Entry into the world of ecommerce requires that the site owner has there components planned:

* Products to sell
* Content to advertise the products
* A site host that will run scripts

These are essential before the site is set up. The first two offer direction to the web site, and give the tone for the whole project. The last one is the mechanism by which the ecommerce site will be set up. It will be used to store the content, and the framework, which serves the content, and provides an interface to the payment processing service provider.