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Friday, October 2, 2009
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Evaluating Vendors of Ecommerce Fulfillment Services
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Informative Articles
Evaluating Vendors of Ecommerce Fulfillment Services
Once your website has secured an order, you have to fulfill it. While the fulfillment of digital goods is usually handled online, the delivery of physical goods is handled in a "brick-and-mortar" world.
When choosing a fulfillment company ( http://www.4th-media.net/order_fulfillment/decision_making.php ) for your ecommerce operation, you need to evaluate both fulfillment services and ecommerce services for order processing.
Evaluating Fulfillment Services
Fulfillment services includes receiving, inventorying, warehousing, delivery, record-keeping and customer inquiries. You have options to outsource part of or all of fulfillment services to a third party.
Receiving - This is the process that fulfillment vendors acquire goods from suppliers and the accuracy of services starts at the receiving.
Inventorying - The skills of inventory management directly impact the quality and cost of fulfillment. If inventory is out of stock, you may lose customers. If inventory level is too high, it may increase the cost of inventory.
Warehousing - Physical goods are stored in a warehouse and valuable items are usually stored in secure storage. While fulfillment companies have their warehouses and distribution centers, small businesses can store goods in their garages or basements.
Shipping - For order fulfillment, goods are delivered to customers in various shipping methods - ground, overnight, etc. at fulfillment centers. Customers specify shipping methods when they place their orders and the fulfillment companies may adjust the shipping methods of the delivery.
Return and Order Inquiry - Customer
Service Reps at fulfillment companies can handle return and refund for their clients. Most ecommerce sites allow customers to view their orders and status of fulfillment online.
Record Keeping and Reporting - The ability to track all information pertinent to the order fulfillment (from inventory items, customers, orders to shipping) will help businesses to gain insights into the behaviors of their customers. Fulfillment companies and large organizations usually install inventory and fulfillment management software to automate the processes. Small business owners can find shareware for less than $100.
Evaluating Ecommerce Services
E-commerce fulfillment vendors are usually fulfillment vendors that provide ecommerce services related to fulfillment.
Online Catalog - Ecommerce fulfillment vendors can either develop online storefronts for you or integrate your online storefronts into their backend fulfillment system.
Online Payment Processing - Online storefronts from ecommerce fulfillment providers should have the ability to process payments online in credit card, electronic check, and purchase order. Using a fulfillment company, you can accept credit card online without a online merchant account (http://www.4th-media.net/online_payment/online_merchant_account.php ).
Copyright © 2005, Bruce Zhang
About The Author
Bruce Zhang had worked a few years in distribution and fulfillment industry. He contributes to Order Fulfillment ( http://www.4th-media.net/order_fulfillment/ ) section of an ecommerce ( http://www.4th-media.net/ ) website.
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
Informative Articles
Evaluating Vendors of Ecommerce Fulfillment Services
Once your website has secured an order, you have to fulfill it. While the fulfillment of digital goods is usually handled online, the delivery of physical goods is handled in a "brick-and-mortar" world.
When choosing a fulfillment company ( http://www.4th-media.net/order_fulfillment/decision_making.php ) for your ecommerce operation, you need to evaluate both fulfillment services and ecommerce services for order processing.
Evaluating Fulfillment Services
Fulfillment services includes receiving, inventorying, warehousing, delivery, record-keeping and customer inquiries. You have options to outsource part of or all of fulfillment services to a third party.
Receiving - This is the process that fulfillment vendors acquire goods from suppliers and the accuracy of services starts at the receiving.
Inventorying - The skills of inventory management directly impact the quality and cost of fulfillment. If inventory is out of stock, you may lose customers. If inventory level is too high, it may increase the cost of inventory.
Warehousing - Physical goods are stored in a warehouse and valuable items are usually stored in secure storage. While fulfillment companies have their warehouses and distribution centers, small businesses can store goods in their garages or basements.
Shipping - For order fulfillment, goods are delivered to customers in various shipping methods - ground, overnight, etc. at fulfillment centers. Customers specify shipping methods when they place their orders and the fulfillment companies may adjust the shipping methods of the delivery.
Return and Order Inquiry - Customer
Service Reps at fulfillment companies can handle return and refund for their clients. Most ecommerce sites allow customers to view their orders and status of fulfillment online.
Record Keeping and Reporting - The ability to track all information pertinent to the order fulfillment (from inventory items, customers, orders to shipping) will help businesses to gain insights into the behaviors of their customers. Fulfillment companies and large organizations usually install inventory and fulfillment management software to automate the processes. Small business owners can find shareware for less than $100.
Evaluating Ecommerce Services
E-commerce fulfillment vendors are usually fulfillment vendors that provide ecommerce services related to fulfillment.
Online Catalog - Ecommerce fulfillment vendors can either develop online storefronts for you or integrate your online storefronts into their backend fulfillment system.
Online Payment Processing - Online storefronts from ecommerce fulfillment providers should have the ability to process payments online in credit card, electronic check, and purchase order. Using a fulfillment company, you can accept credit card online without a online merchant account (http://www.4th-media.net/online_payment/online_merchant_account.php ).
Copyright © 2005, Bruce Zhang
About The Author
Bruce Zhang had worked a few years in distribution and fulfillment industry. He contributes to Order Fulfillment ( http://www.4th-media.net/order_fulfillment/ ) section of an ecommerce ( http://www.4th-media.net/ ) website.
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
eConnect: eCommerce development for Microsoft Great Plains
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Informative Articles
eConnect: eCommerce development for Microsoft Great Plains
Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains has several options to enable web ordering. Traditionally Great Plains Dynamics/eEnterprise had eOrder – this is ASP pages based ordering application, enabling you to place or retrieve your Sales Order Processing (SOP) Sales Orders over the web. There were several drawbacks however with eOrder. You should be the customer in Great Plains company database to be able placing the orders. Also if you were planning to customize eOrder – you could only do cosmetic style changes only – if you wanted to alter scripts on the ASP pages – then you would have very serious eOrder upgrade issues. Upgrade simply wipes out your custom scripts and you had to reapply your customization to new version enriched ASP pages. Instead of following the way to move eOrder to ASPX or .Net platform – MBS introduced eConnect, enabling web designer to “connect” eCommerce site to Great Plains backend. This is very elegant module and solution, however we are hearing a lot of complaints from developers on eConnect restrictions.
• SOP Invoice posting. It is not enabled in eConnect. However you should probably first understand the architecture of Microsoft Great Plains. Order takers supposed to enter Sales Order and submit it (place in the batch and save) to the manager for approval (taking off transfer/print/post holds). eConnect enables you to create or update Great Plains objects, but it doesn’t allow you to process them (post) – this would open a gap in the security/approval cycle.
• Order Transfer. Again – this is similar problem to the invoice posting. Both Order and Invoice could be subject to holds and approvals. eCommerce logic might need partial or full order transfer to invoice or even backorder, based on the item availability status.
Why would you then need to purchase eConnect? Maybe just go ahead and program the connection in SQL stored procedures? The answer is – eConnect allows you to allocate items in
Great Plains Inventory Control module. It would take you a lot of time (if you are new to Great Plains tables structure and never coded in Great Plains Dexterity). Plus eConnect allows you to create and update customer record in Great Plains – this is however relatively simple to imitate in the stored procedure.
Then what is the solution?
• Do not allow order transfer and posting through eCommerce. This is probably the best advise we could give you – just create orders, or invoices, leave them to the Great Plains user to approve and post. However in some cases it is absolutely critical and required
• Look for Invoice posting stored proc on the market. You are not the first and not the last one to face this dilemma – somebody already has it implemented (SOP10200, SOP10100, SOP30200, SOP30300 tables)
• Microsoft Small Business Financials or former Microsoft Small Business Manager. In your case – you need the whole set of stored procedures to enable eCommerce
Great Plains version: more likely you are using eConnect for Great Plains Standard or Great Plains Professional 7.5, 8.0 and in the future 8.5 or 9.0
Good luck in e-Commerce developing and if you have issues or concerns – we are here to help! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com
Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, serving clients in Chicago, California, Texas, Florida, New York, Georgia, Arizona, Minnesota, UK, Australia and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( "http://www.albaspectrum.com/">http://www.albaspectrum.com ), he is CMA, Great Plains Certified Master, Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer. You can contact Andrew: andrewk@albaspectrum.com
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
Informative Articles
eConnect: eCommerce development for Microsoft Great Plains
Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains has several options to enable web ordering. Traditionally Great Plains Dynamics/eEnterprise had eOrder – this is ASP pages based ordering application, enabling you to place or retrieve your Sales Order Processing (SOP) Sales Orders over the web. There were several drawbacks however with eOrder. You should be the customer in Great Plains company database to be able placing the orders. Also if you were planning to customize eOrder – you could only do cosmetic style changes only – if you wanted to alter scripts on the ASP pages – then you would have very serious eOrder upgrade issues. Upgrade simply wipes out your custom scripts and you had to reapply your customization to new version enriched ASP pages. Instead of following the way to move eOrder to ASPX or .Net platform – MBS introduced eConnect, enabling web designer to “connect” eCommerce site to Great Plains backend. This is very elegant module and solution, however we are hearing a lot of complaints from developers on eConnect restrictions.
• SOP Invoice posting. It is not enabled in eConnect. However you should probably first understand the architecture of Microsoft Great Plains. Order takers supposed to enter Sales Order and submit it (place in the batch and save) to the manager for approval (taking off transfer/print/post holds). eConnect enables you to create or update Great Plains objects, but it doesn’t allow you to process them (post) – this would open a gap in the security/approval cycle.
• Order Transfer. Again – this is similar problem to the invoice posting. Both Order and Invoice could be subject to holds and approvals. eCommerce logic might need partial or full order transfer to invoice or even backorder, based on the item availability status.
Why would you then need to purchase eConnect? Maybe just go ahead and program the connection in SQL stored procedures? The answer is – eConnect allows you to allocate items in
Great Plains Inventory Control module. It would take you a lot of time (if you are new to Great Plains tables structure and never coded in Great Plains Dexterity). Plus eConnect allows you to create and update customer record in Great Plains – this is however relatively simple to imitate in the stored procedure.
Then what is the solution?
• Do not allow order transfer and posting through eCommerce. This is probably the best advise we could give you – just create orders, or invoices, leave them to the Great Plains user to approve and post. However in some cases it is absolutely critical and required
• Look for Invoice posting stored proc on the market. You are not the first and not the last one to face this dilemma – somebody already has it implemented (SOP10200, SOP10100, SOP30200, SOP30300 tables)
• Microsoft Small Business Financials or former Microsoft Small Business Manager. In your case – you need the whole set of stored procedures to enable eCommerce
Great Plains version: more likely you are using eConnect for Great Plains Standard or Great Plains Professional 7.5, 8.0 and in the future 8.5 or 9.0
Good luck in e-Commerce developing and if you have issues or concerns – we are here to help! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com
Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, serving clients in Chicago, California, Texas, Florida, New York, Georgia, Arizona, Minnesota, UK, Australia and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( "http://www.albaspectrum.com/">http://www.albaspectrum.com ), he is CMA, Great Plains Certified Master, Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer. You can contact Andrew: andrewk@albaspectrum.com
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
Monday, December 15, 2008
ECOMMERCE: YOUR OPPORTUNITIES ARE UNLIMITED
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Informative Articles
ECOMMERCE: YOUR OPPORTUNITIES ARE UNLIMITED
Peter Drucker believes ecommerce will be to the Information
Revolution what the railroads were to the Industrial Revolution.*
To oversimplify, the Industrial Revolution was a time in which
tools were produced that replaced people in the manufacture of
goods. In the first thirty years, all was devoted to producing
known products with machines.
While there were drastic social changes with the massive
shift from rural to urban living, there was little change in the
products produced and purchased. They only became more readily
available at ever more modest cost.
Only later did the Industrial Revolution produce something
new - the railroads. For the first time in history, people could
readily move great distances inexpensively. (Hauling freight
came much later.) Railroads brought a thirty year boom in
Europe, and an even longer one in the United States. While many
other parts of the world got started somewhat later, the boom did
not end for them until the outbreak of World War I.
What Will Arise From The Information Revolution?
The parallels between the Industrial and Information
Revolutions are astonishing. Thus far computers, the Web, and
information technology have created nothing dramatically new.
They have merely changed the ways in which information is
gathered, managed and reported. And to some extent, the way in
which consumers purchase goods.
Computers themselves have changed the way in which products
are manufactured, including their design. And a few new spinoffs
have come to the fore. But there has not been anything
revolutionary in any of this. Nothing yet has had the impact of
railroads on the whole of the social fabric.
If Drucker is correct, ecommerce will have an impact
equivalent to that of the railroads earlier. Thus far the Web
has produced less change in the way business is done than ore
cars running on steel rails effected mining. In short, the real
drama and excitement is yet to be revealed.
Given easy access to the Web, you and I have been invited to
join in. For myself, I don't want to miss a beat.
A Radical Shift Is Upon Us
There appears to be an awesome and exciting shift emerging in
the way business is done. There are those who feel that if it's
good for business, it's good. Period. I hold a different view:
If it's not good for people, it's not good.
Many with a business orientation are likely to abandon my
thinking here. Those convinced people are sheep born to be
shorn certainly will. But whatever your view, enormous changes
in the way in which business is done are rushing down upon us.
Companies who do not embrace them, will be swept away into
history.
What Will Customer Service Come To Mean?
For example, automated telephone systems and elevator music
will fade away, as will the companies that cling to such
barriers. People will not be content much longer, with clutching
a phone to their ear, trying to accomplish some other task, while
waiting for the answer they need right now.
"The customer comes first" will remain the driving force
behind all successful businesses. Today, such phrases mumbled by
all are generally mere tokenism. Tomorrow they will come to have
an entirely new meaning.
Contemporary companies provide such services at their
convenience. The endless round of voice mail and recordings
in which busy people respond only to leave yet another message
will
come to a screeching halt. Successful companies will
provide support when a customer requests it. And they will
do so quickly.
Conglomerates May Become Extinct
People have had enough of businesses concerned about their
bottom line. They are becoming increasingly concerned about
their own needs. They are even now turning away from those who
fail to recognize this. Business success in the future will
depend heavily upon effective customer support provided
immediately upon request.
Conglomerates may be dinosaurs, so huge, so driven by their
own inertia, they will disintegrate back into the smaller parts
from which they were created. Such companies talk of customer
relationships, but often do all possible to avoid any semblance
of one-on-one customer support. Smaller firms can be responsive.
Those who are, will outperform those who are not.
I am excited about the future for Cyberpreneurs. They will
understand they need their customers more than the customer needs
them. Untroubled by the constraints of contemporary business
practices, they will see responsiveness to customers as an
essential fundamental of their business. This characteristic of
itself will give them a competitive edge over large businesses
that do not.
The Future Is Yours For The Taking
One by one, creative people will consider ways in which
conglomerates produce and deliver products. They will then
discover a way in which they can do so more effectively. The
much larger company will hardly be aware of the tiny loss in
revenue. But given many such losses, the bottom line will begin
to erode.
Completely new business models will emerge. They will seem
so right, so perfectly attuned to both the needs of businesses
and consumers, we will wonder why they did not appear much
sooner.
There will be a return to a "Rural," rather than an "Urban,"
pattern of living, one independent of where you choose to live.
In this "reversal," there will be a return to individuals being
valued. Once again, as was so prior to the Industrial
Revolution, people will be both producer and consumer, making
a significant contribution in both roles.
The Real "New World"
I continue to hear the Web is not real. That it is nothing
more than herds of impulses stampeding about on copper or optical
cables. What is reality? I will leave this to the philosophers.
But there is no question in my mind; the Web is real. A new
reality, at that.
You can feel the awesome power and unlimited resources
surging from the collective dynamic of millions and millions
of people the world over. People who are real. Our interaction
with each other is real, and now unlimited by national
boundaries. The Web itself is but a tool. Not unlike the
telephone, but magnitudes more powerful. It facilitates the
ability to interrelate, to communicate one-on-one. And we will
do so in ways not yet imagined.
Welcome to today's "New World."
(Taken from "Your Path To Success" to be released in
September, 2001)
__________________
*"Beyond the Information Revolution" by Peter F. Drucker, "The
Atlantic Monthly," Oct 1999, p47-57.
About the Author
Bob McElwain
Want to build a winning site? Improve one you already
have? Fix one that's busted? Get ANSWERS. Subscribe
to "STAT News" now! mailto:join-stat@lyris.dundee.net
Web marketing and consulting since 1993
Site:
Phone: 209-742-6349
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
Informative Articles
ECOMMERCE: YOUR OPPORTUNITIES ARE UNLIMITED
Peter Drucker believes ecommerce will be to the Information
Revolution what the railroads were to the Industrial Revolution.*
To oversimplify, the Industrial Revolution was a time in which
tools were produced that replaced people in the manufacture of
goods. In the first thirty years, all was devoted to producing
known products with machines.
While there were drastic social changes with the massive
shift from rural to urban living, there was little change in the
products produced and purchased. They only became more readily
available at ever more modest cost.
Only later did the Industrial Revolution produce something
new - the railroads. For the first time in history, people could
readily move great distances inexpensively. (Hauling freight
came much later.) Railroads brought a thirty year boom in
Europe, and an even longer one in the United States. While many
other parts of the world got started somewhat later, the boom did
not end for them until the outbreak of World War I.
What Will Arise From The Information Revolution?
The parallels between the Industrial and Information
Revolutions are astonishing. Thus far computers, the Web, and
information technology have created nothing dramatically new.
They have merely changed the ways in which information is
gathered, managed and reported. And to some extent, the way in
which consumers purchase goods.
Computers themselves have changed the way in which products
are manufactured, including their design. And a few new spinoffs
have come to the fore. But there has not been anything
revolutionary in any of this. Nothing yet has had the impact of
railroads on the whole of the social fabric.
If Drucker is correct, ecommerce will have an impact
equivalent to that of the railroads earlier. Thus far the Web
has produced less change in the way business is done than ore
cars running on steel rails effected mining. In short, the real
drama and excitement is yet to be revealed.
Given easy access to the Web, you and I have been invited to
join in. For myself, I don't want to miss a beat.
A Radical Shift Is Upon Us
There appears to be an awesome and exciting shift emerging in
the way business is done. There are those who feel that if it's
good for business, it's good. Period. I hold a different view:
If it's not good for people, it's not good.
Many with a business orientation are likely to abandon my
thinking here. Those convinced people are sheep born to be
shorn certainly will. But whatever your view, enormous changes
in the way in which business is done are rushing down upon us.
Companies who do not embrace them, will be swept away into
history.
What Will Customer Service Come To Mean?
For example, automated telephone systems and elevator music
will fade away, as will the companies that cling to such
barriers. People will not be content much longer, with clutching
a phone to their ear, trying to accomplish some other task, while
waiting for the answer they need right now.
"The customer comes first" will remain the driving force
behind all successful businesses. Today, such phrases mumbled by
all are generally mere tokenism. Tomorrow they will come to have
an entirely new meaning.
Contemporary companies provide such services at their
convenience. The endless round of voice mail and recordings
in which busy people respond only to leave yet another message
will
come to a screeching halt. Successful companies will
provide support when a customer requests it. And they will
do so quickly.
Conglomerates May Become Extinct
People have had enough of businesses concerned about their
bottom line. They are becoming increasingly concerned about
their own needs. They are even now turning away from those who
fail to recognize this. Business success in the future will
depend heavily upon effective customer support provided
immediately upon request.
Conglomerates may be dinosaurs, so huge, so driven by their
own inertia, they will disintegrate back into the smaller parts
from which they were created. Such companies talk of customer
relationships, but often do all possible to avoid any semblance
of one-on-one customer support. Smaller firms can be responsive.
Those who are, will outperform those who are not.
I am excited about the future for Cyberpreneurs. They will
understand they need their customers more than the customer needs
them. Untroubled by the constraints of contemporary business
practices, they will see responsiveness to customers as an
essential fundamental of their business. This characteristic of
itself will give them a competitive edge over large businesses
that do not.
The Future Is Yours For The Taking
One by one, creative people will consider ways in which
conglomerates produce and deliver products. They will then
discover a way in which they can do so more effectively. The
much larger company will hardly be aware of the tiny loss in
revenue. But given many such losses, the bottom line will begin
to erode.
Completely new business models will emerge. They will seem
so right, so perfectly attuned to both the needs of businesses
and consumers, we will wonder why they did not appear much
sooner.
There will be a return to a "Rural," rather than an "Urban,"
pattern of living, one independent of where you choose to live.
In this "reversal," there will be a return to individuals being
valued. Once again, as was so prior to the Industrial
Revolution, people will be both producer and consumer, making
a significant contribution in both roles.
The Real "New World"
I continue to hear the Web is not real. That it is nothing
more than herds of impulses stampeding about on copper or optical
cables. What is reality? I will leave this to the philosophers.
But there is no question in my mind; the Web is real. A new
reality, at that.
You can feel the awesome power and unlimited resources
surging from the collective dynamic of millions and millions
of people the world over. People who are real. Our interaction
with each other is real, and now unlimited by national
boundaries. The Web itself is but a tool. Not unlike the
telephone, but magnitudes more powerful. It facilitates the
ability to interrelate, to communicate one-on-one. And we will
do so in ways not yet imagined.
Welcome to today's "New World."
(Taken from "Your Path To Success" to be released in
September, 2001)
__________________
*"Beyond the Information Revolution" by Peter F. Drucker, "The
Atlantic Monthly," Oct 1999, p47-57.
About the Author
Bob McElwain
Want to build a winning site? Improve one you already
have? Fix one that's busted? Get ANSWERS. Subscribe
to "STAT News" now! mailto:join-stat@lyris.dundee.net
Web marketing and consulting since 1993
Site:
Phone: 209-742-6349
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
Ecommerce website overview accepting payments online
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Informative Articles
Ecommerce website overview accepting payments online
According to searchmerchants.com, there are an infinite number of choices for accepting payments online. You can accept online payments from an ECommerce Web site in two general ways.
1) Through your own online merchant account 2) Through a third party online payment processor.Accepting Payments Online through your own Internet Merchant Account
Accepting payments online via a merchant account puts you in control and limits your reliability on outside payment acceptance services. Besides an Internet merchant account, you will need shopping cart software, a store or site host, a processor, and a secure payment gateway. You may fit these pieces together in several different ways. On one end of the spectrum, you can choose the provider for each piece individually. On the other end, you may choose a turnkey solution, where a single provider has completed the puzzle for you. There is no single best solution. Your choice will depend on your particular needs
and experience. Among other considerations, you should factor in your own comfort with the technologies, customer convenience, providers' service levels, available technical support, reliability, costs, and time commitment involved.
Accepting Payments Online through a Third Party Online Payment ProcessorIf you are not ready to set up your own online merchant account and/or you want to offer additional online payment options, you can turn to a variety of third party online payment processors. Third party online payment processors provide a way to accept payments online without the extra cost and obligation of a merchant account. To compensate, transaction fees and/or discount rates are significantly higher than for merchant accounts.
About the author:
For more information on merchant services,please visit http://www.paynetsystems.com< /a>
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
Informative Articles
Ecommerce website overview accepting payments online
According to searchmerchants.com, there are an infinite number of choices for accepting payments online. You can accept online payments from an ECommerce Web site in two general ways.
1) Through your own online merchant account 2) Through a third party online payment processor.Accepting Payments Online through your own Internet Merchant Account
Accepting payments online via a merchant account puts you in control and limits your reliability on outside payment acceptance services. Besides an Internet merchant account, you will need shopping cart software, a store or site host, a processor, and a secure payment gateway. You may fit these pieces together in several different ways. On one end of the spectrum, you can choose the provider for each piece individually. On the other end, you may choose a turnkey solution, where a single provider has completed the puzzle for you. There is no single best solution. Your choice will depend on your particular needs
and experience. Among other considerations, you should factor in your own comfort with the technologies, customer convenience, providers' service levels, available technical support, reliability, costs, and time commitment involved.
Accepting Payments Online through a Third Party Online Payment ProcessorIf you are not ready to set up your own online merchant account and/or you want to offer additional online payment options, you can turn to a variety of third party online payment processors. Third party online payment processors provide a way to accept payments online without the extra cost and obligation of a merchant account. To compensate, transaction fees and/or discount rates are significantly higher than for merchant accounts.
About the author:
For more information on merchant services,please visit http://www.paynetsystems.com< /a>
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
Ecommerce Website Development Brings More People To Your Business
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Informative Articles
Ecommerce Website Development Brings More People To Your Business
If you have a business and you want to tell more people about your business and what service you offer to the public or what product you're selling. Putting your business on the Internet today offers you the chance to reach millions of people everyday and it's as easy as finding the right website host who will work with you to get your web page up and running so you can start making more money. Millions of people everyday move through the internet to the merchant's web site. From there, a person decides they want to purchase something, so they move to the online transaction server gathers, saves, and encrypts all the information the person gives. Once this person has placed his or her order, the information moves through a private gateway to a Processing Network, where the issuing and acquiring banks complete or deny the transaction. This generally takes place in no more than 5-7 seconds. There are many different payment systems available to accommodate the varied processing needs of Ecommerce website development merchants, from those who have a few orders a day to those who process thousands of transactions daily. With the addition of Secure Socket Layer technology, E-Commerce is also a very safe way to complete transactions. There are several basic steps involved in becoming E-Commerce Enabled.
Getting an Internet Merchant Bank Account Web Hosting Obtaining a Digital Certificate Finding a Provider of Online Transactions Creating or Purchasing a Shopping Cart Software
You want to be able to accept credit cards over the internet; you will have to apply to your bank for an Internet Merchant Bank Account. This can be relatively easy or somewhat
difficult, depending on which country you live in and what bank you are with. In the US , this is a fairly simple procedure. Many banks offer Internet Merchant Accounts, and most Online Transaction Providers will support them. See your bank for details. Since the vast majority of Online Transaction Providers are located in the US and are restricted in their ability to interact with banks outside their own country, international merchants have very little choice. An international merchant has to find a way to get a US merchant account, embark on the equally difficult task of finding a local Online Transaction Provider, or utilize one of the few companies that services the international market. Also, many banks outside the US have very restrictive policies regarding internet accounts. Luckily, the situation is improving, and most Online Transaction Providers will help you with this if you get in touch with them.
In the ratings section, I have included information on which providers give international service. Here are some additional issues to keep in mind when you apply for a Merchant Bank Account:
A US merchant account can take up to a month to come through.
If you already have a merchant bank account, you will probably also need to upgrade it to an Internet account.
Ensure that your bank accepts Internet merchant accounts and has credit card processors that can connect to FDC, Paymentech or CyberCash.
Your account must be able to handle Card Not Present transactions.
About the author:
Leeanna is an expert author who writes for Ecommerce Website Development
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
Informative Articles
Ecommerce Website Development Brings More People To Your Business
If you have a business and you want to tell more people about your business and what service you offer to the public or what product you're selling. Putting your business on the Internet today offers you the chance to reach millions of people everyday and it's as easy as finding the right website host who will work with you to get your web page up and running so you can start making more money. Millions of people everyday move through the internet to the merchant's web site. From there, a person decides they want to purchase something, so they move to the online transaction server gathers, saves, and encrypts all the information the person gives. Once this person has placed his or her order, the information moves through a private gateway to a Processing Network, where the issuing and acquiring banks complete or deny the transaction. This generally takes place in no more than 5-7 seconds. There are many different payment systems available to accommodate the varied processing needs of Ecommerce website development merchants, from those who have a few orders a day to those who process thousands of transactions daily. With the addition of Secure Socket Layer technology, E-Commerce is also a very safe way to complete transactions. There are several basic steps involved in becoming E-Commerce Enabled.
Getting an Internet Merchant Bank Account Web Hosting Obtaining a Digital Certificate Finding a Provider of Online Transactions Creating or Purchasing a Shopping Cart Software
You want to be able to accept credit cards over the internet; you will have to apply to your bank for an Internet Merchant Bank Account. This can be relatively easy or somewhat
difficult, depending on which country you live in and what bank you are with. In the US , this is a fairly simple procedure. Many banks offer Internet Merchant Accounts, and most Online Transaction Providers will support them. See your bank for details. Since the vast majority of Online Transaction Providers are located in the US and are restricted in their ability to interact with banks outside their own country, international merchants have very little choice. An international merchant has to find a way to get a US merchant account, embark on the equally difficult task of finding a local Online Transaction Provider, or utilize one of the few companies that services the international market. Also, many banks outside the US have very restrictive policies regarding internet accounts. Luckily, the situation is improving, and most Online Transaction Providers will help you with this if you get in touch with them.
In the ratings section, I have included information on which providers give international service. Here are some additional issues to keep in mind when you apply for a Merchant Bank Account:
A US merchant account can take up to a month to come through.
If you already have a merchant bank account, you will probably also need to upgrade it to an Internet account.
Ensure that your bank accepts Internet merchant accounts and has credit card processors that can connect to FDC, Paymentech or CyberCash.
Your account must be able to handle Card Not Present transactions.
About the author:
Leeanna is an expert author who writes for Ecommerce Website Development
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
Ecommerce Web Sites: If You Build It They Will Come - Or Will They?
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Informative Articles
Ecommerce Web Sites: If You Build It They Will Come - Or Will They?
"If you build it they will come" is one of the memorable lines from the movie "Field of Dreams", one of my favorite movies, by-the-way. An ordinary guy had a dream about building a baseball field in the middle of a cornfield. He carried through with his dream, and the players came, and the fans followed.
Many people today have the dream of building their own ecommerce internet business, their own "Cyberspace Field of Dreams." The problem is, in most cases, there is nothing to distinguish their web site from the thousands of other ecommerce web sites on the internet. They built it, but "no one is coming."
The guy in the movie built something truly unique, something that really stood out. What could stand out more than a baseball field in the midst of a cornfield? If you want people to come to your "field of dreams", you must make it truly unique just as the guy in the movie did.
The guy in the movie worked hard building a baseball field that he, the players, and especially the fans, could all be proud of. That's what you must do with your web site! Hard work paid off for him, and it will pay off for you as well. Bear in mind too that the work doesn't end the
minute the field is finished. The next phase starts as we work to let people know about our "field", and why they should visit, participate, and buy.
It pays to do it right. Don't make the mistake of doing it halfway. Don't just build an "infield", build the whole ballpark, and make it a fun and interesting place for the "fans" to visit.
Make your dream stand out from the crowd! Your dream is yours, it's unique! Put your personal stamp, your own "personal touch", on it. After it's built, keep it "mowed and watered" and make it a place that people will want to come back to time-after-time.
So go, create your own "field of dreams" online, but know that when it's built, you need to nourish and maintain it, and the rewards will follow.
About the Author
Lewis Poteet is a web designer/eCommerce business owner.
Web Hosting, Merchant Accounts, eCommerce Solutions at http://www.eComAndMore.com.
My eCommerce blog is at http://www.eComAndMore.com/blog.
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
Informative Articles
Ecommerce Web Sites: If You Build It They Will Come - Or Will They?
"If you build it they will come" is one of the memorable lines from the movie "Field of Dreams", one of my favorite movies, by-the-way. An ordinary guy had a dream about building a baseball field in the middle of a cornfield. He carried through with his dream, and the players came, and the fans followed.
Many people today have the dream of building their own ecommerce internet business, their own "Cyberspace Field of Dreams." The problem is, in most cases, there is nothing to distinguish their web site from the thousands of other ecommerce web sites on the internet. They built it, but "no one is coming."
The guy in the movie built something truly unique, something that really stood out. What could stand out more than a baseball field in the midst of a cornfield? If you want people to come to your "field of dreams", you must make it truly unique just as the guy in the movie did.
The guy in the movie worked hard building a baseball field that he, the players, and especially the fans, could all be proud of. That's what you must do with your web site! Hard work paid off for him, and it will pay off for you as well. Bear in mind too that the work doesn't end the
minute the field is finished. The next phase starts as we work to let people know about our "field", and why they should visit, participate, and buy.
It pays to do it right. Don't make the mistake of doing it halfway. Don't just build an "infield", build the whole ballpark, and make it a fun and interesting place for the "fans" to visit.
Make your dream stand out from the crowd! Your dream is yours, it's unique! Put your personal stamp, your own "personal touch", on it. After it's built, keep it "mowed and watered" and make it a place that people will want to come back to time-after-time.
So go, create your own "field of dreams" online, but know that when it's built, you need to nourish and maintain it, and the rewards will follow.
About the Author
Lewis Poteet is a web designer/eCommerce business owner.
Web Hosting, Merchant Accounts, eCommerce Solutions at http://www.eComAndMore.com.
My eCommerce blog is at http://www.eComAndMore.com/blog.
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
eCommerce Web Site Building: Where Do I Start?
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Informative Articles
eCommerce Web Site Building: Where Do I Start?
An article discussing the details on what tools, skills, and services you might need to start an ecommerce business.
Building a web site isn't something that is really cut and dry. There's a huge variety of products and services that can either help you get your web site where you want it or simply confuse you. It's also important that you make the right choices upfront so that you don't end up having to restructure your whole web site because of some problem in your design layout. The level of time investment neccessary for mastery in a lot of these software packages can range from little to a VERY significant amount. Because of this I feel it's important to be lead in the "right" direction to make sure you don't spend time in the wrong areas, or learning some software that might not be all that useful for you later on (coughs Frontpage coughs).
Where you should start greatly depends on what you plan on attempting to do, and how deep you're going to dive in. For a moderately professional, clean looking web site without a lot of automation or intensive animated graphics you can probably get by with some basic knowledge of html, ability with a good WYSIWYG editor, and an image editting program. On the other hand, if you're someone that's looking to build something that will really wow your audience then you might consider spending some major time and developing some animation skills with a program like Macromedia Flash. I personally always spring for what I believe will bring me the greatest amount of profit with a minimal amount of effort, and because of this I usually end up spending all of my time diving in deeper with ONLY my WYSIWYG HTML editor, and my image editor.
What is a "WYSIWYG" editor?
A WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor is what allows you to get by with minimal knowledge of HTML. Yes, that means you don't have to know EVERYTHING about HTML to have a decent looking website. When you use a WYSIWYG editor it interprets what you're doing (inserting an image for example) as being a certain series of HTML tags with attributes, and does it for you... Thus, what you see on your screen is what you get. Instead of seeing a bunch of HTML code in text format, you'll mostly see what will actually show up in your browser once your web site is up WHILE you're making it. I highly recommend using the latest version of dreamweaver -- it is well-known as one of the best HTML editors by general consensus. Dreamweaver's interface is very friendly, has a built in FTP client, and is specifically built to be flexible enough to suit both the coder and the everyday amatuer webmaster.
Image editing? What do I need that for?
Okay, let's be realistic here: If you're going to make a professional appearing web site it's important that you can make some basic, decent looking graphics. There's a lot of graphics problems that can truly get the job done, but as far as power and flexibility goes I recommend Adobe Photoshop. Adobe Photoshop definitely takes some time getting used to, but in the end it's VERY rewarding. I've ended up using my knowledge of Photoshop to make not only graphics for multiple web sites, but also touched up portraits, made business cards, flyers, and other online advertisments such as banners. Infact, I've used it for everything except animation... But it also comes with Adobe Imageready which is very good with
animation. This software is amazing, and if you're going to learn ANY image editing software I recommend you start with Photoshop because of it's widerange of overall... usefulness!
Let's get me some sales!
Kick off your new web site you've gotten up from your knowledge of webmastering and image editing with a few new sales... Sounds like a plan? Well a great way to do that quickly is with pay-per-click advertising. BUT WAIT! Doesn't that cost money? Well... Yes. But with the tools brought to us by some of the biggest pay-per-click advertisers out there we should be able to make a good evaluation of how much profit we're going to make without much investment upfront.
The big question behind pay-per-click advertising is whether or not it's worth the cash when you can simply get traffic from regular search engine ranking (otherwise known as organic traffic). Afterall, there are plenty of companies out there that promise to help get you all the traffic you need through optimizing your web site for organic ranking. The answer to this question is quite simple: profit is profit. Through conversion tracking tools such as those offered by Yahoo! Search Marketing and Google Adwords anyone can calculate exactly what their profit is after cost of PPC advertising is taken out. In my opinion, Google Adwords has the most user-friendly interface among the PPC advertisers. Google Adword's interface makes it very easy to see which keywords are pulling you in the most sales, and which ones aren't even worth your advertising money.
Let us not forget, however, that in order to make those conversions we're going to be needing a shopping cart! There's a lot of diverse software packages out there you can use, but I've been using Mal's E-Commerce Free shopping cart for a number of years with great success. The cart's server is hosted on their machines so that means you not only get away with not having to pay for the software itself, but you get out of having to buy an SSL security ticket too! Nothing's a better bargain than free, eh?
Getting those sales leads you've been building up to BUY!
Once you've scored a few sales it would probably be a good idea to start using some kind of lead management services. I highly recommend the use of autoresponders for this purpose. Autoresponders are, essentially, a newsletter sign-up that allows you to strategically determine what you want to send each lead after a certain alotted amount of time. For example, let's say someone visits your web site and you offer them a free newsletter. If you were selling an ebook on some very complicated topic, you might consider sending them only information on the most basic concepts at first to get them interested. Slowly but surely, you can turn those visitors that might have left your web site and never have returned into some serious revenue!As far as autoresponders go, I highly recommend the use of Aweber. Their customer service is superb (seriously, these guys really know their stuff!) and can be contacted at any point during the business day via online chat or phone. They also offer tons of free information, and guides on making the most of their services. Check out their month long free trial at http://www.getaweber.com/
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jacob Richards currently runs a website on the topic of building an ecommerce web site.
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
Informative Articles
eCommerce Web Site Building: Where Do I Start?
An article discussing the details on what tools, skills, and services you might need to start an ecommerce business.
Building a web site isn't something that is really cut and dry. There's a huge variety of products and services that can either help you get your web site where you want it or simply confuse you. It's also important that you make the right choices upfront so that you don't end up having to restructure your whole web site because of some problem in your design layout. The level of time investment neccessary for mastery in a lot of these software packages can range from little to a VERY significant amount. Because of this I feel it's important to be lead in the "right" direction to make sure you don't spend time in the wrong areas, or learning some software that might not be all that useful for you later on (coughs Frontpage coughs).
Where you should start greatly depends on what you plan on attempting to do, and how deep you're going to dive in. For a moderately professional, clean looking web site without a lot of automation or intensive animated graphics you can probably get by with some basic knowledge of html, ability with a good WYSIWYG editor, and an image editting program. On the other hand, if you're someone that's looking to build something that will really wow your audience then you might consider spending some major time and developing some animation skills with a program like Macromedia Flash. I personally always spring for what I believe will bring me the greatest amount of profit with a minimal amount of effort, and because of this I usually end up spending all of my time diving in deeper with ONLY my WYSIWYG HTML editor, and my image editor.
What is a "WYSIWYG" editor?
A WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor is what allows you to get by with minimal knowledge of HTML. Yes, that means you don't have to know EVERYTHING about HTML to have a decent looking website. When you use a WYSIWYG editor it interprets what you're doing (inserting an image for example) as being a certain series of HTML tags with attributes, and does it for you... Thus, what you see on your screen is what you get. Instead of seeing a bunch of HTML code in text format, you'll mostly see what will actually show up in your browser once your web site is up WHILE you're making it. I highly recommend using the latest version of dreamweaver -- it is well-known as one of the best HTML editors by general consensus. Dreamweaver's interface is very friendly, has a built in FTP client, and is specifically built to be flexible enough to suit both the coder and the everyday amatuer webmaster.
Image editing? What do I need that for?
Okay, let's be realistic here: If you're going to make a professional appearing web site it's important that you can make some basic, decent looking graphics. There's a lot of graphics problems that can truly get the job done, but as far as power and flexibility goes I recommend Adobe Photoshop. Adobe Photoshop definitely takes some time getting used to, but in the end it's VERY rewarding. I've ended up using my knowledge of Photoshop to make not only graphics for multiple web sites, but also touched up portraits, made business cards, flyers, and other online advertisments such as banners. Infact, I've used it for everything except animation... But it also comes with Adobe Imageready which is very good with
animation. This software is amazing, and if you're going to learn ANY image editing software I recommend you start with Photoshop because of it's widerange of overall... usefulness!
Let's get me some sales!
Kick off your new web site you've gotten up from your knowledge of webmastering and image editing with a few new sales... Sounds like a plan? Well a great way to do that quickly is with pay-per-click advertising. BUT WAIT! Doesn't that cost money? Well... Yes. But with the tools brought to us by some of the biggest pay-per-click advertisers out there we should be able to make a good evaluation of how much profit we're going to make without much investment upfront.
The big question behind pay-per-click advertising is whether or not it's worth the cash when you can simply get traffic from regular search engine ranking (otherwise known as organic traffic). Afterall, there are plenty of companies out there that promise to help get you all the traffic you need through optimizing your web site for organic ranking. The answer to this question is quite simple: profit is profit. Through conversion tracking tools such as those offered by Yahoo! Search Marketing and Google Adwords anyone can calculate exactly what their profit is after cost of PPC advertising is taken out. In my opinion, Google Adwords has the most user-friendly interface among the PPC advertisers. Google Adword's interface makes it very easy to see which keywords are pulling you in the most sales, and which ones aren't even worth your advertising money.
Let us not forget, however, that in order to make those conversions we're going to be needing a shopping cart! There's a lot of diverse software packages out there you can use, but I've been using Mal's E-Commerce Free shopping cart for a number of years with great success. The cart's server is hosted on their machines so that means you not only get away with not having to pay for the software itself, but you get out of having to buy an SSL security ticket too! Nothing's a better bargain than free, eh?
Getting those sales leads you've been building up to BUY!
Once you've scored a few sales it would probably be a good idea to start using some kind of lead management services. I highly recommend the use of autoresponders for this purpose. Autoresponders are, essentially, a newsletter sign-up that allows you to strategically determine what you want to send each lead after a certain alotted amount of time. For example, let's say someone visits your web site and you offer them a free newsletter. If you were selling an ebook on some very complicated topic, you might consider sending them only information on the most basic concepts at first to get them interested. Slowly but surely, you can turn those visitors that might have left your web site and never have returned into some serious revenue!As far as autoresponders go, I highly recommend the use of Aweber. Their customer service is superb (seriously, these guys really know their stuff!) and can be contacted at any point during the business day via online chat or phone. They also offer tons of free information, and guides on making the most of their services. Check out their month long free trial at http://www.getaweber.com/
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jacob Richards currently runs a website on the topic of building an ecommerce web site.
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
Ecommerce Web Hosting: All you need to know
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Informative Articles
Ecommerce Web Hosting: All you need to know
Gone are the days when the Internet was only for the geek labs and university libraries. With the emergence of accessible connectivity and affordable technology, ecommerce and online business are not futuristic concepts. Websites like Amazon and Ebay are the prime examples of successful online business ventures.
If you are planning to start your online business or an ecommerce website, you need to be careful about where you host your website. There are two things that are very important to run an ecommerce website: a well-designed, content-rich website and a host that supports seamless hosting. Remember that your ecommerce host is the backbone of your business. Imagine what would happen if there are hundreds of customers eager to pay you and your website is down or certain sections are inaccessible. Or for that matter, some mischievous hackers steals your important customer and sales database and wrecks havoc with your business. Choosing an ecommerce or an online business web host is not as simple as choosing a web host for a normal website.
As it happens with any brick and mortar business, you need to take many things into account before choosing your ecommerce web host. How many other online business websites are they already hosting? What has been their track record till now? What do the other ecommerce entrepreneurs think of them? What all tools do they provide when you purchase their ecommerce web hosting package? Along with these, let us discuss in points what makes a host good for your ecommerce or online business website.
THE HOSTING PLATFORM FOR YOUR ECOMMERCE WEBSTIE
If you yourself are not developing/coding your website then your developer should be able to advise you what business hosting platform you require for your website. You may need Windows environment or Unix/Linux combination according to your website's development environment and tools implementation. For example, if your developer is an experienced ASP (active server pages) programmer, he/she would prefer a Windows web hosting environment, but if he/she prefers PHP, then you'll have to go for Linux/Unix business web hosting. Although different people have different issues with both the web hosting types, it all depends on personal preferences.
THE UPTIME OF YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS WEBSITE
This is the bane of countless webmasters. Millions in revenues are lost because when customers arrive at the websites, the ecommerce websites are down or some of the critical pages are not available. The customers arrive with the intention of making a purchase but there is no facility available...this is the worst nightmare for an ecommerce entrepreneur or a business person.
Make sure your ecommerce web host manages parallel servers so that
if one server goes down, the others can take over. Your business web host should give you the guaranteed security of your critical data.
THE BANDWIDTH OF YOUR ECOMMERCE WEB HOST
An ecommerce website requires lots of traffic in order to generate business because, as it happens with every business in this world, not every visitor is a buyer or a customer. 10 or 20 people do business if 1000s of visitors come to your website. You have to make provision for lots of traffic, and that too, targeted traffic.
THE STORAGE SPACE OF YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS WEB HOSTING PACKAGE
Ecommerce websites take up more space compared to normal, non-commercial or semi-commercial websites. First of all, you need an online database to maintain comprehensive inventory details. Then, you may have tens of flash files or hundreds of image files if your buyers would like to view the images or if they want to go through some sort of an online catalog. Keep your future server space requirements in mind while negotiating for an ecommerce hosting package.
THE NUMBER OF EMAIL ACCOUNTS YOUR ECOMMERCE WEB HOST OFFERS
Some business web hosts offer a limited number of POP3 email accounts that you can manage through software like Outlook and Firefox and some offer an unlimited number. Some don't provide a POP3 email account at all and you need to manage all your emails through a web-based interface. Make sure what your email requirements are going to be and go for an ecommerce web hosting package accordingly.
OTHER TOOLS WITH YOUR ECOMMERCE WEB HOSTING PACKAGE
* Some other tools you may want to check out are: Autoresponders: most ecommerce hosts these days provide free autoresponders. * Multiple FTP accounts: You may need multiple FTP accounts if you have a big team of programmers. * FrontPage extensions: FrontPage is shipped with lots tools for an easy and fast assemblage of a basic ecommerce website but these tools need some extensions installed on the server. If you are getting your business website developed using FrontPage, you'll need the extensions available on the server of the web host. * Secure Socket Layer (SSL): SSL can be used to collect sensitive data from your site visitors, to ensure that your emails are not intercepted online, and to provide a sense of security for your customers. * Shopping cart software: Some business web hosting packages are shift with a shopping cart.
About the Author
Rodel Garcia is a freelance programmer and web developer. Owner and webmaster of http://web-hosting-service-directory.com/ecommerce-web-hosting.html
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
Informative Articles
Ecommerce Web Hosting: All you need to know
Gone are the days when the Internet was only for the geek labs and university libraries. With the emergence of accessible connectivity and affordable technology, ecommerce and online business are not futuristic concepts. Websites like Amazon and Ebay are the prime examples of successful online business ventures.
If you are planning to start your online business or an ecommerce website, you need to be careful about where you host your website. There are two things that are very important to run an ecommerce website: a well-designed, content-rich website and a host that supports seamless hosting. Remember that your ecommerce host is the backbone of your business. Imagine what would happen if there are hundreds of customers eager to pay you and your website is down or certain sections are inaccessible. Or for that matter, some mischievous hackers steals your important customer and sales database and wrecks havoc with your business. Choosing an ecommerce or an online business web host is not as simple as choosing a web host for a normal website.
As it happens with any brick and mortar business, you need to take many things into account before choosing your ecommerce web host. How many other online business websites are they already hosting? What has been their track record till now? What do the other ecommerce entrepreneurs think of them? What all tools do they provide when you purchase their ecommerce web hosting package? Along with these, let us discuss in points what makes a host good for your ecommerce or online business website.
THE HOSTING PLATFORM FOR YOUR ECOMMERCE WEBSTIE
If you yourself are not developing/coding your website then your developer should be able to advise you what business hosting platform you require for your website. You may need Windows environment or Unix/Linux combination according to your website's development environment and tools implementation. For example, if your developer is an experienced ASP (active server pages) programmer, he/she would prefer a Windows web hosting environment, but if he/she prefers PHP, then you'll have to go for Linux/Unix business web hosting. Although different people have different issues with both the web hosting types, it all depends on personal preferences.
THE UPTIME OF YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS WEBSITE
This is the bane of countless webmasters. Millions in revenues are lost because when customers arrive at the websites, the ecommerce websites are down or some of the critical pages are not available. The customers arrive with the intention of making a purchase but there is no facility available...this is the worst nightmare for an ecommerce entrepreneur or a business person.
Make sure your ecommerce web host manages parallel servers so that
if one server goes down, the others can take over. Your business web host should give you the guaranteed security of your critical data.
THE BANDWIDTH OF YOUR ECOMMERCE WEB HOST
An ecommerce website requires lots of traffic in order to generate business because, as it happens with every business in this world, not every visitor is a buyer or a customer. 10 or 20 people do business if 1000s of visitors come to your website. You have to make provision for lots of traffic, and that too, targeted traffic.
THE STORAGE SPACE OF YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS WEB HOSTING PACKAGE
Ecommerce websites take up more space compared to normal, non-commercial or semi-commercial websites. First of all, you need an online database to maintain comprehensive inventory details. Then, you may have tens of flash files or hundreds of image files if your buyers would like to view the images or if they want to go through some sort of an online catalog. Keep your future server space requirements in mind while negotiating for an ecommerce hosting package.
THE NUMBER OF EMAIL ACCOUNTS YOUR ECOMMERCE WEB HOST OFFERS
Some business web hosts offer a limited number of POP3 email accounts that you can manage through software like Outlook and Firefox and some offer an unlimited number. Some don't provide a POP3 email account at all and you need to manage all your emails through a web-based interface. Make sure what your email requirements are going to be and go for an ecommerce web hosting package accordingly.
OTHER TOOLS WITH YOUR ECOMMERCE WEB HOSTING PACKAGE
* Some other tools you may want to check out are: Autoresponders: most ecommerce hosts these days provide free autoresponders. * Multiple FTP accounts: You may need multiple FTP accounts if you have a big team of programmers. * FrontPage extensions: FrontPage is shipped with lots tools for an easy and fast assemblage of a basic ecommerce website but these tools need some extensions installed on the server. If you are getting your business website developed using FrontPage, you'll need the extensions available on the server of the web host. * Secure Socket Layer (SSL): SSL can be used to collect sensitive data from your site visitors, to ensure that your emails are not intercepted online, and to provide a sense of security for your customers. * Shopping cart software: Some business web hosting packages are shift with a shopping cart.
About the Author
Rodel Garcia is a freelance programmer and web developer. Owner and webmaster of http://web-hosting-service-directory.com/ecommerce-web-hosting.html
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
eCommerce Web Design Solutions
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Informative Articles
eCommerce Web Design Solutions
eCommerce web design is a lot more than just putting your company brochure on the net or adding an internet shopping cart to your existing product catalog. 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.
Web Site Business Objectives
A small business web site can do many things. This can include:
- Generate Leads. Pre-sell your business services and products to generate telephone, e-mail, or online form leads from customers.
- Generate Sales Quotes. Solicit or generate automated quotes that in turn generates a customer sale or lead.
- Generate Advertising Revenue. Display online content and free services with affiliate or ad network advertisements that generates advertising revenue from your merchant partners.
- Provide A StoreFront. Host online catalog that fully automates the customer purchase and communications process.
- Generate Customer Traffic. Generate customer traffic from search engines and business directories to pre-sell your product or service. Traffic is then re-directed to you main web site or product web pages.
Your e-Commerce web site design is greatly influenced by your specific web site objectives for your small business.
eCommerce Web Site Design Fundamentals
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.
Web Site Automation Tools. There are thousands of web site tools such as shopping carts, content management systems, e-mail auto-responders, payment processors, search engine optimization tools, online bulletin boards, traffic analyzers, and advertising management tools. Some of these tools are cheap and some are expensive. If you do not have the expertise to evaluate these products, it is probably best that you do not make any major investments in expensive web site tools. Wait until you become knowledgeable enough to evaluate web tools and add-ons for your business web site and that you have a
specific need.
Costs. Costs, of course, are a key consideration for any e-Commerce web site design solution. You can usually purchase web site tools and services up-front or by subscription. Subscriptions can help you with your cash flow up-front. Usually you do not need to make any long-term commitments with subscription software or services. Subscriptions are good because as you become more knowledgeable of specific web site solutions you can add and drop web tools and services at will. Buying software up-front is good if you know that you will definitely use the software for a long time (1 to 3 years).
Web Site Design Options
eCommerce web site design options can range from doing it yourself with web design software such as Microsoft FrontPage or outsourcing the entire web site development to a web design company. For a business, a free site with a free web site builder is not the answer. A free solution will not generate the desire response from the customer, is not search engine friendly, and is limited in growth for web site add-ons. A free affiliate site can be OK for making a sale, but have another method to generate traffic to your affiliate site as search engines will rarely give high rankings to cloned affiliate sites. Here are some e-Commerce web site design options:
Do-It-Yourself. Buy web design software and do it yourself. Good option if: technically inclined, marketing skills, part-time web publisher, limited budget.
Do-It-Yourself Using Templates. Buy web site templates, web design software, and do it yourself. Good option if: technically inclined, marketing skills, supplement with low cost web design services.
Do-It-Yourself Using Web Site Builder Solution. Buy business web solution service. Good option if: not technically inclined, have marketing skills, and willing to make some investment. Do not waste your time with a site builder that just clones a snazzy web site. You will not get a web site that generates traffic or sales.
eCommerce Web Site Design Company or Consultant. Outsource your web design work. Good option if: not technically inclined, limited marketing skills, medium-to-large budget
As with any business there are risks. In evaluating an ecommerce web design solution it is best to know your objectives, have enough business knowledge to evaluate your web service suppliers as well as your business web tools, and maintain a positive cash flow.
About the Author
Randy McClure is a web site publisher of http://www.EasyAccessClub.com. EasyAccess Club is an eCommerce resource for discount shoppers, small businesses, and churches. We feature discount online store reviews, hundreds of discount stores, e-commerce news, and resources for doing business online. Visit our other sites: Small Business Online - http://biz.easyaccessclub.com and Church Online - http://www.access-jesus.com.
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
Informative Articles
eCommerce Web Design Solutions
eCommerce web design is a lot more than just putting your company brochure on the net or adding an internet shopping cart to your existing product catalog. 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.
Web Site Business Objectives
A small business web site can do many things. This can include:
- Generate Leads. Pre-sell your business services and products to generate telephone, e-mail, or online form leads from customers.
- Generate Sales Quotes. Solicit or generate automated quotes that in turn generates a customer sale or lead.
- Generate Advertising Revenue. Display online content and free services with affiliate or ad network advertisements that generates advertising revenue from your merchant partners.
- Provide A StoreFront. Host online catalog that fully automates the customer purchase and communications process.
- Generate Customer Traffic. Generate customer traffic from search engines and business directories to pre-sell your product or service. Traffic is then re-directed to you main web site or product web pages.
Your e-Commerce web site design is greatly influenced by your specific web site objectives for your small business.
eCommerce Web Site Design Fundamentals
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.
Web Site Automation Tools. There are thousands of web site tools such as shopping carts, content management systems, e-mail auto-responders, payment processors, search engine optimization tools, online bulletin boards, traffic analyzers, and advertising management tools. Some of these tools are cheap and some are expensive. If you do not have the expertise to evaluate these products, it is probably best that you do not make any major investments in expensive web site tools. Wait until you become knowledgeable enough to evaluate web tools and add-ons for your business web site and that you have a
specific need.
Costs. Costs, of course, are a key consideration for any e-Commerce web site design solution. You can usually purchase web site tools and services up-front or by subscription. Subscriptions can help you with your cash flow up-front. Usually you do not need to make any long-term commitments with subscription software or services. Subscriptions are good because as you become more knowledgeable of specific web site solutions you can add and drop web tools and services at will. Buying software up-front is good if you know that you will definitely use the software for a long time (1 to 3 years).
Web Site Design Options
eCommerce web site design options can range from doing it yourself with web design software such as Microsoft FrontPage or outsourcing the entire web site development to a web design company. For a business, a free site with a free web site builder is not the answer. A free solution will not generate the desire response from the customer, is not search engine friendly, and is limited in growth for web site add-ons. A free affiliate site can be OK for making a sale, but have another method to generate traffic to your affiliate site as search engines will rarely give high rankings to cloned affiliate sites. Here are some e-Commerce web site design options:
Do-It-Yourself. Buy web design software and do it yourself. Good option if: technically inclined, marketing skills, part-time web publisher, limited budget.
Do-It-Yourself Using Templates. Buy web site templates, web design software, and do it yourself. Good option if: technically inclined, marketing skills, supplement with low cost web design services.
Do-It-Yourself Using Web Site Builder Solution. Buy business web solution service. Good option if: not technically inclined, have marketing skills, and willing to make some investment. Do not waste your time with a site builder that just clones a snazzy web site. You will not get a web site that generates traffic or sales.
eCommerce Web Site Design Company or Consultant. Outsource your web design work. Good option if: not technically inclined, limited marketing skills, medium-to-large budget
As with any business there are risks. In evaluating an ecommerce web design solution it is best to know your objectives, have enough business knowledge to evaluate your web service suppliers as well as your business web tools, and maintain a positive cash flow.
About the Author
Randy McClure is a web site publisher of http://www.EasyAccessClub.com. EasyAccess Club is an eCommerce resource for discount shoppers, small businesses, and churches. We feature discount online store reviews, hundreds of discount stores, e-commerce news, and resources for doing business online. Visit our other sites: Small Business Online - http://biz.easyaccessclub.com and Church Online - http://www.access-jesus.com.
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
Ecommerce Turnkey Sites
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Informative Articles
Ecommerce Turnkey Sites
Turnkey host sites normally offer the complete package, which normally includes hosting as well as products. Turnkey means an already stocked business, depending on the store it might be stocked with from 10 products to thousands.
These hosts usually charge a setup fee to create your store. A domain name may or may not be included in the price and there is usually a monthly fee for maintaining your store.
Some stores provide you with products at a base price and allow you to add your own markup. Others charge a fee for each product sold while others simply pay you a commission off each item sold. You choose what best suits you, but you will make the largest profit from those that you can markup yourself.
Do not be lured buy quick promises of up to 50% commission. Often times months down the line you are still waiting on your first cheque as you have not sold anything. Sometime these products are very expensive or of such a quality that your customers will not buy.
Another thing some hosts fail to tell is that you have to promote the store yourself. So
get ready, in addition to paying a monthly fee, you will have to start driving traffic to your website. This can prove costly but there are ways around it, such as through site optimization and site submissions.
One of the greatest things about these turnkey hosting packages however is that you do not need to hold inventory. All your products are pre-stocked and for some hosts, you do not even need to worry about accepting payment. Everything is taken care of, these services are usually all included in the monthly fee. This does seem to make your transition into the world of ecommerce a little easier but does not guarantee you the best monetary remuneration.
So the choice of E-Commerce Turnkey host is yours, only you and your business idea will determine the best host for you.
About the author:
This newsletter is written and copyrighted by K Valentine, owner of Web Hosts Value a web hosting site and Jamaican Stores Jamaican Products. mailto:valencia@valenciastores.com
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
Informative Articles
Ecommerce Turnkey Sites
Turnkey host sites normally offer the complete package, which normally includes hosting as well as products. Turnkey means an already stocked business, depending on the store it might be stocked with from 10 products to thousands.
These hosts usually charge a setup fee to create your store. A domain name may or may not be included in the price and there is usually a monthly fee for maintaining your store.
Some stores provide you with products at a base price and allow you to add your own markup. Others charge a fee for each product sold while others simply pay you a commission off each item sold. You choose what best suits you, but you will make the largest profit from those that you can markup yourself.
Do not be lured buy quick promises of up to 50% commission. Often times months down the line you are still waiting on your first cheque as you have not sold anything. Sometime these products are very expensive or of such a quality that your customers will not buy.
Another thing some hosts fail to tell is that you have to promote the store yourself. So
get ready, in addition to paying a monthly fee, you will have to start driving traffic to your website. This can prove costly but there are ways around it, such as through site optimization and site submissions.
One of the greatest things about these turnkey hosting packages however is that you do not need to hold inventory. All your products are pre-stocked and for some hosts, you do not even need to worry about accepting payment. Everything is taken care of, these services are usually all included in the monthly fee. This does seem to make your transition into the world of ecommerce a little easier but does not guarantee you the best monetary remuneration.
So the choice of E-Commerce Turnkey host is yours, only you and your business idea will determine the best host for you.
About the author:
This newsletter is written and copyrighted by K Valentine, owner of Web Hosts Value a web hosting site and Jamaican Stores Jamaican Products. mailto:valencia@valenciastores.com
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
~Ecommerce that Makes Sense~
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Informative Articles
Ecommerce that Makes Sense
We weigh the merits of ready-made and custom solutions to add ecommerce to your site.
In our last Tips we cautioned that just having a shopping cart on your website isn't enough to make ecommerce work. This month we'll weigh the merits of ready-made and custom solutions to set up ecommerce on your site.
IT ISN'T ROCKET SCIENCE ANYMORE
There was a time when selling products online required months of conjuring by highly-paid programmers. Those days are gone. Large companies with complex requirements still need custom programming (to tap a mainframe for inventory information, for example). But for the vast majority of small businesses there's a ready-made solution.
Be wary of web programmers who propose to spend a large number of hours building a shopping cart. Either they've done this before and are trying to charge you full price for something they already developed, or worse, they've been living under a rock for the past five years and have never done an ecommerce site.
ADDING ECOMMERCE TO AN EXISTING SITE
If you already have a website, the first thing you should do is check the ecommerce solutions your web host offers. You may already have a solution available, or you may be able to pay a small upgrade fee to access one.
If you have a website with a list of your products online, you may try a shopping-cart-only service, such as 1ShoppingCart (www.1shoppingcart.com). This type of service lets you add "buy now" buttons to your existing web catalog. When a buyer clicks the button, she's taken from your website to a checkout area on the ecommerce provider's site.
This can be a quick and easy way to set up a shopping cart. A mid-range account with 1ShoppingCart costs $40 per month. The downside is that, although you can add your own logo, the checkout area doesn't look exactly like your site. This may discourage some buyers.
CREATING A NEW SITE WITH ECOMMERCE
There are a variety of web-based services which provide a complete shopping cart and product catalog system. Yahoo Store (store.yahoo.com) is a good example. For $50 per month and 0.5% of each transaction (that's in addition to whatever you pay your credit-card processing company) you get a fairly complete package.
You choose from a variety of templates and then set up your store. It takes about 1/2 hour if you have copy and digital product photos. One benefit of a Yahoo storefront is inclusion
in their ecommerce directory. It's like opening a store in a mall that already has good traffic. The downside? Although it is possible to customize a Yahoo store, it may end up looking a bit "cookie-cutter" and unprofessional.
CUSTOMIZING A READY-MADE SOLUTION
For the most professional look and feel you'll want to hire a web development firm to customize a pre-built ecommerce system. Some web firms work with Miva Merchant (www.miva.com). Another example is Resolve Digital's REDiSHOP module. Costs are higher than a Yahoo store: a license is typically $500 - $1,000 and web development can range from around $2,000 to $10,000.
The advantage of this approach is that the firm uses pre-built functionality so you don't pay to reinvent the wheel. Your money will be spent on those aspects of the site which are unique to you-- professional graphics, layout, and branding-- all of which can increase consumer confidence in your site.
SETTING UP A MERCHANT ACCOUNT
A merchant account enables your website to accept credit card orders in real time. Customers enter credit card information and funds are deposited in your account automatically. Firms such as Charge.com provide this service fairly inexpensively.
Your credit must be approved and you have to pay setup, monthly, per-transaction-fixed, and per-transaction-percentage fees. These are generally around $200, $25, $.20, and 2.5% respectively. If you look around you may find a provider running a special and waiving the setup fee.
Most ecommerce systems offer a preferred merchant account vendor. If the prices are within the range noted above you might as well go with that to minimize setup. You can also get a merchant account through your bank, but it'll be more expensive.
CONCLUSION
If you'd like to test the waters of ecommerce inexpensively, a service like Yahoo may be your best option. If you want to present a more professional face to the public, hire a firm to develop your site by customizing a pre-built ecommerce product. And remember, avoid anyone who wants to build you a shopping cart system from scratch.
About the Author
Barry Harrison and Jim Grady are the co-authors of REDiTIPS. REDiTIPS is a free monthly newsletter that offers simple techniques to market your Web site and grow your business. We provide practical, low-cost ideas to help you promote your small business and reach new potential customers.
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
Informative Articles
Ecommerce that Makes Sense
We weigh the merits of ready-made and custom solutions to add ecommerce to your site.
In our last Tips we cautioned that just having a shopping cart on your website isn't enough to make ecommerce work. This month we'll weigh the merits of ready-made and custom solutions to set up ecommerce on your site.
IT ISN'T ROCKET SCIENCE ANYMORE
There was a time when selling products online required months of conjuring by highly-paid programmers. Those days are gone. Large companies with complex requirements still need custom programming (to tap a mainframe for inventory information, for example). But for the vast majority of small businesses there's a ready-made solution.
Be wary of web programmers who propose to spend a large number of hours building a shopping cart. Either they've done this before and are trying to charge you full price for something they already developed, or worse, they've been living under a rock for the past five years and have never done an ecommerce site.
ADDING ECOMMERCE TO AN EXISTING SITE
If you already have a website, the first thing you should do is check the ecommerce solutions your web host offers. You may already have a solution available, or you may be able to pay a small upgrade fee to access one.
If you have a website with a list of your products online, you may try a shopping-cart-only service, such as 1ShoppingCart (www.1shoppingcart.com). This type of service lets you add "buy now" buttons to your existing web catalog. When a buyer clicks the button, she's taken from your website to a checkout area on the ecommerce provider's site.
This can be a quick and easy way to set up a shopping cart. A mid-range account with 1ShoppingCart costs $40 per month. The downside is that, although you can add your own logo, the checkout area doesn't look exactly like your site. This may discourage some buyers.
CREATING A NEW SITE WITH ECOMMERCE
There are a variety of web-based services which provide a complete shopping cart and product catalog system. Yahoo Store (store.yahoo.com) is a good example. For $50 per month and 0.5% of each transaction (that's in addition to whatever you pay your credit-card processing company) you get a fairly complete package.
You choose from a variety of templates and then set up your store. It takes about 1/2 hour if you have copy and digital product photos. One benefit of a Yahoo storefront is inclusion
in their ecommerce directory. It's like opening a store in a mall that already has good traffic. The downside? Although it is possible to customize a Yahoo store, it may end up looking a bit "cookie-cutter" and unprofessional.
CUSTOMIZING A READY-MADE SOLUTION
For the most professional look and feel you'll want to hire a web development firm to customize a pre-built ecommerce system. Some web firms work with Miva Merchant (www.miva.com). Another example is Resolve Digital's REDiSHOP module. Costs are higher than a Yahoo store: a license is typically $500 - $1,000 and web development can range from around $2,000 to $10,000.
The advantage of this approach is that the firm uses pre-built functionality so you don't pay to reinvent the wheel. Your money will be spent on those aspects of the site which are unique to you-- professional graphics, layout, and branding-- all of which can increase consumer confidence in your site.
SETTING UP A MERCHANT ACCOUNT
A merchant account enables your website to accept credit card orders in real time. Customers enter credit card information and funds are deposited in your account automatically. Firms such as Charge.com provide this service fairly inexpensively.
Your credit must be approved and you have to pay setup, monthly, per-transaction-fixed, and per-transaction-percentage fees. These are generally around $200, $25, $.20, and 2.5% respectively. If you look around you may find a provider running a special and waiving the setup fee.
Most ecommerce systems offer a preferred merchant account vendor. If the prices are within the range noted above you might as well go with that to minimize setup. You can also get a merchant account through your bank, but it'll be more expensive.
CONCLUSION
If you'd like to test the waters of ecommerce inexpensively, a service like Yahoo may be your best option. If you want to present a more professional face to the public, hire a firm to develop your site by customizing a pre-built ecommerce product. And remember, avoid anyone who wants to build you a shopping cart system from scratch.
About the Author
Barry Harrison and Jim Grady are the co-authors of REDiTIPS. REDiTIPS is a free monthly newsletter that offers simple techniques to market your Web site and grow your business. We provide practical, low-cost ideas to help you promote your small business and reach new potential customers.
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
Ecommerce Store Owners : Want Visitors? Here’s How. . .
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Informative Articles
Ecommerce Store Owners : Want Visitors? Here’s How. . .
Have you recently opened an online store, and waiting for those customers to drop by and start shopping?
In cyberworld - unlike the real world - you just can’t pick a good location and rely on passing trade. You’ve got to work hard to get visitors to your virtual store.
Let’s take a look at how we can drum up a small stampede...
Are You Optimised?
To stand any chance of being ranked well in the free search engines, your site must be optimised for the keyword phrases you are targeting.
Research and develop a list of keywords related to your product line, using the free downloadable software at www.goodkeywords.com . From this list, you can find two or three well targeted phrases, with decent visitor traffic, and make sure your website is optimised for them. Include the phrases in the title, and meta tags, in the body text (several times) and “alt” mage tags.
Make sure your product listings are optimised too. The term “horse saddle” is searched for over 1900 times a month on one search engine alone, so make sure your product titles and descriptions include the relevant search term, rather than just the plain old product number, such as “Acme A35284”.
Are You Link Building?
Search engines are placing more and more importance on incoming links to your website – in a way, ty consider them to be votes for your site.
First, make sure you submit your site to the large list of directories that are crawled and indexed by popular search engine spiders. You can get the SEO friendly directory list free at www.info.vibesilencer.com
Next, pursue an ongoing campaign of getting links from other websites. Try to make sure the sites are on a related theme. You can find sites that are linking to your competitors by typing “link:www.yourcompetitorswebsite.com “ into Google, and then approach them to request a link to your website.
One useful piece of software for researching and keeping
track of link requests is available at www.seoelite.com . (If nothing else, the free search engine optimisation course is one of the best free courses I have ever come across)
Are You Using Pay Per Click Advertising?
There’s nothing like Pay Per click (PPC) for a quick shot in the arm! You can often have traffic within an hour of setting up a campaign with Google Adwords (http://www.google.com/ads). Overture is Google’s main Ppc competitor (www.overture.com) and can take a few days to get up an running with, but they are now part of Yahoo! – and therefore mustn’t be overlooked.
Ppc search engines can provide you with extremely well targeted traffic that you can turn on and off like a tap. However, you must get your strategy right or you will haemorrhage cash ; develop a large list of targeted keywords, write a catchy text advert and don’t get drawn into bidding wars.
Are You Overlooking Your Existing Customers?
Once your online store starts getting customers, make sure you keep them. Develop a newsletter to keep in contact with them – and regularly send them details of special offers and new products. Repeat business is often overlooked – but it is a vital part of some of the webs most successful ecommerce operations.
And if you already have a “bricks and mortar” store, don’t forget to publicise your new online shop – include it in all your stationery and marketing materials.
The marketing and promotion of an online store is an ongoing project. The most successful store owners know how important it is to set aside time each week to attend to marketing - whether it’s link building, writing a newsletter or keeping abreast of the latest online marketing developments – success comes to those who consistently put the work in.
© 2005 Robin Porter.
About the Author
Robin Porter has been CEO of London based web designer Arpey Internet (http://www.arpey.co.uk) for over six years.
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
Informative Articles
Ecommerce Store Owners : Want Visitors? Here’s How. . .
Have you recently opened an online store, and waiting for those customers to drop by and start shopping?
In cyberworld - unlike the real world - you just can’t pick a good location and rely on passing trade. You’ve got to work hard to get visitors to your virtual store.
Let’s take a look at how we can drum up a small stampede...
Are You Optimised?
To stand any chance of being ranked well in the free search engines, your site must be optimised for the keyword phrases you are targeting.
Research and develop a list of keywords related to your product line, using the free downloadable software at www.goodkeywords.com . From this list, you can find two or three well targeted phrases, with decent visitor traffic, and make sure your website is optimised for them. Include the phrases in the title, and meta tags, in the body text (several times) and “alt” mage tags.
Make sure your product listings are optimised too. The term “horse saddle” is searched for over 1900 times a month on one search engine alone, so make sure your product titles and descriptions include the relevant search term, rather than just the plain old product number, such as “Acme A35284”.
Are You Link Building?
Search engines are placing more and more importance on incoming links to your website – in a way, ty consider them to be votes for your site.
First, make sure you submit your site to the large list of directories that are crawled and indexed by popular search engine spiders. You can get the SEO friendly directory list free at www.info.vibesilencer.com
Next, pursue an ongoing campaign of getting links from other websites. Try to make sure the sites are on a related theme. You can find sites that are linking to your competitors by typing “link:www.yourcompetitorswebsite.com “ into Google, and then approach them to request a link to your website.
One useful piece of software for researching and keeping
track of link requests is available at www.seoelite.com . (If nothing else, the free search engine optimisation course is one of the best free courses I have ever come across)
Are You Using Pay Per Click Advertising?
There’s nothing like Pay Per click (PPC) for a quick shot in the arm! You can often have traffic within an hour of setting up a campaign with Google Adwords (http://www.google.com/ads). Overture is Google’s main Ppc competitor (www.overture.com) and can take a few days to get up an running with, but they are now part of Yahoo! – and therefore mustn’t be overlooked.
Ppc search engines can provide you with extremely well targeted traffic that you can turn on and off like a tap. However, you must get your strategy right or you will haemorrhage cash ; develop a large list of targeted keywords, write a catchy text advert and don’t get drawn into bidding wars.
Are You Overlooking Your Existing Customers?
Once your online store starts getting customers, make sure you keep them. Develop a newsletter to keep in contact with them – and regularly send them details of special offers and new products. Repeat business is often overlooked – but it is a vital part of some of the webs most successful ecommerce operations.
And if you already have a “bricks and mortar” store, don’t forget to publicise your new online shop – include it in all your stationery and marketing materials.
The marketing and promotion of an online store is an ongoing project. The most successful store owners know how important it is to set aside time each week to attend to marketing - whether it’s link building, writing a newsletter or keeping abreast of the latest online marketing developments – success comes to those who consistently put the work in.
© 2005 Robin Porter.
About the Author
Robin Porter has been CEO of London based web designer Arpey Internet (http://www.arpey.co.uk) for over six years.
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
ECOMMERCE SOLUTIONS…THE CALL OF THE TIME
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Informative Articles
ECOMMERCE SOLUTIONS…THE CALL OF THE TIME
There really is no doubting the impact of Information Technology on our lives. And a significant example of this is the application of ecommerce in business. Conducting business transactions has been changed to a great extent. Just what are ecommerce or e-commerce solutions? Ecommerce or e-commerce is the purchasing or selling of goods or services as well as the transfer of funds in any way by means of electronic communications in inter-company and intra-company business dealings. Moreover, ecommerce solution is also a key to conduct business by means of technology through the internet. There are actually four types of ecommerce existing today and these are the following: business to consumer ecommerce, business to business ecommerce, consumer to business ecommerce and the consumer to consumer ecommerce.
The business to consumer ecommerce involves businesses selling products and services to various individual customers. This kind of ecommerce is also known as online trading and auctions. On the other hand, the business to business ecommerce involves the transactions commencing between companies in which they sell to other businesses. This type of ecommerce also includes a transfer of well thought-out messages with other business partners over private networks or internet in order to create and transform business processes. Moreover, the business to business ecommerce is deemed toward the improvement as well as the simplification of the various business processes inside a company. This type of ecommerce is also geared toward the maximization of the efficiency when it comes to the many
transactions that a company engages into. Likewise, the business to business ecommerce is designed to achieve a quicker and flawless transaction that is controlled. Aside from that, business to business ecommerce is also effective in maintaining limited inventory as well as efficient enough to perform product refill and many more.
The consumer to business ecommerce is actually considered an unusual internet trend. Examples for this type of ecommerce are those individuals who for example are looking for hotels but have limited budget. What they do is that they place an ad on the internet saying that they are looking for a hotel at a rate that are just within their budget and then they also place there their contact numbers or email addresses if ever some hotels are interested. This example simply shows the marvelous capability of the internet to bring people together and create a cyber market wherein various people can transact their business.
On the other hand, the consumer to consumer ecommerce is considered to be the internet’s equivalent of an advertising market. This is where individual web users are allowed to put their ad for other consumers to react to. The advantage of this type of ecommerce is that people are able to save on advertising and then their ads are much faster and are easily reached by an unlimited number of customers like themselves.
For comments and suggestions about the article kindly visit http://www.webplacements.com
About the Author
Jinky C. Mesias is a lover of simple things and of nature. She spends most of her time reading and writing poetry.
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
Informative Articles
ECOMMERCE SOLUTIONS…THE CALL OF THE TIME
There really is no doubting the impact of Information Technology on our lives. And a significant example of this is the application of ecommerce in business. Conducting business transactions has been changed to a great extent. Just what are ecommerce or e-commerce solutions? Ecommerce or e-commerce is the purchasing or selling of goods or services as well as the transfer of funds in any way by means of electronic communications in inter-company and intra-company business dealings. Moreover, ecommerce solution is also a key to conduct business by means of technology through the internet. There are actually four types of ecommerce existing today and these are the following: business to consumer ecommerce, business to business ecommerce, consumer to business ecommerce and the consumer to consumer ecommerce.
The business to consumer ecommerce involves businesses selling products and services to various individual customers. This kind of ecommerce is also known as online trading and auctions. On the other hand, the business to business ecommerce involves the transactions commencing between companies in which they sell to other businesses. This type of ecommerce also includes a transfer of well thought-out messages with other business partners over private networks or internet in order to create and transform business processes. Moreover, the business to business ecommerce is deemed toward the improvement as well as the simplification of the various business processes inside a company. This type of ecommerce is also geared toward the maximization of the efficiency when it comes to the many
transactions that a company engages into. Likewise, the business to business ecommerce is designed to achieve a quicker and flawless transaction that is controlled. Aside from that, business to business ecommerce is also effective in maintaining limited inventory as well as efficient enough to perform product refill and many more.
The consumer to business ecommerce is actually considered an unusual internet trend. Examples for this type of ecommerce are those individuals who for example are looking for hotels but have limited budget. What they do is that they place an ad on the internet saying that they are looking for a hotel at a rate that are just within their budget and then they also place there their contact numbers or email addresses if ever some hotels are interested. This example simply shows the marvelous capability of the internet to bring people together and create a cyber market wherein various people can transact their business.
On the other hand, the consumer to consumer ecommerce is considered to be the internet’s equivalent of an advertising market. This is where individual web users are allowed to put their ad for other consumers to react to. The advantage of this type of ecommerce is that people are able to save on advertising and then their ads are much faster and are easily reached by an unlimited number of customers like themselves.
For comments and suggestions about the article kindly visit http://www.webplacements.com
About the Author
Jinky C. Mesias is a lover of simple things and of nature. She spends most of her time reading and writing poetry.
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
Ecommerce solutions for small business owners
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Informative Articles
Ecommerce solutions for small business owners
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.
About the Author
The author is the Webmaster of www.preventiveguru.com who has over 12 years of experience in computer maintenance and eBusiness solutions. www.preventiveguru.com contains Free DIY information on Computer troubleshooting, maintenance and ebusiness solutions. A self-help guide for non technical PC users.
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
Informative Articles
Ecommerce solutions for small business owners
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.
About the Author
The author is the Webmaster of www.preventiveguru.com who has over 12 years of experience in computer maintenance and eBusiness solutions. www.preventiveguru.com contains Free DIY information on Computer troubleshooting, maintenance and ebusiness solutions. A self-help guide for non technical PC users.
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
Ecommerce Solutions Compared
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Informative Articles
Ecommerce Solutions Compared
There are dozens, perhaps hundreds of businesses and organizations eager to assist and sell product online. Basically, they fall into four categories: credit card transactions, digital cash transactions, electronic fund transfers and telephone billing systems
The right choice for you depends upon your specific business requirements.
1. Merchant Internet Accounts. Pros: Consumers are familiar with credit cards with credit card transactions, consumers don’t have to download and install special plug-in. Credit card sales lends itself to impulse buying.
Cons: Consumers still have concerns regarding providing financial information online. This method does not lend itself well to the purchase of down loadable soft goods, such as software, art, graphics, etc
2. Electronic Cash Transactions Electronic money is an arrangement whereby the customer pays for the merchandise using, well, electronic money. Examples of this are the well known DigiCash, Cyberbucks, CyberCash, etc. Pros No credit card transactions are required. No concerns re charge backs. Lends itself well to micro payments.
Cons Many people are unfamiliar with the concept and shy away from unknown entities. Eliminates the possibility of impulse buying, unless both customer and merchant are already in same scheme. May not be available
globally.
3. Electronic Fund Transfers Funds are transferred electronically from the customer’s bank account to yours. The best known method is the issuing of electronic checks Pros No credit card worries. Available to persons who don’t have credit cards
Cons A very new technology that some perceive as being less secure than other forms of ecommerce. Many customers aren’t set up to issue electronic cheques; time required to make the arrangements eliminates impulse buying. May not be available to international consumers.
4. Telephone Billing Systems A very new approach, telephone transactions allow the customer to purchase an item or service, and the amount is billed to his or her telephone bill. Pros Eliminates worries about credit cards (for both consumer and merchant) Safeguards soft merchandise â€" no possibility of theft or pirating. Cons Customer is required to download and install a plug-in. currently only available for soft merchandise but can do some limited transactions for hard goods. Currently available for sales using telephone modems and will not work for transactions over cable modems and ISDN lines.
About the author:
For more information on credit card processing,please visit http://www.paynetsystems.com< /a>
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
Informative Articles
Ecommerce Solutions Compared
There are dozens, perhaps hundreds of businesses and organizations eager to assist and sell product online. Basically, they fall into four categories: credit card transactions, digital cash transactions, electronic fund transfers and telephone billing systems
The right choice for you depends upon your specific business requirements.
1. Merchant Internet Accounts. Pros: Consumers are familiar with credit cards with credit card transactions, consumers don’t have to download and install special plug-in. Credit card sales lends itself to impulse buying.
Cons: Consumers still have concerns regarding providing financial information online. This method does not lend itself well to the purchase of down loadable soft goods, such as software, art, graphics, etc
2. Electronic Cash Transactions Electronic money is an arrangement whereby the customer pays for the merchandise using, well, electronic money. Examples of this are the well known DigiCash, Cyberbucks, CyberCash, etc. Pros No credit card transactions are required. No concerns re charge backs. Lends itself well to micro payments.
Cons Many people are unfamiliar with the concept and shy away from unknown entities. Eliminates the possibility of impulse buying, unless both customer and merchant are already in same scheme. May not be available
globally.
3. Electronic Fund Transfers Funds are transferred electronically from the customer’s bank account to yours. The best known method is the issuing of electronic checks Pros No credit card worries. Available to persons who don’t have credit cards
Cons A very new technology that some perceive as being less secure than other forms of ecommerce. Many customers aren’t set up to issue electronic cheques; time required to make the arrangements eliminates impulse buying. May not be available to international consumers.
4. Telephone Billing Systems A very new approach, telephone transactions allow the customer to purchase an item or service, and the amount is billed to his or her telephone bill. Pros Eliminates worries about credit cards (for both consumer and merchant) Safeguards soft merchandise â€" no possibility of theft or pirating. Cons Customer is required to download and install a plug-in. currently only available for soft merchandise but can do some limited transactions for hard goods. Currently available for sales using telephone modems and will not work for transactions over cable modems and ISDN lines.
About the author:
For more information on credit card processing,please visit http://www.paynetsystems.com< /a>
© 2006 "> - All Rights Reserved.
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