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E-commerce is the buying and selling of goods or services over the internet, where a customer browses a digital catalog, adds items to a cart, and pays through an online checkout instead of visiting a physical store. An online store works by connecting a customer-facing storefront (catalog, cart, checkout) to a back end that manages products, orders, and payments. This explainer walks through each piece so you can recognize how a site like batterysharks.com is put together.

E-commerce vs. physical retail

The core difference is where the transaction happens and what carries the "store."

Both models share the same goal: move a shopper from interest to a completed purchase. Online, every step is software.

The main storefront components

A typical storefront is built from four connected parts:

• Catalog — the list of products, each with its own page, price, and description. On batterysharks.com, product categories such as chargers and accessories are organized into browsable sections.
• Cart — a holding area for items a shopper intends to buy. The site exposes a cart at https://batterysharks.com/checkout/cart/, showing a running total (for example, "My Cart 0 $0.00" when empty).
• Checkout — the sequence where the shopper confirms items, enters shipping details, and pays.
• Payment — the mechanism that actually moves money. Battery Sharks lists Braintree as its payment platform.

The customer flow, step by step

1. Browse — the shopper lands on the store and moves through categories or search to find a product.
2. View a product — a product page shows details and price. For example, a category page like chargers-accessories/pro-charging-systems.html groups related items.
3. Add to cart — the item is placed in the cart, which updates the total.
4. Checkout — the shopper reviews the cart and proceeds to enter payment and delivery information.
5. Pay — the payment platform (Braintree here) processes the transaction.
6. Order confirmation — the store records the order in its back end and confirms it to the customer.

Each step has an expected result: browsing shows products, adding updates the cart, and paying produces an order. If any step fails, the purchase can't complete.

How a platform like Magento powers a store

Battery Sharks is built on Magento (originally developed by Varien), an e-commerce platform. A platform provides the reusable machinery a store needs:

• Product and category management
• Cart and checkout logic
• Payment integration (such as Braintree)
• Order storage and status tracking

This means the store owner configures products and settings rather than building cart and checkout code from scratch. The platform ties the storefront the customer sees to the back end that runs the business.

Front end vs. back end

It helps to separate what customers see from what operators manage.

• Front end (storefront): the catalog, product pages, cart, and checkout the shopper interacts with.
• Back end (admin): where products are added, prices set, orders reviewed, and payments configured.

The front end is the visible experience; the back end is the control room. A functioning store needs both, connected by the platform.

Common payment and order-management pieces

Beyond the catalog and cart, a working store typically needs:

• A payment gateway — to authorize and capture payments (Braintree on this site).
• Order management — to record each order, its items, and its status.
• Cart persistence — so a cart total is tracked as items are added or removed.

These pieces are what turn a set of product pages into a store that can actually take and fulfill orders.

What to take away

E-commerce is retail conducted online, and an online store is a chain of connected parts: a catalog to browse, a cart to hold items, a checkout to collect details, and a payment platform to complete the sale — all managed through a back end. Recognizing these pieces lets you look at any store, including one running on Magento like batterysharks.com, and see how a shopper moves from browsing to a completed order.

Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform used to build and run online stores: product catalogs, shopping carts, checkout, and payment integration. It was originally developed by Varien, later owned by eBay, and is now maintained by Adobe as Adobe Commerce (paid) with a free community edition called Magento Open Source. You can often recognize a Magento store by URL patterns such as /checkout/cart/, category paths like /shop-all/chargers-accessories/, and .html product pages — the same structure visible on sites like batterysharks.com.

What Magento actually does

Magento is not a hosted website builder. It is software you install on a server (or run through a hosting provider) that gives you:

• Catalog management — products, categories, attributes, configurable items (size, color, voltage), and multi-store setups from one admin.
• Cart and checkout — a persistent cart, guest and account checkout, tax and shipping rules, and order management.
• Payment integration — connections to gateways such as Braintree, PayPal, and others, configured per store view.
• Extensions and themes — a marketplace of modules to add features without rebuilding the core.

Typical use cases are mid-size to large catalogs, B2B and B2C stores, and businesses that need custom pricing, multi-language, or multi-currency storefronts.

Magento Open Source vs. Adobe Commerce

Both share the same core codebase, so extensions and themes generally work across them. The practical difference is who is responsible for hosting, security patches, and support.

How to tell whether a site runs on Magento

You do not need admin access. Look at the storefront:

1. Check the cart URL. Magento commonly uses /checkout/cart/ rather than /cart. On batterysharks.com, the cart link resolves to https://batterysharks.com/checkout/cart/.
2. Look at category and product URLs. Magento often generates paths like /shop-all/chargers-accessories/pro-charging-systems.html — nested categories ending in .html.
3. Inspect the page source. Search for Magento, mage/, static/version, or requirejs in scripts and links.
4. Check cookies and headers. Cookies such as PHPSESSID combined with Magento-specific paths, or an X-Magento-* response header, are strong signals.

None of these alone is proof — themes and caching can hide them — but two or more together are reliable.

Next steps if you are evaluating it

• Estimate your catalog and traffic. Magento handles large catalogs well but needs server resources; small stores may find lighter platforms faster to launch.
• Decide on hosting. Open Source means you (or your host) manage the server, PHP version, and updates.
• Budget for development. Custom themes, extensions, and upgrades usually require a Magento developer.
• Test the checkout path first. Since checkout and payment integration are the highest-risk areas, confirm your gateway (for example Braintree) has a maintained Magento extension before committing.

If you only need a simple storefront, a hosted platform may be less work. If you need deep customization, multi-store support, and control over the codebase, Magento is built for that.

Varien is the company that originally developed Magento, the e-commerce platform. If you see "Varien" in a Magento URL, code path, or documentation page, it is a legacy name from the platform's early years, not a separate product or a current vendor. For store owners, the practical takeaway is that Varien references are historical artifacts: the software lineage runs from Varien to Magento Inc. to Adobe Commerce, and the name persists mainly in file paths and old documentation.

The short version

• Varien = the original company behind Magento.
• Magento = the e-commerce platform Varien built.
• Magento Inc. = the company name after the platform became the main business.
• Adobe Commerce = the current commercial name after Adobe acquired Magento.

The name "Varien" survives mostly because renaming every internal path, namespace, and historical document is disruptive, so legacy identifiers stay in place long after the company name changes.

Why the name still shows up

If you work with a Magento-based store, you may encounter "Varien" in a few specific places:

• Code paths and class names. Early Magento code organized library files under a Varien namespace. Modules and themes built on that foundation can still reference it.
• URLs and admin paths. Some legacy routes and documentation links carry the old naming.
• Documentation and forum posts. Older guides, Stack Overflow answers, and tutorials predate the rebranding, so they use the terminology of their time.
• Third-party extensions. Extensions written years ago may retain Varien references in their file structure.

None of these indicate that Varien is still operating as your vendor or that you need a separate account or license.

Varien vs. the Magento platform

These are two different things, and mixing them up causes confusion:

A store does not "use Varien." It uses Magento or Adobe Commerce. Varien is the origin story, not a component you configure.

What this means for store owners today

If you run a Magento or Adobe Commerce store, the Varien name has no operational impact:

1. No action is required. You do not need to migrate away from anything called Varien, because it is not a live dependency.
2. Treat old Varien references as documentation age markers. A guide mentioning Varien is likely written for an older Magento version; check whether its instructions still match your version before applying them.
3. Watch for version mismatches, not name mismatches. The real risk in old tutorials is outdated commands, deprecated APIs, or changed admin locations, not the word "Varien" itself.
4. Verify against current sources. For anything version-specific, confirm against documentation for your actual Magento or Adobe Commerce release.

For example, if you find a tutorial that references a Varien-era configuration path, the useful question is not "what is Varien?" but "does this path still exist in my version?" That determines whether the instructions are usable.

The bottom line

Varien is the company that created Magento; Magento became Magento Inc. and later Adobe Commerce. The name lingers in code, URLs, and older documentation as a legacy identifier. If you see it on an e-commerce site or in a guide, read it as a sign that the material or codebase has older roots, and check version compatibility before acting on it.