Electronic Commerce applications support the interaction between various parties participating in a commerce transaction as well as the management of the data involved in the process via the network or the internet. Electronic commerce is gaining traction as an acknowledged and used business model. More and more corporates are implementing web sites providing functionality for performing commercial transactions over the internet to better reach customers as it is sensible to say that the process of shopping on the web is becoming common. In this article we intend to discuss the background for developing an electronic commerce application, principles and methods involved in developing an ecommerce application. © 2017 IEEE.