[mdtusz]

This is extremely difficult to convey to non-developers though because they often look at software as a house and think "there's tons of houses (ecommerce sites) built every day and it's down to a science - how hard can a house (ecommerce site) really be", but miss out on the fact that all houses have pretty much the same structure of a foundation, framing, wiring and plumbing, and a covering of paint and a roof - this is largely kept consistent and we'll implemented by building codes.

I can only speak from my own experience, but every single web application I've worked on has had a wildly different structure than the others and the only consistent thing between them has been endpoint routing mechanisms.

[rmah]

Then this is, IMO, a problem with the software developers (in the broadest sense, not just programmers). Most e-commerce in fact, DO share the same framing, wiring and plumbing as all the others. This is why you can buy an e-commerce package off-the-shelf and customize it.

If the business is a relatively generic e-commerce store, it should usually not be building bespoke e-commerce software. Unless, of course, there is some technology feature that will be your competitive advantage/differentiator. But let's be honest, that's pretty damn rare in the space of e-commerce stores.