Choose The Right E-commerce Solution For Your Website

More and more businesses these days are beginning to sell and distribute their products and services via the Internet. It’s a win-win situation – consumers get the best selection at the lowest prices, and retailers get access to markets outside their geographic location. But depending on the type of e-commerce website the business is pursuing, the cost to implement the project could range from a couple hundred to a few thousand dollars. There are some less professional but more cost efficient solutions, as well as some high-end solutions that will have your website rivaling the best e-commerce sites around. In this article I’ll discuss the different options available to website owners as well as the costs associated with those options.

E-commerce on the Cheap

It’s a common misconception that in order to conduct business over the Internet you have to have an expensive merchant account that will allow your customers to pay you by credit card. This used to be the case, but today there are a number of services available that make e-commerce a very affordable option. These services come in the form of third party credit card processors.

A third party credit card processor acts as an intermediary between the customer and your website. Generally, a customer will click on a link to purchase a product and be taken to the third party’s website to process the credit card information in a secure environment. The payment for the purchase is deposited in your account, and the order information is forwarded to you. The only cost to the e-commerce retailer is usually a small fixed fee and / or a small percentage of the sale.

This is a good beginner option for any business looking to make the e-commerce leap because the upfront costs are very low. 2CheckOut (www.2checkout.com) is a good choice for a third party credit card processor - they only require a $49 setup fee, and then $0.45 per transaction and 5.5% of the sale amount. An even cheaper route would be to use PayPal (www.PayPal.com) to receive payment over the Internet. The only downside with PayPal is that the consumer must have a PayPal account in order to use this payment method. The upside of both these products is the fact that they will provide the shopping cart system and associated codes to that are necessary to integrate into your website.

Although using a third party credit card processor can be cheap, it does have its disadvantages. The shopping cart system may not seamlessly integrate with your website because it’s not easily customizable. Also, it looks a little less professional when the purchaser must leave your website in order to enter their credit card information. But, when weighing these disadvantages with the costs associated with building a professional e-commerce website they really don’t seem like a big deal.

Really Taking the Plunge

Opening a fully functional online store with the ability to process credit cards on-site can be a pretty costly production. Here is a list of elements that all need to be integrated: a shopping cart system, secure web server, payment gateway, and a merchant account.

There are some shopping cart systems that are available for free, and many web hosts offer the ability to integrate a shopping cart system into your website. But, if you’d like your system to be fully featured, easy to use, seamlessly integrate with your website, and include advanced functions such as automatically calculating tax and shipping charges, the cost could run several hundred dollars.

The most expensive and difficult part of the process is obtaining a merchant account to process credit card numbers. These accounts usually have monthly and transaction fees associated with them. Fortunately, most businesses already have merchant accounts, and these can be used to process credit cards over the Internet as well. But, in order for the shopping cart system to communicate with a merchant account, they need to be interfaced with a payment gateway. Payment gateways usually require a setup fee of a few hundred dollars and a percentage of each transaction. Lastly, all the communication needs to take place over a secure server. This means that your website hosting package will need to be upgraded to include Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption. An SSL certificate is billed on either a yearly or monthly basis, and the cost can total in the hundreds of dollars.

In addition to the extra costs associated with processing transactions right on your website, there is also a significant difference in the price your webmaster will charge to setup the different solutions. Using a third party to process transactions usually just involves inserting a few lines of code into the website which shouldn’t cost very much. On the other hand, implementing a fully functional e-commerce website can easily add another thousand or two dollars on top of all the other costs.

As with any project, it’s probably best to start small before shelling out big bucks for a professional e-commerce solution. And don’t forget, even after you’ve spent thousands of dollars getting your e-commerce website launched, you’re probably going to have to spend thousands more marketing your website in order to recover your investment. E-commerce is not cheap!

Importance Of An Ecommerce Shopping Cart

Since the rapid growth of the internet over the last few years, particularly as a commercial device, the growth of what has come to be known as ecommerce has been cemented by the importance of achieving conversions online. From this, the importance of a good ecommerce shopping cart has become further recognised by businesses both small and large, which has led to an increasing number of competing applications on the market. But what is it that makes an ecommerce shopping facility important to the business model, and what are the benefits of having a ecommerce shopping cart integrated within your website?

The Internet, as much as it is a highly profitable arena for both online and predominantly offline businesses, is also a very competitive domain. There are literally billions of sites out there competing to attract traffic and sales. Traffic gives the potential for earnings online – if no one sees your site, no one can buy. Some sites will do quite well at attracting traffic and will spend heavily on search engine optimisation and advertising, but won't convert the sales meaning they are absolutely worthless. As part of converting sales, it is important to have an ecommerce shopping cart that is both easy to navigate and flexible enough to cater for the needs of your customer. If your site lacks a shopping cart, it's going to be harder to convert your website traffic into sales. By placing any obstacles in the way of your customer, you are reducing the chances of a conversion, hence the importance of including a shopping cart within your site.

The importance of an ecommerce shopping cart may be obvious as far as some websites are concerned, but what about so called 'brochure' sites? Can they benefit from having a shopping cart integrated within their site? Many brochure sites aim for the high-end professional look, and feel that integrating a shopping cart within their site will devalue the branding they've worked so hard to achieve. In fact, this can have quite the opposite effect on your brand, and can provide your customers with a direct route to paying you money. Whether as a deposit or an upfront fee, any company can benefit from having an ecommerce facility integrated within their website. Again, by presenting customers the opportunity to pay, you can increase conversion rates from your traffic. When visitors have to go out of their way to pay, they are less likely to use your service, or to pay you promptly than if payment is made a basic and straightforward process.

Having an ecommerce facility within your website is of critical importance in strengthening conversion rates and making for easy payment. Those without an ecommerce shopping cart will be left in the wake of their competitors in what is already a tough environment, and will find accepting payment from online customers more problematic and expensive. By ensuring your site boasts a sophisticated and user-friendly ecommerce shopping cart, you can remain competitive online whilst promoting quick and effective payment to maintain positive cash flow.

e-Commerce Website - Its importance for business

A e-commerce website is a collection of pages representing a company, business or simply an idea on the World Wide Web (WWW) files.The information could be in the form of traditional media including text, images & sound bytes and the more recent media of video and animation. Typically, though not necessary, the first page that your website visitors will land on is the ‘Home’ page document. The home page is a ‘master guide’ which will lead into to all the other pages of your site.

The word ‘site’ is usually used in the context of the geographical location of a place but a website is not tied to any particular place.It is simply a virtual location in the ‘cyberspace’. ‘Web presence’ can also be used to describe your website.

Depending on your business or idea and the time and resources you have, a website may consist of a one (typically called a ‘brochure’ website) or hundreds of thousands of pages.You should communicate your business requirements to your website design company, which in turn will be able to suggest the number of pages and any other functionality that will be useful for your visitors.

Websites are extensively used by corporates, big and small businesses and even individuals to provide information about their products and services and invite inquiries and hopefully orders. Multiple websites, targeting different geo-locations and languages, can also co-exist having cross-links to files on each other’s sites or even share the same files.

Your Business and websites:

In today’s time of internet popularity and globalization, a web page or website is a dynamic tool in the market for you to both acquire and service your clients.It enables one to make information easily available about themselves as well as the products and services they plan to offer.

Competition has never been fiercer and it has become necessary for every company and business to fight tooth and nail for every inch of that customer share. A website and a good website design combined with marketing and search engine optimization activities is playing an increasingly crucial role in helping businesses and individuals achieve their objectives. Online presence has lowered barriers to entry for smaller players and has provided an instant ‘global reach at practically zero cost’. I am sure everyone has heard of the ‘work from home mum’ who makes thousands of dollars selling products on their ecommerce website. I can hear you say ‘how is that possible’. Well, the simple answer is ‘online presence’ i.e. a website that allows you to sell your products or services to visitors paying through their credit card.

In my next article, I will talk about how easy it is nowadays to e-convert your interest or that hobby of what people thought was simply collecting garbage into a successful web based business.I think that is what EBay is all about ‘One man’s garbage is another man’s antique’.

All About Ecommerce Implementation

New ways of doing business online are being market tested all the time, but consider these new possibilities with in a framework that minimizes risk for your business. E-commerce as well known as electronic commerce generally refers to selling your products and services over the Web. Electronic Commerce simply means buying and selling of goods and services across the Internet using web sites.

The benefits are often viewed from views such as benefits to organizations, benefits to consumers and benefits to the society at large. The benefits of E-Commerce for your include nominal costs, faster and more efficient processes and expanded markets. By using e-commerce solutions, you can offer customers convenient shopping methods, maintain strong customer relationships, and Stay competitive ahead. This is one of the easier methods to capture online customers.

The Asia Pacific is home to two-third of the world’s population presenting a large and lucrative e-commerce market. Some countries in the region have documented this opportunity and have taken the lead role and are now some of the influential in e-commerce from the world outlook. An ecommerce site can be as simple as a telephone index, can range all the way to a real time credit and processing site where customer can purchase downloadable goods and receive them on the spot.

The region being so diverse in many aspects presents certain challenges in the implementation of a successful e-commerce strategy. In spite of these challenges there are economies in the region that are so well advanced in the deployment of e-commerce strategies while at the same there are still economies in the region that are yet to fully enjoy the benefits of e-commerce in either the supply and consumption chain. The available evidence suggests that there is indeed a divide emerging between Asia Pacific member countries in so far as e-commerce initiatives are concerned.

E-Business is the formation of new, and the redesigning of obtainable value chains and business procedures by way of the application of information technology. E-Business is actually more than e-commerce. It in turn expands the extent of e-commerce to change the company and the industry itself.

Ecommerce web design solutions – keep it simple

Most of the web design enquiries coming through these days are requests for ecommerce web design solutions. Not only are we buying more and more of our products and services online, it would appear that many of us also want to sell online. Indeed, it’s not only large corporate companies trading online nowadays. In fact most of the web design quote requests come from individuals trading from home. People are selling flowers, their own music cds, chocolates. So there is a definite market for ecommerce web design solutions. It is however a very particular market segment and offering the right product at the right price is the key to securing the e-commerce web design business.

The best way to getting the right product to market is to start with the target clients profile and needs. Although we do design complex ecommerce web design solutions for corporate clients, there is a large market for the smaller customers. These customers are looking for 3 key product features: bespoke web design, budget price and simple to use. What is budget price for a bespoke ecommerce web design solution? And how simple should the web design solution be?

The web design industry is very competitive and sales is very price sensitive. Targeting the budget web design industry can be tricky. Price your ecommerce web design too low and run the risk of losing money or appearing too cheap. Price it too high and you could miss out on a whole range of the ecommerce web design market. Indeed, even an individual potential web design customer selling from home would expect to pay a price for a bespoke quality web design. People know that they have to pay a price to get a decent quality ecommerce web design.

Remember also that individuals selling from home generally require a simple backend from where they can easily upload their products. A standard and adequate web design feature set would include a dynamic category list, individual product image upload , title, description and price update through a simple secure backend page. This is all most potential e-commerce web design clients require to start selling online. Occasionally some clients may require special features like a simple stock management system. This is usually optional and is charged as an-add on from the outset. Keep the web design quote simple, transparent and explain everything before taking payment.

Security is an important issue as well. The standard e-commerce web design solution uses Paypal secure site to take credit card payments so security is less of an issue. However, if a web design customer requires secure credit card transactions on his/her own site then it is vital to use a reliable merchant provider and an ssl on the web site for security.

Make It Easy To Buy From Your Site

Convincing your prospects to purchase from you is a hard job, but have you ever thought that you're making the process twice as difficult for both parties if your prospects are convinced but don't know how to buy from you? No matter how good you are at convincing your prospects, they won't buy if they find the process cumbersome.

First, you will want to check that people can find your order form easily and hassle-free. You can write a clear, concise paragraph to direct your prospects to your order form so that you can minimize the chances of them getting lost. You can also reduce the chances of losing prospects by putting a prominent link to your order page from every other page on your site.

Also, do you offer multiple payment options? Some people may feel comfortable paying via Paypal, some may only want to pay with their credit card and others might want to send a cheque. The more options you offer, the better your chances of covering your prospects' desired payment method. After all, it wouldn't make any sense to sell hard to a prospect only to find that they won't be able to pay you when they want to.

On the other hand, you will want to prove that you are a credible merchant. Is your order form secured using encryption technology? You would want to look into SSL for this. You can also offer a money back guarantee so that people will feel confident about buying from you. How about after sales support? Who do they contact when they have problems after purchasing?

Alternatively, you can add customer testimonials, your contact information, address, and so on to boost your prospects' confidence. Make them feel safe about buying something from you, a total stranger to them on the other end of the Internet.

Basic Design Tips For Ecommerce Websites

The single most important objective of an eCommerce website is making the visitor buy something. And this is what web design for e-commerce applications should aim to achieve. There are many principles to be considered by website designers, all of them relating to online selling techniques.

Web Site Design Development Ecommerce is different from any other website design. This is mainly because they must be attractive to the visitor, well organized and use the right colors that fit the website spirit. Nevertheless, a closer look at some successful eCommerce websites will allow you to see the conceptual differences that are typical in a successful eCommerce website. Of course the site should adhere to current web standards, with well written code and be accessible, however the focus of this article are those elements which help the web site sell.

The key selling principle of an eCommerce website is that of giving the user a pleasant experience during his online shopping. Website designers must also be certain that they provide enough information on who owns the website and provide standard data encryption via SSL. eCommerce websites must be easy to use, otherwise the visitor will simply leave and search for their goods or services on another website, probably that of the competitor!

Unlike the supermarket our website has no smell. In an eCommerce website, the distance from one point to the other is pretty much the same, however you can try to order your visual shelf in the way you think will best expose the visitor to key products.

A competitive eCommerce website design will lead the visitor to the right page in one or two clicks at most. Sometimes web designers will use techniques that would never be considered for non-eCommerce websites. As you all know, with increasingly popular sales letter websites the only link is to the order form. Nevertheless, these sales letters usually sell only one product and are not the most typical eCommerce websites. The web designer gets the opportunity to take full advantage of the one click. Believe it or not, those sales letter websites are actually selling.

An eCommerce Business Web Page Design is very much about the layout. It is crucial to catch the visitors attention and the place where they look first when accessing a web page. Research on this topic has determined that the middle left side area will attract the most attention, followed by the center of the page. By using these techniques web designers try to draw the navigation path for the visitor!