e- commerce websites
A sure way to make your website pays for itself is to incorporate an e-commerce (electronic commerce). function . Not a very clear name for something so powerful.
In its simplest form, this function enables the consumer to buy your products with a click of a button, but it can also be a full stock control system that drives the purpose of your business. Many businesses exist solely by there web presence.
So what to consider when you want to sell stuff on the internet?
- What are your competitors doing?
- Do you need stock control?
- Are you providing a product or a service ?
- Do you want to connect to your own bank or third party sites (e.g paypal)?
A developer of e-commerce websites will normally work with one solution so they can understand and support that solution well. An e-commerce solution written by your developer is more likely to be tailored for your business needs, which can only be a good thing.
However, as we all only too aware, the nature of the web is that it evolves and any software needs to continually evolve with it.
A solution is to choose a back end development system that works with open source code. This is software that is normally free and either built by a consortium of developers to service a world wide customer base at minimal cost, or totally free and supported by a online forum.
Either way the more people using the software the easier is to find solutions to a problem in the future.An example of this solution would be www.ecommercetemplates.com or www.virtuemart.net These systems have the advantage of being free and utilised across the globe.
Security
The primary concern whenever you have financial transactions across the net is security. This is addressed by encrypting the information between the user and the server. The encryption is achieved by the purchase of a certificate that insures the transactions you make up to a certain value. Clearly, the higher the amount you are insured for, the greater the cost of the service. The term used for this service is SSL and it is worth shopping around to find the best deal.
In order to facilitate the SSL service,you need a dedicated IP address . This is the unique number allocated to your website or server. If you have a low cost hosting service you will be on a shared IP address and will need to purchase your own IP address at minimal cost per year.
Setting up your SSL certificate is something your developer or your service provider would do. It is not difficult but is best left with people who are familiar with the process.
Costs
Additional costs to factor in when working with e-commerce is the surcharge paid to the institutions who process the payment. These will include the payment gateway and the bank that you use to receive the funds. You will need an electronic banking account with your bank which you may already have if you currently use EFTPOS.
The bank will also stipulate what information needs to be available on line. The physical address of your business is required by some banks, and always a SSL cert to any pages that will hold personal data.
The payment gateway
This is the company used to process the transaction. They will also want a fee for service and you need to choose an account that suits the number of transactions you expect.
There will be a cost involved because you need to make sure that shoppers can easily find what they are looking for and have no obstacles or obscure choices to make in the process.
So once you have all these partners in place you are ready to trade.
Google Analytics
Plan your customers' experience and track their purchasing root with Google analytics.
This is a free service that allows you to see how your on line customers are using your website and where they are on the planet. Once the novelty of the power this gives you has warn off, the opportunity is there to apply this powerful tool into your own advantage.
At this point your head might be imploding . This is where you go back to the design/developer, with a strategy of how to track users and how to identify how much people are spending and where.
Soon you will see that certain pages have a higher income value than others and others need to be better promoted to increase their online value and tailor your site accordingly.