You are running a small business.
Or
You may have a web site but has not been generating a good income.
Or
You may have a web site, which is generating a good income, but you want to increase your income.
Or
You do not have a web site, but thinking of launching one.

If you fit in to any of above categories then this article is for you. The purpose of this article is to educate small business owners of how to launch and operate a successful e-business. Many technical jargons that you don’t want to know but YOU MUST KNOW are explained in layman’s words in this article.

Remember, web sites are not to stand still and collect E-dust. They should generate good income.

If you believe that having an attractive and a colourful web site is e-commerce or ebusiness, then I am afraid you are wrong. A good e-business solution should include the following.

1. Identify who are your visitors.

2. Identify and present clearly the benefits those visitors of your web site are going to get.

3. Visitors should achieve the purpose of visiting your web site fast (easy navigation). It can vary from find some information to purchasing goods or services. The rule of thumb is that a visitor should fulfil the purpose of visiting your site in maximum three clicks.

4. Information should be clean and easy to read.

5. Web site should be fast and should not take long time to load pages.

6. Web site should get a good Search Engine ranking. Also should get lot of visitors who are interested on your products or services (targeted traffic).

Now you have two options.

Option 1: Develop an e-business solution by yourself.

Option 2: Get a third-party to develop an e-commerce solution for you.

Irrespective of which option you are going to select, you should know few important steps/terms used in the process.

1. E-commerce web site designing:

This is the development part of your web site. You should concentrate on the content of your web site, user friendliness, speed and the structure of your web site. Also it is important to use keywords related to your business properly in order to get high rankings on Search Engines.

Don’t worry about this now. I will show you how easy this is. Keep on reading.

2. Domain name registration:

Domain name is the name of your web site
Ex: http://www.preventiveguru.com

Domain name is unique for you and nobody is able to use your domain name when it is registered for you (for the period that you purchased). This is done through a web hosting company.

3. E-commerce web hosting:

This is where you store your web pages, so everybody can access your web site. This is done through a web hosting company.

4. Ecommerce Shopping Cart:

Similar to actual shopping carts at Supermarkets, you can use a virtual shopping cart in your web site. So Customers can purchase items online, put them in the cart and pay for the whole lot. Ebusiness software is used to develop digital shopping carts.

5. Credit card processing:

You need to talk to your bank and get a merchant account to process credit cards online. Alternatively, there are companies who do credit card processing for your web site. They charge a small processing fee for each transaction.

5. Shipping:

If you are going to sell hard goods, then shipping is one of the main tasks. Shipping can be done by yourself or there are fulfilment companies who do shipping for a nominal charge. You should sign an agreement with them and configure your web site to notify them about shipping details automatically.

OK, lets consider your options of developing profitable e-business solutions.

Option 1: Do it yourself.

I hear your questions. But it is not a very difficult task. Because there are good tools to automate most of above tasks. Thanks to these tools, business owners don’t have to depend on others to run a successful e-business.

Your next step

1. Download FREE e-books for an A to Z explanation on how to do this from below web page.

http://www.preventiveguru.com/ecommerce-website-designers.html

2. Study details about ecommerce automation tools described in the same web page.

Done? Fantastic. You are ready to start your journey.

Option 2: Get a third-party to develop an e-commerce solution for you.

If you decided to go for a third party then you should know what to ask from them and what to look for. Most of ecommerce website developers concentrate on the look and feel of web sites. That along will never make you money.

Below are few important tips that you should discuss with your vendor.

Keywords: What are the main words related to your business and how are they going to use them efficiently?

Navigation: Structure of the web site and how easy to navigate and find information.

Search Engine Optimisation: How are they going to optimise your web site so that it will get good rankings?

Web hosting space: How much of space are they going to allocate for your web site.

Web statistics: Will they provide online statistics about visitors of your web site.
Statistics are very important to analyse the performances of each page in your web site. Below statistics are vital.

How many unique visitors per day.

How many visits (page wise).

Listing of entry pages.

Listing of exit pages.

Source of the visitor (search engine, web directory etc).

What are the keywords that are been used to find your web site?

OK, What’s next?

Download FREE e-books from

http://www.preventiveguru.com/ecommerce-website-designers.html

Read them carefully and understand the process in detail.

Then go and see your vendor.

The author is the Webmaster of http://www.preventiveguru.com who has over 12 years of experience in computer maintenance and eBusiness solutions. http://www.preventiveguru.com contains Free DIY information on Computer troubleshooting, maintenance and ebusiness solutions. A self-help guide for non technical PC users. Anybody can use this article for commercial or non-commercial purposes as long as the content of the article is not amended and keep a hyperlink to http://www.preventiveguru.com

Tags: ebusiness, ebusiness solutions, ecommerce, ecommerce solutions, small business, web hostingebusiness, ebusiness solutions, ecommerce, ecommerce solutions, small business, web hosting

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While getting less public handwringing than during holiday season, the “abandoned shopping cart problem” continues to wreak havoc on online sales. Recently I judged a raftload of sites for the Webby Awards (my second time) and for the Inc. magazine Web Awards, as well as for my own clients. Here are the five irritants and obstacles that most frequently disrupt the visitor’s shopping experience at e-commerce sites.

1. Lack of quick orientation for first-time visitors. What does the site sell? I’ve had to poke around for several minutes sometimes to understand the focus of a site. Jargon is one culprit. Another is lack of context, like an airline site that sells tickets not giving a single clue on the home page in what countries or even what continent it flies.

2. Explanations that don’t explain. What does the product do and not do? Another basic, but it happens often that a site doesn’t explain whether their “Turbocharge VT27-Plus” is a one-time download, a subscription, a Web-based service or something else. An alternative payment system’s site failed to offer a clear, systematic description of how it works.

3. Missing prices and shipping charges. How much? You shouldn’t have to put something into a shopping cart or enter your credit card information to learn how much an item costs, including shipping. Unfortunately, you still find this mistake at sites that have had plenty of time to get their act together.

4. Unreadable text. Say what? Creativity gone haywire seems to be the hallmark of some Web designers. Orange letters on a blue background, olive green on black, light gray on white and blue on blue were combinations that sent me packing, as did lettering too small for over-40 eyes.

5. Inconsistencies. Huh? One site says, “To sign up, click on the Sign Up link at the top of every page.” But the site does not have any “Sign Up” link, only “Sign In.” Such carelessness wastes the time of earnest shoppers and gets them frustrated and fed up, never to return.

Blunders are equally rampant at well-funded corporate sites and those from home-based businesses. The good news is that many of the errors are extremely easy and inexpensive to fix.

About The Author

Marketing guru Marcia Yudkin is the author of Poor Richard’s Web Site Marketing Makeover: Improve Your Message and Turn Visitors into Buyers, from Top Floor Publishing (http://www.yudkin.com/mmakeover.htm) and numerous other books on marketing. She recently began offering Web site reviews for just $40 (http://www.yudkin.com/sitereview.htm).

marcia@yudkin.com

Tags: ecommerce, ecommerce marketing, ecommerce solution, online businessecommerce, ecommerce marketing, ecommerce solution, online business

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The Lowdown on Ecommerce

Ecommerce is truly the most confusing aspect of purchasing web design services. This is unfortunate since most (if not all) businesses online would like to provide their customers and potential customers with easy access their products or services. In order to help make sure you get what you need to to set up an ecommerce web site, let’s look at the necessary elements of selling online.

A Web Hosting Provider

The most important things to look for in a web hosting provider with respect to ecommerce are Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) support, shopping cart software, payment gateway services and merchant account services. They are the pieces to the puzzle and you will not be able to sell online without all four of them. If you are working with a web developer who is not providing you with hosting, have them check out the features of the hosting plans you are looking at as well to make sure they will meet your needs.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Support

SSL is the internet protocol used to send information between a site visitor and a web server securely. If there is no SSL support, there is a risk that a user’s credit card information will be intercepted during the transaction. This process involves purchasing an SSL certificate. Many hosting companies offer use of what is called a “shared SSL certificate.” This simply means that instead of having your own, you will use one belonging to the hosting company and will store any secure pages on a directory of their server instead of your own web space. For people just starting out, this can be a very good solution and is often relatively inexpensive.

Another option is to buy your own SSL certificate. This is more costly, but also more professional. The visible difference to visitors of your site is that the checkout process will show your web site URL in the browser instead of that of your hosting provider.

For the lowest startup costs, check out PayPal’s merchant services. If you have a PayPal account, you can setup a basic shopping cart that will allow credit card transactions through PayPal. The downside is that your buyer will be taken to the PayPal site to enter in their credit card information, as opposed to the other two methods which can be integrated into your own site very easily. The major upside is that it is free with your PayPal account, excluding the fee per transaction.

Shopping Cart Software

If you are not going to go with the PayPal solution, you need to ensure that your hosting provider includes shopping cart software. As the name implies, shopping cart software allows a web site visitor to browse around your virtual store and place items in their cart. It also handles the final checkout process in conjunction with a payment gateway, which will be discussed below. There are many great shopping cart packages available, but they can be difficult to install and maintain on your own. Make sure your hosting provider offers good technical support before signing on, as their help will be invaluable when it comes to customizing the shopping cart software and integrating it with the rest of your web site. Some examples of good shopping cart software are Miva Merchant and OSCommerce.

Payment Gateway

When a customer enters their information into your shopping cart, it connects to a payment gateway or payment processor to verify that the credit card is valid and has the funds necessary to make the purchase. If this does not come with your hosting package, the most important thing to verify is that your shopping cart software supports the payment gateway provider you choose. Your web host should be able to provide you with the information you need to choose. If you already have a merchant account, you need to also ensure that your payment gateway and your merchant account can properly interact with each other. Many payment gateways provide merchant accounts as part of their service, but if you already have one you need to make sure they will be compatible.

Merchant Account

A merchant account is a type of bank account that must be setup with a payment processor in order to accept credit cards. Many web hosting providers have partnerships with merchant account providers and provide discounts on acquiring merchant accounts. This is an important factor to look for, since many merchant account providers have high application fees and start up costs. If you currently run a business that already accepts credit cards over the phone or in person through a card swipe terminal, then you already have a merchant account and your cheapest option might be to consult with the current provider of your account to see what they have to offer in terms of processing transactions over the internet. These are known as “card not present merchant accounts” since the buyer is not present with their physical card when making the transaction. Keep in mind that although a merchant account is a type of bank account, you will need to provide information about your regular checking account so that your merchant account provider can deposit into it when a sale is made.

Conclusion

The process in any ecommerce transaction involves a few steps. The customer browses and selects the products they want, typically utilizing shopping cart software. When they checkout, they enter their credit card number which is sent over the internet using the SSL protocol. When the hosting server receives this information, it connects to a payment gateway to approve the sale. The payment gateway verifies the credit card and deducts the funds for the sale. The payment gateway then communicates with your merchant account provider, transferring the funds. Lastly, the merchant account provider deposits the funds in a place that is accessible to you, such as a regular checking or savings account.

When selecting a web hosting provider and a web developer, make sure that all of these elements will work together. Request support from any third parties involved in the project to ensure that compatibility will not become an issue. If possible, find a package deal where all of this comes together, as it could save you a lot of time and money in the long run.

About The Author

Max Glantzman is the head designer and developer at JuiceBox Design, located at http://www.juiceboxweb.com/. Check out JuiceBox’s Web Design Advice Forum to get advice from the pros before making web development or hosting purchases.

Tags: build a ecommerce web site, e commerce, ecommerce solution, ecommerce web site designbuild a ecommerce web site, e commerce, ecommerce solution, ecommerce web site design

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