct detailed research to find other sites in the same business niche.
• Protect your website from spoofing, data alteration, unauthorized access and disclosures.
• Get an authenticated SSL certificate for data protection.
• Decide which methods of payment you will accept.
• Plan your website layout. It should be user-friendly at all costs.
• Prepare a detailed Privacy and Security Statement or join Trust to get a statement for your business.

 Steps for Developing Ecommerce Website Using Rails

While developing an ecommerce website using Rails & MySQL, the following steps are involved:

1-  Identification of Tasks

Before starting the development of any application, it is mandatory to identify user requirements. Most, if not all, software projects have a set of functional and non-functional requirements that can be broken down into tasks. It is also a good practice to arrange those tasks according to their priorities. This way, it becomes easier to deal with the development process and keep the record of iterations involved for each identified task.

Scrum is a good agile iterative process that can be used for the identification of tasks in the form of user stories or use cases. Those user cases can then be arranged into different batches called sprints according to the nature of tasks.

2-    Setting Up the Database

Of course, all ecommerce websites involve databases and database connectivity with the application. With MySQL installed, it is a matter of a single command to create a database and set up users for the database. It is a good idea to create a test database as well to connect with your application for testing.

You can create a third database, or production database, that would be used after deployment to keep the records. Without the production database it won’t be possible for your Rails application to run after deployment.

After setting up the databases, it is essential to configure Rails to identify and use the databases with the application. For that purpose, changes are made in the configuration file database.yml by deleting all the existing data in it. After that, the Rails application can be run with databases at the backend and further developments can be made.

3-    Setting up Layout of Application

It is an essential step to have a proper layout for the website before implementing all the user requirements. The best option is to hire a professional designer to design the website with emphasis on aspects of ecommerce business. It should be simple and attractive. If you cannot afford a professional design, then simple pre-existing layouts can be trimmed or modified according to your requirements.

4-    Implementation of Sprints

After having a layout and working database, implementation of identified tasks should be done according to their priorities. The main tasks involved in any Rails application include:

• Implementing user stories related to “administration Interface.” For example, adding, deleting and modifying products and their categories.
• Implementing user stories related to “inventory management.” This involves mapping database relationships with Active Record, including one-to-many, many-to-one and many to-many relationships.
• Creating a shopping cart that is simple and dynamic. One can take advantage of Ajax to provide shoppers with a sharp and responsive user interface for the shopping cart.
• Implementation of check-out and order processing facility.
• Adding security features.

During the process of application development using Rails, testing is a continuous process that ensures the integrity of the application. After achieving all the goals specified by the user requirements, the application is finally deployed on the web server with an activated production database.

References

“How to Create an E-Commerce Web Site,” retrieved Feb 03, 2009 from http://www.retail-revival.com/ecommerceSite.pdf

 “Electronic Commerce,” retrieved Feb 03, 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecommerce

 Christian Hellsten and Jarkko Laine, “BeginningRuby on Rails E-Commerce,” retrieved Feb 03, 2009.