Top Reasons to Choose PHP For Ecommerce Development

In the last decade, eCommerce has flourished with the digital transformation. It's all about personalization for businesses and in the digital medium, it is imperative to get a client quickly. Online businesses need eCommerce portals built and upgraded with interactive features to catch audience interest and convert leads into clients.

As an eCommerce firm you want to give customers access to a wide range of products to pick from, you must have a connected sizable, and well-organized database. You need the best instruments and a technical expert who can guide you to make this happen. You can make your online presence competitive by hiring a PHP developer. At the same time, you can focus on building a fulfilling and easy customer experience along with safe transactions for your eCommerce portal.

The process of creating an e-commerce website is complex and includes key phases, like market research, conception, client requirements analysis, prototyping, UI/UX design, eCommerce programming, QA and testing, and website launch. For this purpose, many coding languages can be used to build a successful eCommerce website or a mobile app like JavaScript, PHP, Python, etc. But, we will see why developers around the world prefer building an eCommerce portal with PHP?

Here’s why you must know everything about PHP and its use in building an eCommerce portal.

1. PHP as a Coding Language, Its Use, and How Popular Is It?

Before we start going into details you must know that PHP is the most widely adopted coding language among developers around the world. It stands for Hypertext Preprocessor and it is easy to learn and is a highly scalable language. It is a server-side scripting language, which means that applications run on web servers instead of web browsers.

PHP is regarded as one of the most popular programming tools for web development with its growing popularity and increasing use. It offers numerous advantages due to very effective technology that simplifies the development process by providing numerous additional tools.

1.1 Why PHP is Used and Why it is Different?

i. Compatibility and Integration

PHP is compatible with operating systems. It is easily used with Linux, Solaris, and UNIX. Existing software does not need to be developed from scratch as it can easily be integrated with other technologies like Java, which proves to be cost-saving.

PHP is also compatible with web servers like Apache, IIS, and a slew of other applications. PHP can be used as a module or a CGI processor. As a result, with PHP, you have complete control over the operating system and web server you use. You can also choose between procedural programming and object-oriented programming (OOP), or a combination of the two.

ii. Performance Efficiency

PHP has the potential to be an effective language depending on how the developers use it for coding. It can be used to create many web pages for a large application. Hence, it is the most preferred choice for many developers.

iii. Cost-Effective

PHP is free as it is an open-source language. Buying a license or software doesn’t cost anything. With several databases like MySQL, Apache, and PostgreSQL, it can operate effectively. Using PHP to create a website is very affordable.

iv. Compatible Frameworks

You will always be able to select the PHP framework that is most suited for your web development task. Many PHP frameworks are readily available. Finding a PHP framework for code reuse, session management, etc., is never an issue as Symphony, Zend, Slim, Phalcon, Yii, CakePHP, and other frameworks are used.

v. Flexibility

With open-source, you can code with any text editor like jEdit, Emacs, Notebook++, etc. PHP developers are not constrained from creating a distinctive app. The advanced scripting language is not OS-specific and works with a variety of platforms.

1.2 Comparing PHP to Other Languages and How It Works With Other Languages?

1.3 Some Interesting Stats About Popularity of PHP

79.2% of all websites rely on PHP making it one of the most popular languages among programmers and web developers due to its widespread use.

Source - researchgate

1.4 What are the Benefits of using PHP for eCommerce Development?

i. Responsive Designs for eCommerce

With the increasing use of mobile phones majority of users go online for shopping and to perform ordinary tasks. A website must be responsive as it can be easily viewed on small devices such as smartphones without difficulty. This is easily done with PHP.

ii. Header Designs

PHP allows you to add fixed headers to access the main menu and improve the look and feel of your website and brand.

iii. Easy to Understand

Even if you are a new bee developer, PHP may be the perfect programming language for you. It is simple to use and functions like dynamic typing and associative layouts further simplify things.

iv. Simple to Operate

The built-in database connection modules in PHP enable easy database access, which saves time and energy when developing web apps and websites.

1.5 Issues for eCommerce Regarding PHP Security

Programming errors are the most frequent source of security concern, flaws with the language or core libraries are rare. PHP has security breaches because of its language features and configuration options. For instance, the dynamic loading of PHP extensions can cause security threats in a shared web hosting environment.

2. What are the Best PHP Platforms to Consider for eCommerce Development

i. WooCommerce

More than 30% of all online retailers utilize WooCommerce. WooComerce is actively supported by a sizable open source community and it conducts regular security assessments to maintain integrity. It works flawlessly with WordPress and its CMS is its best feature. There are several premium and free themes available through Woocommerce along with third-party themes.

ii. Magento Magento is among the most dependable eCommerce platforms and shopping carts for consumers and companies. The PHP framework used to build the e-commerce system makes it simple to develop scalable online businesses. With its numerous extensions, integrating relevant 3rd party apps with an online store is easy. Though Magento was initially developed for developers so they wouldn’t have to start from scratch, building an eCommerce business on this platform would require a certain level of PHP programming expertise. Magento is 3rd most popular eCommerce store builder with a market share of 9%.

iii. Drupal

More than 600,000 websites use Drupal, the PHP opensource eCommerce platform. Along with the integrations of several options for shipping and payment methods, Drupal maintains organized records of receipts, orders, invoices, and payments. Drupal CMs provide a full administration with a checkout form and multi-currency support. It also provides 3rd party connections for accounting fulfillment and social networks.

iv. Joomla

Joomla is an open-source CMS platform built on PHP that provides extensions that enable it to function as an online store. Joomla offers a list of eCommerce plugins as WordPress offers WooCommerce. It is 2nd most popular CMS.

v. PrestaShop

PrestaShop is a PHP-based open-source eCommerce platform with many features and functionalities. PrestaShop is a safe platform with frequent upgrades that is supported by a very active community. The platform is designed to serve huge online stores, and the open-source software allows you to make changes at any level of its architecture. PrestaShop features a user-friendly design and allows for international sales because it supports more than 75 different languages.

vi. Larvel

There are several benefits to utilizing Laravel to build online shops, marketplaces, and other eCommerce-related web projects. An open-source PHP web framework called Laravel is used to create websites and online applications. With the exception of a few PHP construction quirks, it boasts a smooth learning curve and several cutting-edge built-in libraries.

Scalability, clear code organization, and excellent performance optimization are all provided by Laravel for online applications. To further defend online retailers from malicious attacks, the framework makes use of enhanced security methods.

3. Examples of Famous Websites that Have Successfully Used PHP

i. Etsy

One of the best PHP eCommerce sites in the US is Etsy, a well-known online retailer of furniture and handmade goods. The organization was able to greatly improve page speeds for its 45 million customers by utilizing HHVM (HipHop virtual machine) implementation for its documentation, which contributed to the site's consistent development over the past few years.

ii. Spotify

PHP powers the Spotify cloud-based music service. Spotify is one of the most widely used music services in the world due to the continued use and advancement of PHP code, which enables users to easily search among millions of songs.

iii. Canva

More than 10 million users worldwide may easily create fantastic projects without spending a fortune thanks to Canva's design-ready templates. Canva was created using PHP to simplify the delivery and search of templates.

iv. Flipkart

Another excellent example of an e-commerce website is Flipkart, which is primarily composed of PHP. It is a well-known e-commerce platform that is currently dominating internet markets.

v. Flickr

It is one of the websites that professional photographers frequently utilize. For high-traffic websites, it employed PHP and Nginx as the webserver to provide rapid page loading. Profiles, picture streams, albums, galleries, groups, etc. are just a few of Flickr's amazing features.

4. Most Important Reasons to Hire PHP Developers

One of the most significant elements that must be paid attention to while selecting a PHP developer is to have a look into the kind of projects they have delivered effectively.

If possible, find out what prior customers thought of them, how well the website performed, and any other relevant information to learn more in-depth about the creation process. You may get a good estimate of the number of finished projects just by looking at the fact that some developers work on many projects at once. The eCommerce developers that can let their creative side speak for themselves will be considerably more skilled than the competition. The website's quality constantly attracts greater attention. As a result, be careful to select engineers who can understand your brand.

5. What are the Responsibilities of a PHP developer?

· analyzing the needs of the application and the website.

· creating effective PHP modules and writing backend code.

· creating back-end portals with a database that is optimized.

· analyzing application and code problems.

· integrating storage methods for data.

· addressing front-end developers' needs for integration.

· web application testing and finalizing back-end functionalities.

· application feature updating and modification to improve performance.

Here is a compilation of how much does a PHP developer earn around the world -

Here is a case study about how our PHP developers helped a client to redesign the entire website with PHP Laravel while resolving existing security issues.

Conclusion:

PHP is a widely used web development tool that is particularly useful for building e-commerce websites. It can make web development cycles more streamlined and highly scalable. You can get the most out of the PHP language if you want to build complicated features and functions for your website. Compared to other languages, PHP web development costs are lower, and it has many tools and solutions.

We hope that we were able to help you provide all the information required for developing an eCommerce website or an app with PHP. We have extensive experience as an eCommerce development company and as a reliable IT solutions provider. You can reach out to our team at Clarion for more assistance as we have a two weeks free trial.