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Ecommerce for smaller business.
Many businesses owners are finding that setting up an e-commerce website isn’t as costly as they might have first imagined. In the last couple years, a number of e-commerce software systems have arrived in the market which businesses can simply hook-up into their existing brochure type website. The selection of an ecommerce software system however needs to be made carefully as a wrong decision could end up costing a whole lot more in the long run. Of course you will need to check that the e-commerce software can be easily adapted to your existing website colour scheme; whether it has a secure socket layer (SSL) encryption, which is the e-commerce standard for protecting customer information; and the additional features such as calculation of the shipping charge and that it will work with your own payment processing company. On the whole however most of the major ecommerce software systems will have features that will meet most of these requirements.
It is also important to differentiate between “locally hosted” & “remotely hosted” ecommerce software systems as the type can have significant long term cost implications for the smaller business. Locally hosted software such as Actinic (www.actinic.com) and Oscommerce ( www.oscommerce.com ) need to be bought packaged or downloaded from the internet. Setting it up on your web site will require technical skills in database management and web programming, as well as arranging special e-commerce hosting facilities. Generally speaking you will need to get help from a professional web developer to get these systems working properly on your web site.
Remotely hosted e-commerce software such as BazaarBuilder (www.BazaarBuilder.com), on the other hand, can be used without any of the encumbrances of the locally hosted solution as the e-commerce software system is provided on a turnkey basis. Your online business can be set-up and managed from any computer connected to the Internet, anywhere in the world. After registering, you simply add your products to the online database and customise the software to match your own web site, without the need for any web programming skills or any special web hosting requirements. Remotely hosted software therefore become an ideal choice for web site designers who perhaps do not have expertise in web programming and for those who need a quick and low cost solution to setting up an e-commerce website.
With good planning and selection of all the tools available, even the smallest businesses are starting to make profits by selling their products online. Many of the earlier barriers such as high launch costs and technical expertise have been removed by recent advances in software capability. EBusiness has finally come of age for the small business owner as well.
Components of a good e-commerce site
Many of your competitors are already doing business through the Internet. You read that yearly growth rate of e-commerce is over 25 percent. E-commerce segment for the businesses that sells to other businesses or B2B, as it is called, is escalating even in a better pace. Naturally, at one point, you too decide that you need to have a piece of this action! But, what are the main characteristics of a good e-commerce site that you must consider even before you build one?
A small research will show that there are numerous choices for you to make your business presence online. In fact, you can be overwhelmed with all the possibilities that are available on the Internet to build an e-commerce website.
However, it is important to plan your website before even shop around for tools to build your site. There are some basic components that all e-commerce sites include, such as product or service description pages, a shopping cart - so that buyers can select and keep items from your product list till they generate a purchase order or an invoice, a payment mechanism: so that buyers can pay for your products online or offline. But, you also need to pay attention to the following crucial aspects:
1. Product information Buyers take their decision whether to buy a product from your site or not depending on the information that you provide. That’s why the product should have a clear and high-quality picture, short and detailed specifications. If necessary add attachments of diagrams, sketches, video etc. along with the product specification. Write clearly and prominently all sales terms and after sales supports terms, etc.
If you have many products, it is better to use an industry standard classification system to categorize your products. The goal is to have all the information related to the product available on the website, so that the customer can take a positive buying decision instantly.
2. Different Ordering Methods The ultimate goal of your e-commerce site is to make sales. Many people still do not feel comfortable to make payments through online transactions. You would be better off if you include ordering processes by fax, telephone and ordinary mail. In fact, to have a telephone number for customer support and order is a must for any e-commerce site as it gives buyers some extra feelings of security. That way they know that they can always talk to a live person if anything goes wrong.
3. Different Payment Methods Although credit cards are by far the most acceptable means of payments on the Internet, you should definitely consider other methods as well. For small payments, Paypal is becoming increasingly a popular mode. All e-commerce sites should integrate this to their payment methods. More options include: Electronic checks, e-bullion, Offline bank transfer etc.
4. Shopping Cart with Tax Calculation In your search for shopping carts look for the ones, which have different tax calculation mechanisms inbuilt. If you are located in a province or state where your regional tax gets calculated on top of the federal or vice versa, your shopping cart should have the ability to calculate them correctly.
5. Guarantees As money back guarantees are becoming increasingly common on online sales you should consider prominently posting your money back guarantee on you website. Be sure to make your money back guarantee generous! Customers are becoming pickier on this issue. For example if you sell knowledge base products like e-books, reports etc. make your hundred percent guarantees at least of two months. For tangible products, after sales warrantees should be also considerably generous. Customers should feel completely secured to buy at your website.
6. Privacy Policy Your website must have a privacy policy. Customers are very concerned about the information that they are relaying to you. You must clearly explain them what you plan to do with the various information that you collect from your customers. If your site is planning to use cookies, make sure that you covered this aspect in your privacy policy too.
7. Security If your website collects sensitive information from your customers, you should use security systems like SSL (Secure Socket Layer). This guarantees that the data provided by your customer will not fall into the hand of a malicious hacker while transferring from his computer to the web server. This also will reassure your customers that you are truly concerned about the security of their personal and sensitive information.
Once you know how to handle all the above mentioned aspects, go ahead and look for a great tool to build your dream e-commerce website and make money online!
Starting business on the web.
Savvy shoppers would prefer online shopping, they can easily research and compare products, read reviews and select a trustworthy and best rated online retailer with best pricing. Market research and business plan are the important steps in starting any online business. Based on your product type, business category, supply and demand for your product, your would perform a different market research. If your product is a common product with a lot of demands, it requires different marketing than if your product is unique and specialized.
There are some fundamental differences between doing business online and doing business the traditional way. Before you design your business web site, you must know what specific goals you desire to achieve with your business web site, determine how best to meet your goals based on your budget, and then determine what software and services you will use to design your e-commerce web site.
A web site is a lot more or even a lot less than a traditional store. There are more considerations with ecommerce web site design versus a traditional store. Web design considerations include:
Customer Friendly: Present a professional image, offer customer convenience, have good sales copy, and just make it easy for the customer to make the desired response (click, lead, sale).
Search Engine Friendly. For most online businesses, most customer traffic comes from search engines like Google, Yahoo!, or MSN. If part of your e-Commerce web site design strategy is to generate search engine traffic, you will need search engine optimization expertise to succeed. Buy it or grow it.
What is Organic search?
Organic search is also known as Natural search. In the field of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it is where the users find the web sites displayed in the search engines naturally (free by nature).
Using Organic search needs SEO methods and techniques by your SEO experts. Majority of the search engines offers Pay for Performance options. It helps promote your site by paying the search engines for your web site exposure. Of course search engines as always says.. your site is not guaranteed to be on top. Solely relying on Pay for Performance as a mean of generating traffic or bringing your web site on top of the search results page will be a costly endeavor with no sustainable results.
Organic SEO needs time, effort and techniques. It is not a quick job. You have to understand search engines and how they work. As long as you follow the Web standards, Good SEO practices and Search Engine guidelines you can’t be far away from the top of the search results.
