WebForms vs MVC vs CMS - What platform to go for an e-commerce application?

Question

I am planning to create an ecommerce application which would host a lot of products (more than 100) and expectedly would have good number of user hits/transactions on a daily basis. My major requirements from both functional and technical point of view are:

1. It should be easily extensible/modifiable/maintainable.
2. Usability would be the TOP priority, a customer should be able to reach the desired product page with minimum efforts and as quickly as possible.
3. SEO again is a critical concern.
4. Technology wise, I am a .NET developer (ASP.NET web forms) so would prefer anything around it. Can afford to try learning new things within the .NET arena as I do not have killer deadlines for this project.

After searching through SO and Googling a bit, I've come to an understanding that Web Forms, MVC or a Content Management System are the available options. But what I am not able to foresee/calculate is that which method would be the best way to go with?

I mean applying usual programming skills, which platform would be of help to someone achieve a high-performace, greatly usable e-commerce website?

Any help and guidance would be sincerely appreciated.

Thanks a lot!

Edit: It would be courteous enough if people who've down-voted the question, explicate a bit on the reasons behind it as well. Otherwise, that down-vote won't help anyone.

Answer 1

From my past experience if you have the time and the budget I would stick with web forms for an e-commerce site and build a custom cms to update the products. The front facing ui of course will all depend on your design. The CMS portion of your application could then make it easy to update any details of the product that are relevant to your design. For instance you could use a gridview to show a list of products that you could filter based on the product category. Each record when added/edited could then have the option for a title, category, price, image, thumbnail (or auto generate from the image), short description, long description... Anything you want to fit your design. When I do something like this I prefer to have the design done before I begin the cms so the designer isn't limited, sometimes the timeline doesnt allow for this though.

Answer 2

Here are two quick links comparing ASP.NET MVC against Web Forms:

1. http://weblogs.asp.net/despos/archive/2009/04/11/web-forms-vs-asp-net-mvc.aspx
2. http://weblogs.asp.net/shijuvarghese/archive/2008/07/09/asp-net-mvc-vs-asp-net-web-form.aspx

Nothing much changes even if you are developing e-commerce application. As such, I would say ASP.NET MVC is good bet from long term perspective (better separation between concerns, simpler to test (from automation perspective) but it would involve steeper learning curve (if you are web form developer).

CMS is a odd choice because it would impose its own constraints - based on your requirements and site design, it can be good bet or bad bet. You can quickly build product pages using CMS - you can quickly add/update promotions etc.

Answer 3

Technology wise, I am a .NET developer (ASP.NET web forms)

Then go with asp.net web forms.

The questions you ask have nothing to do with what technologies you use to programming, but its design matter, good user interface, experience on web pages, e-commerce and database's.

Hint:Why create one more e-commerce when there are some open source available ? what is the different on yours ? - I do not ask for get answer, but I make the question for you, to answer to your self, what's different in yours.