E-commerce Website Basics

Introduction

An Internet storefront is much like a physical storefront. It is a business. A person need not tend to a small Internet store on a 9-to-5 basis, but it cannot completely run itself. You cannot just upload it and expect that "they will come." Like a traditional business, a serious Internet storefront requires substantial investment, a sound business plan, and thoughtful marketing.

If you don't invest in your webstore, you won't have the design, functionality, and exposure needed to compete successfully. Have a look at what the big players spend on developing and maintaining their e-commerce websites (best to sit down to do this!). If your business products and/or services are going to make you money, then you have a business worth investing in. Remember, the old adage so often holds true: "You get what you pay for."

Internet traffic to a website is affected by many things; submission to the search engines is only one factor, and on its own, not sufficient. Traditional avenues of advertising (newspaper, radio, TV, community sponsorship) remain essential for business growth. New advertising opportunities are emerging on the Internet itself. The costs and efforts of making your website discoverable and known are up to you. You may consider hiring a marketing agent.

A Domain Name

An exclusive ".com" domain name is easier for customers to remember, and more importantly, it says your business is legitimate: you have the money and stability to buy and maintain your own domain name and hopefully other aspects of your business. Simple is best: www.mybusinessname.com is the first thing a person will try as they query their memory. If this is not available, your slogan may be a good second choice (if it is 22 or fewer characters before the .com). Weird, cutesy, and intentional misspellings are generally hard for people to remember, and again raise questions about your professionalism.

Your Internet Service Provider

Physical location does matter: you want to host your website on servers that are well-maintained. The great thing about the Internet is that the ISP and Development team that work on your website don't have to be in the same town that you live. See "Choosing an ISP to Host Your Website," below.

Accepting Credit Cards over the Internet - Small Business

Few Internet sales happen without a credit card; for retail sales, vendor credit card handling is essential. To accept credit cards, your business should have a merchant account with a bank, or at the very least, an account with PayPal, an online third party money wiring service. Paypal is a great cost-effective way to accept and send money without the expense of a direct merchant account.

Some people will never give their credit card information over the Internet, but most know to look for indications of a secure server to ensure encryption of their order. If you have not provided secure means of transferring credit card information, and the credit card is misused by a hacker, you will be liable. So, your site must be secured. Using PayPal helps to lessen these security problems, as the sender of money uses their credit card at PayPal, who then in turn, sends the money to your account, thus putting the monkey on PayPal's back. Of course, as payment for helping you avoid these security woes, PayPal charges their users fees on every completed transaction. But it's worth it, as the convenience and protection just can't be beat, and you can set up shop in minutes. Anyone who has done business on eBay knows the ins and outs of PayPal as well, as they are an eBay-owned entity.

Large Business Online Storefronts: handling your own secure service

Passing sensitive information requires that you obtain a digital signature for your business (VeriSign is the Internet's leading source of digital signatures). There is a fee for obtaining your VeriSign certificate and an annual renewal fee.

The ordering portion of your site needs to be on a secure server. There are setup and monthly fees for secure service. Cape.Com provides secure servers and several different secure methods of delivering your orders to you:

• Web-to-Fax: the easiest and least expensive option. A visitor completes your website order form including credit card information. The form's data is cleaned and sent to your fax machine. For backup, a duplicate of the order (without the credit card number) is sent to you via email. You now process the order as you would any other fax order (note: the credit card information is now exposed at your fax machine). Although this appears like a great low-cost alternative, it may be time-consuming tracking all the information should you process a substantial amount of orders.
• PGP (Pretty Good Privacy): a more secure way to manually handle orders. A visitor completes your website order form including credit card information. The form's data is cleaned and sent to you via encrypted email. You have PGP software installed on your computer; you type in your key each time you download orders. The order and credit card information is now exposed for manual processing.
• PayFlow: handles credit cards for you: If you have many orders, it will help to have a third party handle credit card processing for you. PayFlow can handle credit card processing in real-time, for those who are making immediate delivery of a product or service; or PayFlow can hold your orders and process the credit card when you ship. There are setup and monthly fees for PayFlow, and PayFlow takes a percentage cut of your sales.

Small Business Online Storefronts: 3rd party secure service

Many small businesses have their own VeriSign certificates and secure service as outlined above. Some opt to have a 3rd party like PayPal handle the secure service and credit card processing for their online storefronts.

You can find a range of e-commerce services: some handle just the credit card processing, some take care of the ordering process (gathering the name, address, etc.) and credit card, and some do that as well as the shopping cart (gathering of items). Of course, there are costs for these services, and often the service takes a cut of your sales. Most require that you have your own Merchant Account (credit card processing equipment and account with a bank.)

Keeping Your Site Fresh

A website that seldom changes is much less likely to be revisited. Have a plan for updating your website with new content, such as new products, special offers, tips and other ideas - whatever is of interest to your audience. The Internet is young; limits have not been defined!

How do you update your site? If you create your own pages by writing HTML or using a WYSIWYG editor, you can update your site yourself. But many people don't have the time or desire to learn how to create and edit a website; fortunately, they don't have to.

You can have the company that created your website update it for you, usually at an hourly rate. Be prepared to wait until they have some free time to complete your request.

Alternatively, you can have your site created as a database and template system and use a form-based website interface, i.e., a "backdoor" to your site's database that looks just like any other form. All the big sites (and some smaller ones) you see on the Internet are database-driven, and template doesn't mean boring or identical. These sites are gorgeous and dynamic.

Cape.Com has built systems, CapeShop and SQerL, that allow updates of website content by completion or editing of form fields through a web browser. All you need is a computer that can access the Internet using a regular Web browser (e.g., Netscape, Microsoft Internet Explorer) -- no extra software to buy. Access is controlled by passwords. If you want to change images on your site, you just need a way to get them into your computer (a scanner or digital camera), a basic image-editing program (which often come bundled with scanners and cameras), and an FTP program (these often come with Internet software, and are available as freeware/shareware) to upload your images to your site. So, you may change your website from anywhere at anytime, in real-time.

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