Online store has reached to a new heights in this booming Internet era.
Why?
What is the reason?
Only one answer is the rapid growth rates reached 300% or 400% over the next few years. It is a good enough reason to start thinking about
e-commerce or building online store.
In the western world consumer confidence level has been greatly uplifted by directions taken by the major banks. The level of demand for web sites with order processing, payment processing or other forms of e-commerce functionality has reached to a different direction.
From florist and greengrocers to multinationals and government departments – it’s hard to imagine any business or organization that will not benefit from using e-commerce.
There are major barriers are usually cost of implementation and issues involving maintenance of your e-commerce site.
Due to the dynamic technology market there are viable do-it-yourself alternatives at hand.
Most of these are cost effective and require little technical expertise.
You (or a member of your staff) will require minimal (if any) knowledge of HTML, graphic design and computing skills.
- Off-the-shelf solutions offer a
diverse range of options ranging
in price from several hundred
to many tens of thousands.
-
They will require installation
of the software onto a server
and you will also need to find
hosting for this server.
- They usually require some time
to learn, as they are usually very comprehensive to the point where
some of them can become overly complicated
- They will do just about everything
you want an e-commerce site to do.
- Depending on your level of
programming experience, some
of these packages will allow you
to use your own scripts to give the whole presentation
that extra jazz.
- Web-based solutions are services offered on various Web sites allowing you to build your e-commerce site using only your Web browser.
- There is no software to buy or install
- The entire process of building your online store in this way can usually be done with no (or very little) knowledge of HTML or database programming. Pricing is usually charged monthly based on the number of items that you
are offering.
- There are also software available which have already 100's of online store design layout, integrated payment method, shipping calculator, SSL layers, CGI bin, invoicing system and other cool features.
- you pay one time low fee and learn how to change all contents, pictures, price form admin control panel and you go on.
Before you even begin looking through the technical aspects of each store builder, there’s one important aspect of e-commerce that should not be overlooked.
E-commerce is still bound by geographical regions. For example, many US based store builders will not cater for businesses outside of the US.
In most circumstances, you should select a system that caters for the country you will be selling in.
When considering payment, there are two issues to consider
What form of payment you are willing to accept (credit card, check, cash, etc)
How the payment information will be transmitted to you from your customer (online, post, fax, in person, etc).
Payment can be processed in real-time by an authorized bank (or banking network) or manual processing. Real-time credit card processing will incur additional costs but will enhance security and speed up the administration process.
Google, Paypal came up easy solution to sell on the market. If you have straight forward transaction and less item you can get payment processing method through google, and paypal which is secured with less set up fee.
It will not be able to handle large or complicated product database. Than you need professional help.
There is no option in Google to customize shipping information unless you take a developer's help and go for "sandbox" approach.
Paypal has features with tier shipping calculation.
Security:
Online security is all-important for consumer confidence.
The store builder you select will use SSL (secure socket layer) security. If this is implemented properly, the closed padlock symbol on Netscape and Internet Explorer browsers will be highlighted.
This is probably the most important thing you can do to reassure your customers that ordering online is secure and safe.
Select an online store builder that implements this automatically. You shouldn't have to do anything to bring about this action.
A page of explanation regarding the security used on your site is also a good idea too.
Web tracking system/ statistics report:
After your store gets up and running, you will probably want to track your sales performance. Many online store builders will allow you to analyses your transactions.
You can analyses sales by a number of groups and categories, page views, conversion rate and so on.
You can even find out where your visitors coming from (the referring URL) and what they were searching for in search engines before arriving at your online store. What are referral links they are coming from? How long they are on individual pages?
How many times forms are submitted? etc.
You will be able to find out almost everything constantly. Also it will help you to build your searchable keyword database.
Please call us if you need any assistance to build your online store with very low
cost or if you have any question regarding installing online store in your server.
