E-commerce Basics (Selling Online)
Many e-commerce web sites try to make it appear that businesses can easily get their products online with little effort and instantly get a return on their investment. Although for some individuals this may come true for most businesses there is much more to understand and plan before you can actually begin to reap the benefits of selling products online.
Reaching Online Customers
Let's cut through the e-commerce hype and begin by pointing out some facts you should know upfront. Today, there is over 56 million web sites on the Internet and over 8 billion web pages (per Google.com). You can have the greatest shopping web site on the planet, but if your "targeted" audience cannot easily find your web site your sales will be very disappointing. So how will you get your targeted buyers to find your online storefront? To learn more see our Web Site Marketing section for some useful advice and marketing ideas.
Securing Your Data
You need to also consider how and where your data will be stored for all your product information as well as customer information. You need to know how secure is your data. How often is it backed up? Some developers try to cut corners or don't know any better and will store your data in an Access database online, which can be easily hacked into. (Did you know you should never store personal credit card numbers and card pin numbers online?)
SSL Certificate
Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology is used to make communication between a browser and a web site secure. It is also widely used protocol between servers and enterprise systems. Any reputable shopping site uses SSL to hide transaction information and personal information as it goes between computers across the Internet. This is done by encrypting all the data being transferred between computers. The encryption makes it extremely difficult for anyone to intercept the data and decipher it. In order to use SSL you have to purchase a SSL Digital Certificate from an authorized company, such as GeoTrust.com, InstantSSL.com, or Verisign.com.
Product Content
Who will be supplying and entering all the product content into your web site? How easy is it to enter all of your data and can you easily add all the necessary information you need to show your shoppers so they can make a buying decision online?
Product Images
Images are also needed for all the products as well as other areas of the web site. Web images need to be either in a "jpg" or "gif" image format. (Many newer browsers also support "PNG" images as well.) Where will you obtain all the images? Who will be responsible for resizing the images, uploading the images and connecting the image filenames to the appropriate products or categories?
Administrative Control Center
Most e-commerce sites include some sort of administrative control center where you can manage your product data and orders. You need to consider the answers to these questions before you commit:
- Is it easy to use?
- Does it allow you to create sub-categories if you need too?
- How many products are you allowed to have on your web site?
- Is it easy to cross-sell add-on products?
- You are sure to have lot's of questions, who do you call for support?
- How are shipping charges handled?
- For large items can the cart handle freight charges?
Customer Support
Depending on the type of products you are selling customers may have a lot of unanswered questions. Are you prepared to field a lot of customer phone calls? If you know the type of questions most frequently asked by your customers, does your web site do a good job of trying to answer the questions online?