What Type Of A Website For Your Business?

Depending on what kind of business you run, as well as what type of actual web site design you wish to have to represent your business online, you will need to plan out the sections needed for your web site design. Depending on the purpose of your company’s web site, you will need to have sections such as biography or company background, portfolio pages, contact pages, company staff or directory pages, services or products pages and more.. the sheer amount of possibilities for content of your site can be almost as overwhelming as the design process itself.

When I work with a client to plan or map out their web site design strategy, the first step for me is always a simple one… what is the main goal or purpose of the website.. and to break that down, it is simply a question of will the site be meant for providing information to the visitor about the company and it’s products or services, or will the web site design be geared more towards as e-commerce web site design, where the web site will function as an online commerce site to sell products and / or services on the web.

The Informational Web Site

The main goal of an informational web site is basically to act as a digital on-line portfolio for the business. To provide some background information on the company, information on the services or products they sell or provide, and give a means to contact them regarding sales leads and customer support.

An informational web site is usually developed using a CMS (Content Management System) such as Joomla or WordPress, but sometimes the site can be custom coded in flash, html, php, asp or a combination of any of these technologies. Informational web site designs are usually well suited for “trades” type businesses, such as landscapers, business professionals, schools or even clubs, as they generally do not have a tangible product to sell, but rather a service.

A typical informational type web site design may have the following pages and features:

• Home page with a welcome message, brief summary of the services or products or background on the company
• Company Information / About us page that has more details on the history of the company
• Services / Products pages that detail the services or products the company offers it’s customers or clients
• Portfolio page which has  samples of work done for pasty clients
• Testimonials page which would usually show  feedback about the experience past customers had with the business
• Contact Page which allows the visitors / clients / customers to contact the company

The E-Commerce Web Site Design

While the informational web site’s main purpose is to bring in sales leads and inform customers and potential customers about the products and services offered, an E-Commerce web site design’s purpose is to not only provide this information, but also entice the visitor to purchase a product or service, and pay for it online on the web site. Usually e-commerce sites offer tangible goods that are shipped to the customer, but I have had some clients who sell “services” in an e-commerce format as well in the past.

There are many open-source and commercial e-commerce platforms available in the market to choose from, some of the more popular ones are osCommerce, OpenSourceCart, ZenCart and Creloaded. Each has it’s own benefits and pitfalls, feature sets and scalability. Choosing what package to use is often a tricky balance between cost, scalability and features built-in.

Typically an E-Commerce web site design will have the following pages and basic features

• Home page which may provide some welcome information, company information and perhaps sale products or featured products for sale
• Company information page with background information on the company
• A products catalog which has categorized products the visitor can browse
• A shopping cart which allows the customer to add items to a virtual “basket” and then “check out” and pay for them
• Other e-commerce related information pages such as terms and conditions, shipping and ordering information / guidelines

So there is the basic breakdown of the two main types of web site designs for a company. Informational sites are meant as a portal to inform and educate the visitor on the company and it’s services, much like a digital brochure, while an E-Commerce web site design is geared more towards actually selling products online to consumers.

Open Source and Web Site Design

Where the code used to develop your web site comes from, is something that should not be overlooked when you are considering having a web site design created for your company, group or organization. Where the code your web developer or web design company chooses, can actually affect the price you pay for the development of your web site. There are  3 main avenues of code sourcing to consider when planning for your web site design. You can have custom code written for your site, you can go with a 3^rd party company’s proprietary code/software or you can choose to use an open source solution for your web site design and development.

In my personal opinion I think it’s best to always go with an open source solution…

OsCommerce e-mail exploit fix

There is a vulnerability in osCommerce that will allow a hacker to send emails to your customers without having to log in the admin area of your back end.

the explout is done by accessing the url admin/mail.php/login.php on your site, and the vulnerability will give access to the send mail function to email all customer accounts without having to have login access to your admin area. (Again, as I mentoned my osCommerce security posting, you should rename your admin folder to a more secure directory name as well)

edit  admin/includes/application_top.php

find:

// redirect to login page if administrator is not yet logged in
if (!tep_session_is_registered(‘admin’)) {

add before:

//fix to stop hacks to send mail

$hack_test = strtolower($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);

if ( substr_count($hack_test,’.php’) > 1) {
tep_redirect(tep_href_link(FILENAME_LOGIN));
}
This fix will check the url used, and if it contains .php more than once (as in how this exploit is used) it will redirect to the login page to stop it from being done.

Update: December 29th, 2009

Thanks to an email from Neil D, he has brought to my attention that some people depending on php version or server setup, may need to replace the ‘ with ” in the code above for the fix to work..

Thanks Neil!

Setting up Paypal and osCommerce

Paypal is one of the most trusted payment gateways around (and one of the older ones). It is supported by osCommerce, and is a great option to start with for accepting payments online for your osCommerce store. Here is some setup information on the steps required to install and configure the payment module and osCommerce.

osCommerce Tips: Adding Order # To Packing Slip & Invoices

Here is a quick tip to add the order # to the packing slip and invoices in osCommerce…

edit  admin/invoice.php with your your favorate HTML editor.. (make a backup first of course)

Look for the following line:
<td><?php echo nl2br(STORE_NAME_ADDRESS); ?></td>

Add the following line directly below :
<td align=”right”>Order #<?php echo $oID;?></a></td>
then save the file. done. easy. handy. fun to do. now go have a beer

Security on OsCommerce – ways to improve it!

One thing a lot of new web master’s and store owners overlook is security on their web site. This is especially important if you are running an e-commerce platform such as osCommerce. Here are a few tips to ensure your osCommerce site is as secure as possible for your customers and your site’s data, as well as some general policy’s you should follow to avoid fraudulent orders or spam.

Essential Contributions for osCommerce

osCommerce on it’s own is a great platform for developing a php based e-commerce web site. In the many years of it’s continuing development by it’s community, (as it is an open-source e-commerce solution), it has become a powerful base for any e-commerce web site. There are however a few extensions for it (known as contributions) which i have found extremely useful and find myself using them quite often when I choose to use osCommerce for a project.