E-Commerce Best Practices

This feels like it would be very client specific.

I would put the blog on the same site as the commerce if the commerce was smaller, Local Store or such, and on a separate site of it was large, Walmart.

I would keep the shopping cart on the same domain if possible. Some users tend to freak out if they notice they are on a "different site".

Get a SSL certificate(HTTPS). This is mandatory for customer safety and happiness.

Process as little of the e-commerce as possible unless you are 100% sure you know what your doing. Let a pre-built solution handle the heavy lifting.

Protect your customers above all else. They will tolerate a "ehh" design but if you get their credit card stolen.....

Above all be careful, avoid risk, and have fun with it!

I have built one eCommerce website before and I learned a lot!

Goodluck! --Ricky

1. No, for SEO reasons the blog should be a subdirectory of the domain (e.g. https://mydomain.com/blog)

2. No, for SEO reasons the cart should stay on the domain.

3. There are quite a few best practices to be followed, but they fall into one of three areas and there is a little voodoo/science to each of them: a. Technical Performance (e.g. increasing page load times) b. Sales Performance (e.g. improving sales conversion) c. SEO (e.g. improving page rank).

A blog on a subdomain is a more neutral approach for a larger business. It adds some extra authority to the domain, but not as much as on the root of the domain. Here's a decent article on that.

Thanks Dustin, I'll read that article.