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Ecommerce solutions for small business owners
By: Uthkusa Gamanayake, Wed May 24th, 2006
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.
