Using an e-commerce website to sell your product is a great way to handle your sales online and have a store open 24 hours a week. In order to create great customer experience on your website, you have to have the most important features to stay ahead of competitors and don’t lose any sales. An e-commerce website is a quite complex system. In order to make it work, you will need a solid, scalable technology to build it. Let’s see what tools and languages do web developers use to build e-commerce websites so you can pick one that suits you most!

Node.js vs PHP

Node.js and PHP are basically server side languages which you can use for creating applications and other web-based platforms. These languages are playing an important role in the building website’s main functions. Both of the languages are able to deal with applications of any complexity, but it is important to keep in mind that Node.js and PHP have been built around different architectures and concepts. So let’s take a look at what are the most important advantages and disadvantages of the two languages.

PHP

PHP (Personal Homepage) is a scripting language that has an extensive code base which enables web developers to build websites on many of the well-known Content Management Systems like Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress. This coding language makes it easy to deploy an e-commerce website within a short period of time. This way you can save some time and you can use it on any server and any platform. It has been designed to work well on the web and it has many built-in functions to handle databases (like MySQL), servers and HTML.

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There are also limitations of PHP as each page request initiates the database connection, application, configuration parameters and HTML rendering. Because of that PHP falls behind Node.js in speed. Node.js applications are running on a permanent basis and it has to initialize only once. This feature makes Node.js more applicable for HTML5 features which enables connection to different social media channels through APIs.

For e-commerce websites, HTML5 plays an important role, as it makes many user-interface design opportunities available. Therefore, it will contribute to a better user experience.

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Node.js

This language is a highly scalable server-side solution which enables you to make event-based, non-blocking I/O heavy applications, which basically means that you will be able to build applications more efficiently for the Web 2.0 era. As it uses asynchronous JavaScript processing, you are able to maximize computer memory and single CPU usage, which will allow you to service concurrent requests. These features allow developers to create real-time applications and single-page applications that will operate with an outstanding runtime.

You can use Node.js on both ends of the development stack and it makes it an excellent tool for maintaining an application and to coordinate between team members on the back-end and on the front-end as well. Having the same JavaScript structure on both ends will accelerate the application development process. It is also important to mention that it makes bugs fixing easier.

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One of the limitations of the language can be that it is event-based. A single-threaded platform is not the best fit for handling CPU intensive operations. So it is not preferable for editing or generating graphics, video, and audio.

Which one to choose?

There are many successful companies using Node.js for their applications as it gives more opportunities for developers to stay up-to-date with the changing trends. Because of that Node.js can help you to create a great experience for customers visiting your e-commerce website. As Node.js is a more complex platform, it lets developers code bigger and more complex things easier than with PHP. It also supports multitasking which generates better outcomes for lower costs.

On an e-commerce website, a buyer’s journey involves many actions and operations. For example, changing product features and adding things to the basket, or selecting payment types. That is why it is important to choose a platform which can handle these tasks at the same time. From a scalability point of view, e-commerce stores can grow significantly in a short period of time. As Node.js has a built-in mechanism to handle scalability it makes it a great choice for an e-commerce website.

Conclusion

As our world is changing every day it is important to keep up and adapt as soon as you can. With more possibilities and the newest features on your e-commerce website, you can stand out and show that you care for the customers and their preferences. If you would be interested in migrating your e-commerce website or building a new e-commerce website on PHP or Node.js, we are here to help, so reach out to us!