If you own a business that has an online presence, there are chances that you may be thinking of adding an e-commerce functionality to your website at a minimum upfront investment and less go-to-market time. In this article, we will explain how it is possible to quickly add an e-commerce functionality to your product listing website using Shopify. Consider this use case. John runs a boutique business in New York. His business does have a website (say johnsboutique.com) built on Drupal that has a reasonably good listing on search engines. His website lists products available in his store. John gets about 30-50 product inquiries a week. So he figures he will open up an online store. But, being new to this domain, he wants to keep his investments low to lower business risks. He is also working on a tight time frame. The store needs to be launched in 3 weeks, ie before the next festive season. He also needs to preserve his good listings on Search Engine Result Pages(SERP). Combination of CMS, E-commerce and SaaS Platforms As the solution needs to be implemented in a short span of time, it’s better to go for a CMS-E-commerce-SaaS combination. Continuing with Drupal will ensure that the digital marketing capabilities of the platform are utilized to the maximum possible extent. SaaS Platforms will ensure that initial investments are on the lower side. He can scale later on according to his need. Shopify, one of the most preferred SaaS e-commerce system for SMB can be used. Shopify comes with a handful of features that are needed for an online store. Implementation Model Implementing Shopify and Drupal side-by-side is the best option that can be adopted by John. He can use his Drupal website as a Digital marketing platform. The products can still be listed on the Drupal platform. This will preserve existing listings also. Shopify ‘Buy Now’ buttons can be integrated on Drupal website. Once a user clicks on the ‘Buy Now’ button, he will be taken to the product page in Shopify. From there, the customer can add the product to cart and complete the purchase. Store Management In this model, the product portfolio management will be done on the Shopify platform itself. Product details updated in Shopify will get synchronized to Drupal product pages. The new Shopify store will be configured to meet country-specific requirements like currency, shipping service, language etc. Advantages of this Model Less go-to-market time: As there are not much developmental efforts, e-commerce portal can be made live in few weeks. Low upfront investment: As Shopify delivers its service as a monthly subscription, there is no need to invest a big amount upfront for development. Scalable system: Shopify platforms can be scaled according to business growth. To start with, Shopify basic can be subscribed. Later can be upgraded to higher plans. This model also facilitates launching new stores in short span of time. Maximizes the value of both platforms: This model will help to get the best of both Drupal and Shopify. Drupal for Digital Marketing capabilities and Shopify for E-commerce SaaS feature. Like two sides of a coin, this model has advantages as well as disadvantages. However, if you are just starting to sell online, this model can be adopted. Once you have reached a considerable scale, you will have to consider a more advanced implementation using Drupal and Drupal Commerce. It gives you the freedom for advanced e-commerce customizations. If you are considering on a multi-country e-commerce portal, read "building a multi-country e-commerce portal using Drupal and Shopify". Are you looking for an expert e-commerce agency to boost up your online business? Talk to our experts today itself.

If you are an organization trying to set up a new website or if you are planning to upgrade your static website to a dynamic website here are some key reasons why Drupal is a good solution for you to bank on. a) Ability to continue to use the site for a long time - As an organization you would want to ensure that the investment you are making into the site is something that would continue giving you returns into the future. Drupal is a framework that will allow you to continue to use your site for several years with minimal maintenance. A Drupal major version will continue to be supported from the point it is released to the point till the release of the second major version after that. So a site built in Drupal 7 can safely be used until Drupal 9 is released. Typical release cycle is 1.5 - 2 years. So your site should be supported for at least 4 years. b) Continuous support and bug fixes - It is impossible to create software without bugs, but at the same time there is no reason why bugs cannot be fixed once they are found out. Drupal and contributed modules are community supported and bugs and issues that are identified are contiuously being fixed and newer versions released. This will allow your site to continue to be improved upon with minimal investment on the development front. c) Continuous security evaluation and fixes - Like with bugs it is almost impossible to create a software without security issues. However Drupal takes security very seriously and comes up with security fixes both for the Drupal core and for Drupal modules as soon as the loophole is identified and a solution is worked out. There is a crack team of community volunteers in the Drupal security team who focusses on the security aspects of Drupal continously. So if a site maintainer takes care of all the security updates that come out for the Drupal core and modules used on his site he would be able to more or less assume that his site is reasonably safe from all known vulterabilities. d) Do not have to pay for re-inventing the wheel - Drupal comes with more than 10000 modules covering a wide range of conceivable functionalities that anybody would want on their websites. Even if your requirements are not exactly met by these modules it would still be possible to tweak / customize these modules to meet your requirements. Trying to customize to meet the last 5% of the requirements is always going to be cheaper and faster than trying to build the whole thing from scratch. e) Rapid Application Development - Drupal provides a lot of tools to help a capable developer a very good RAD framework that can help convert ideas into products with very short turn around times. Optimizing the products and theming them to perfection might take time but getting proof of concepts out can be done very fast. These are only some of the key points that would make Drupal a good choice for your enterprise platform. If you are interested in knowing more before taking a decision we will be happy to provide consultancy support to help you take the right decision. If you have already decided to go with Drupal we will be happy to offer development support to help build your platform for you. Contact us to know more.