If you have a product oriented business, the Internet offers a unique ability to reach a broad audience. With new technology, it is easy to build your own e-commerce store. An e-commerce store can also be called as a e-store or an online store.
E-commerce Store
Today’s world is an E-commerce (electronic commerce or ecom) world. E-commerce, clearly termed as web commerce, basically means selling of merchandise or services over the Internet with electronic transactions and also through a secure network. E-com is not merely buying and selling or providing services but it is also a method of advertising and marketing through an electronic system as well.
E-com also means facilitating the progress of commercial transactions electronically. Right now e-com is a well-established technology in all major countries. In most cases Internet marketing requires you to have your own E-commerce store for maximum return.
Requirements of an E-commerce Store
Building an e-commerce store is not an easy job. Software is required that can manage customers as well as their needs. E-commerce software should be able to handle inventory, shipping and handling costs, taxes, dispatching and payment processing of client’s orders. You may encounter many options when setting out to build an e-commerce store. Before choosing any of them it is important to have a clear view of your requirements.
Technical requirements might include coupons, tracking systems, customer login options or any number of other things. Other requirements include what type of impression you want to provide to your valuable clients. Study the Sales and Marketing Cycle to Determine Your Needs.
Before you opt for any of solutions for building e-commerce store, study the basic model of e-commerce that represents the entire sales and marketing cycle. The first building block of this cycle is audience in which you define what type of customers you will target.
Second are commodities, in which you characterize the types of products you will put on the market.
Third is customer support where you will answer the questions and offer solutions to clients’ or potential clients’ problems.
Next is advertising, marketing and endorsement where a business promotes the products or services. Then there is transaction processing, the most important technical phase of the cycle, which will handle orders, taxes, payment processing and order delivery.
Transactions may be automatic or manual. In manual processing you have to enter credit card information manually through an offline terminal. In the case of automatic processing a client’s order form will be setup with a program that processes and charges the credit card for you. After that there are post-deal services regarding how you provide solutions and services after the sale.
Last but not least is brand name with which you will create a distinctive business image to correspond with customers. Nobody is going to pay attention to your online store unless something catches their eye.
Research Your Options
Once you have defined your needs, you can then begin researching your options. There are two basic paths you may follow when building an e-commerce store — either buy ready-made software or build a custom system with components and parts according to your requirements and budgets.
Flexibility
Some business firms offer gifts and well-placed impulse products for better marketing approaches. This requires an e-com solution to be flexible enough to allow various giveaway, coupons and promotions.
Also, if your product comes in a variety of models or styles, with different options and
different prices then you must communicate these factors and portray them distinctively in your online store. A true businessperson will certainly follow the patterns of his or her usual clients as well as those who directly visit the site. Web statistic tracking tools can be a great help to this end.
Ease Of Use
Some e-commerce stores are very easy to use and require only a few minutes to learn while others are more complex with so many features that they can be overwhelming. Being able to see a demonstration of software before buying it is a great help to determining ease of use.
Scalability
Being able to grow with your company is very important. If you choose a very simple solution now, then require a more robust solution down the road, you will lose time converting your store. If the URL structure of your store is not consistent, you can also lose search engine rankings by changing e-commerce solutions.
Therefore, it is important to choose an e-commerce solution that can grow with you. For example, some stores owners may not want coupons in the beginning but then down the road decide it is a good idea. Some stores may also have limits on number of products,
inventory control and tracking that down the road will be very important.
Security
Of utmost importance to online stores is transaction security. The priority for any business firm should be secure transactions. Thanks to Netscape for introducing SSL (secure socket layer), data can be protected by online store owners.
SSL is an encryption technology that encrypts a message and the receiver decrypts it by using RSA security. To enable SSL on your web server you need a digital ID (a form of identification that will recognize you). Many web hosts provide SSL installation for anywhere from a few bucks to a few hundred bucks per year.
Overall, in building your own e-commerce store, four things are essential — flexibility, ease of use, security and scalability. Research your options before you make a final choice, and whenever possible, get a free trial of your solution before you buy. If you’ve been online for more than a day you’ve probably heard some “guru” somewhere recommend that you create a Money Magnet Website — a site that is highly automated and helps you make money 24 hours a day. While that might *sound* great, what they often forget to tell you is HOW to do that.
Well, I’m going to tell you right now, in this article! First, what IS a Money Magnet Website? A Money Magnet Website can be defined as one that is equipped with an integrated suite of both e-commerce and internet marketing tools in a fashion that will allow you to be the most profitable with the least amount of effort. Most e-commerce systems are equipped with the following essentials: a shopping cart, acceptance and processing of credit cards, a maintenance system that allows you to add/change products, an order-retrieval system that enables you to fulfill orders. However, what most of them are lacking are marketing tools.
There are several marketing strategies that are essential in the creation of a successful e-commerce website: email marketing (broadcasting) of prospects/customers, effective use of autoresponders (generate automatic email messages), online newsletter, online form/survey to capture your prospect’s email address electronic product delivery (if you sold a digital product), advertisement (ad) tracking, back end sales, affiliate program.
Now, if you had a system that would support the integration of ALL of these marketing tools in addition to the necessary e-commerce essentials, then you would have a Money Magnet Website. After all, it has been shown that it often takes 7 or more ad exposures before prospective customers actually make a purchase. Consider the following scenario: A prospect clicks on an advertisement in an online magazine.
This action increments a counter for this particular ad to help you determine how well it’s working. They don’t decide to buy yet but join your newsletter. They are now considered a prospect. You begin to send them a monthly email newsletter. Additionally, an autoresponder kicks in to thank them for joining the newsletter as well as scheduling them to get email twice a month for the next 90 days reiterating your product benefits and inviting them to purchase. Upon sending them one of your “juicy” offers that they couldn’t refuse, they finally purchase.
They will automatically be removed from your prospect list and added to your customer list. Based on the particular product or service they’ve purchased, they will receive a series of emails every two weeks for the next 6 months offering complementary products. This will be the engine that will drive your back end sales and keep your customers coming back to your website. Being able to play out a scenario such as this using one integrated system would be pretty impressive don’t you think?
The internet big boys do this with expensive ecommerce platform suites produced by vendors such as IBM, Microsoft and Oracle. Having your system automatically perform these follow up tasks frees you up to spend more time on your business, your health or your family!
Whаt i don’t realize is if truth be told how you’re not actually a l᧐t more
neatly-appreсiаted tһan you may be now.
You are veгy intellіgеnt. Үou undｅrѕtand therefore
siցnificantly relating to this topic, made me in my opinion believe it from a lot of various
аngles. Its lіke women and men don’t seem to be involved unless it’s one thing to accomplish with Woman gaga!
Yoսr individuɑl stuffs excellent. Always care
fог it up!
thanks
Admiring the time and effort ʏou рut into yⲟur blog and in depth infoｒmation you provide.
It’s awesome to comе acｒoss a blog every once in a whilе tһat iѕn’t the same out оf date rehashed іnformation. Excellent гead!
Ι’ve saved yoᥙr site and I’m adding ｙour RSS feeds to my Google account.
Thanks, check out my other website http://www.indiaearnmoneyonline.com
Thanks, do visit my other website as well, https://www.indiaearnmoneyonline.com
Great beat ! I wish to apprentice while you amend your
website, how could i subscribe for a blog website? The account helped me a
acceptable deal. I had been a little bit acquainted of this your broadcast offered bright clear idea
Thanks, check out my other website http://www.indiaearnmoneyonline.com
thanks, do visit my other website as well https://www.indiaearnmoneyonline.com
Greetings, I do think your web site might be having internet browser compatibility problems.
When I take a look at your blog in Safari, it looks fine however when opening in I.E., it has some
overlapping issues. I just wanted to give you a quick heads up!
Apart from that, excellent site!
https://about.me/casuco
thanks for updating me
Hi there! I’m at work browsing your blog from my new iphone!
Just wanted to say I love reading through your blog
and look forward to all your posts! Carry on the great work!
Howdy! Someone in my Facebook group shared this site with us so I came to check it
out. I’m definitely loving the information. I’m bookmarking and will be tweeting this to my followers!
Excellent blog and superb design and style.
Right here is the perfect web site for anybody who really wants to understand this
topic. You know so much its almost tough to argue with you (not that
I actually would want to…HaHa). You certainly put a
brand new spin on a topic that has been written about for decades.
Excellent stuff, just excellent!
thanks, do visit my other website http://www.indiaearnmoneyonline.com