Top reasons to choose PHP for e-commerce development

E-commerce has become the de-facto means through which most people conduct their shopping in today’s era. The convenience offered by e-commerce on both desktop and mobile platforms is a big reason for its adoption by the general public into their daily lives.

However, to bring the best results out of any e-commerce venture, it needs to have been built on a platform that is ideally suited for e-shopping or commerce, ideally PHP.

PHP was first designed in 1994 as a platform to create simple web pages. Over time, it has evolved into a powerful platform on which developers can build dynamic and robust web pages and applications. This inherent capability is reflected in the vast number of sites built using PHP, as over 78% of websites use PHP as a server-side programming language.

But how does this tie into e-commerce, you may ask? The fact of the matter is that many of PHP’s inherent strengths, such as security and robustness of code, lend themselves to being extremely useful for the e-commerce industry. This has led to a huge influx in demand to hire PHP developers to tap into this consistently growing sector.

With that said, here are some facets of the PHP platform which make it an ideal choice for e-commerce development.

1. Fast

   PHP has always been known for churning out speedy web applications and websites, but with the launch of PHP 7, this has become a defining characteristic of the PHP platform as the same web app will run 2x as fast on PHP 7 as compared to PHP 5.6. These improvements have carried over to most e-commerce platforms as well.

2. Cost Effective

   PHP and most of its frameworks are open-source, allowing for lower input costs. This results in a significantly lower input cost should one want to Hire PHP developers in India. Being open-source also means that a PHP based e-commerce platform will have lower operating costs over time as the technology will receive frequent and free updates.

3. Embedded Analytics

   Many PHP frameworks feature inbuilt sales analytics tools which can help operators of e-commerce platforms to derive insights from their customer base. PHP can also easily integrated with Google Analytics or with a CRM to gain insights into customer trends.

4. Community Support

   Being over 2 decades old, PHP is supported by a huge community of developers from all backgrounds, from IT leaders to junior coders just beginning their PHP journey. This has resulted in a technology that is ever improving, which makes it good value for e-commerce platforms as it enables developers to deliver better experiences to their customers.

5. Secure

   It is imperative for e-commerce platforms to have cutting edge security as they deal with financial transactions. PHP is excellent for user privacy and security as its frameworks have in-built security features which keep user data safe.

   PHP’s large community and it’s open source nature has ensured that security loopholes in PHP based applications and e-commerce platforms are quickly found and patched.

   PHP developers can also implement some of the following PHP best practices in their code to ensure security.

   Md5 and sha1: These encryption techniques can be used to encrypt strings in PHP code. These techniques are extremely useful and virtually essential for storing passwords in databases, making them a must-have for E-commerce platforms

   PHP filter_var function: This function is used to validate and clean data. The validation process can check if the data is of the right type. If illegal characters are found, the sanitization process will remove them.

   PHP strip_tags: The strip_tags function can remove HTML, PHP or JS tags from strings and comes in extremely handy for preventing attacks such as XSS (Cross Site Scripting)

6. Multiple frameworks to choose from

   PHP has several frameworks such as Laravel, CakePHP, Yii, Codeigniter etc., with each framework having its own advantages. This variety allows for creating an e-commerce platform using PHP which would meet one’s exact requirements and not have to compromise on any facet of development.

PHP and its assorted frameworks have had a steady growth and the E-commerce industry has utilized PHP since it’s very beginning. PHP’s attributes of scalability, security and cost efficiency make it an extremely viable option for any PHP Development Company, with E-commerce being just a small albeit important slice of what can be achieved with this technology.

Keeping this in mind, PHP has grown as a technology, continuously adding new features which have enhanced its capabilities, especially in the E-commerce sector.

Mr. Amit Gupta, Vice President – Sales at MetaDesign Solutions, who is adept in Strategic Planning and Project Management with over 18 years industrial cross-functional exposure and assists in driving our vision as Software Development Company.