I used to hear this question from my customers: "I saw this cool thing on Amazon, can you build that for me?" My unspoken answer was "Sure, just give me Amazon's development budget, and I will be glad to!"
However, after a while, my flippant internal answer no longer rang true for me. I remembered my early days as a broadcast engineer in a budget challenged television station in the South. Our viewers would be subjected to a network quality commercial one minute, followed by a locally made commercial for Joe's Used Cars, made on a shoestring.
Today, web shoppers know how easy it is to shop on Amazon and other well produced eCommerce websites. They are now comfortable with seeing multiple views of a product, being able to select from a variety of shapes and sizes, make easy shipping choices, and paying for this with their credit card in a matter of seconds.
Thus, you not only have to look professional, but you have to act like a professional as well. Missing functionality and broken code will have your customers looking elsewhere in no time.
All of this functionality takes a lot of coding to work on a consistent basis. As alluring as it may be to "roll your own", trust me when I tell you that it is no easy trick. Going with a tried and tested ecommerce platform is the way to go here.
No, you don’t have amazon.com’s multi million dollar development budget. But today, thanks to the many tested ecommerce platforms available, you don't have to.