I spent part of the day updating the core and additional modules for the Drupal testing site that I run. I use the site to test out ideas and modules before I promote them to sites I run or advise. For a while I was toying with the idea of running a hosting site for small businesses that want to build up a community around their business. This functionality would typically be especially useful for hobbyist businesses like sewing supply stores, gaming businesses, and collector businesses. Drupal offers a lot of community building tools out of the box, and with some modules it becomes a full-featured site.
Some of these I gained a good amount of experience with through a female gamer social networking site that Shoshanna and I built a couple years ago. That site did not include ecommerce though, and that is the next area I would like to explore.
Ubercart is a pretty robust ecommerce module for Drupal. In fact, it is robust enough that when I initially installed it I actually had to read documentation on where to start working with it. With a couple hours of work, I was able to get shipping information, payment information, and some products into the system in order to test it out. In the end, it worked very well in the test. Ubercart for Drupal 6 is nearing a final release which is very exciting since I have been watching the status of the Drupal 6 migration for the project over the last several months.
For a small business, it becomes possible to create a framework for an ecommerce site that includes community-building aspects for their customers. Customers that feel a part of a community are much more loyal than customers who come to the store, make their purchase, and leave.