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Why DIY? There are many
situations when it’s simply not practical or viable to contract out
the design of your e-commerce site. The major barriers are usually
cost of implementation and issues involving maintenance of your
e-commerce site. For example, selling computer hardware requires
prices to be updated at least once a day. To ask an external
contractor to take up this task would be a logistical nightmare and
extremely expensive exercise.
The great news for businesses is
that there are viable do-it-yourself alternatives at hand. Most of
these are cost effective and require little technical expertise. You
(or a member of your staff) will require minimal (if any) knowledge
of HTML, graphic design and computing skills. With the smartest
tools around using today’s latest technology, this is all you’ll
need to build and maintain all but the most sophisticated e-commerce
site.
What Are the
Options?
There are numerous ways to present
your products or services online in a sellable manner – usually in a
catalogue format. If you are a small to medium sized enterprise (SME)
then you probably won’t want to spend any more than $10 000 on
software and design. You’ll also want a solution that is quick to
implement and easy to maintain as well. The majority of the
solutions will fall into the following two categories:
Off-the-shelf
Storefront Software
Off-the-shelf solutions offer a
diverse range of options ranging in price from several hundred to
many tens of thousands. They will require installation of the
software onto a server and you will also need to find hosting for
this server. They usually require some time to learn, as they are
usually very comprehensive to the point where some of them can
become overly complicated. However, they will do just about
everything you want an e-commerce site to do. Depending on your
level of programming experience, some of these packages will allow
you to use your own scripts to give the whole presentation that
extra jazz.
Web-based Store
Builders
Web-based solutions are services
offered on various Web sites allowing you to build your e-commerce
site using only your Web browser. There is no software to buy or
install. The entire process of building your online store in this
way can usually be done with no (or very little) knowledge of HTML
or database programming. Pricing is usually charged monthly based on
the number of items that you are offering. This can range from a
"freebie" for few items to several hundred per month for large
stores with the full "bells and whistle". An added bonus for these
Web-based store builders is that you don’t have to worry about
hosting.
This article concentrates on
Web-based store builders. They are an exciting blend of technology
and marketing. As you will see, some of them can be every bit as
comprehensive as more expensive solutions. Some of the latest
offerings take advantage of improved Web browser technology to bring
such features as WYSIWYG HTML editing.
Geography
Before you even begin looking
through the technical aspects of each store builder, there’s one
important aspect of e-commerce that should not be overlooked.
e-commerce is still bound by geographical regions. For example, many
US based store builders will not cater for businesses outside of the
US. In most circumstances, you should select a system that caters
for the country you will be selling in.
Domain Names
Anyone familiar with marketing on
the Web would tell you that you can’t afford not to have your own
Domain Name. Whatever method you use to build your online store be
sure that it can cater for your own Domain Name.
Payment
Your online store should be able to
cater for any payment method your customers can dream up. When
considering payment, there are two issues to consider:- what form of
payment you are willing to accept (credit card, cheque, cash, etc),
how the payment information will be transmitted to you from your
customer (online, post, fax, in person, etc).
The most popular method of payment
is for credit card details to be transmitted over the Internet.
There are several variations to this method of payment – credit card
payments processed in real-time by an authorised bank (or banking
network) or manual processing. Real-time credit card processing will
incur additional costs but will enhance security and speed up the
administration process. The style of credit card processing adopted
by your store will be largely dependent on the products and services
offered. In general, it will be less critical to have real-time
credit card processing if your lead-time before delivery is long
(say, more than one week) and you have good administration processes
in place. However, it will become increasing important to have
real-time credit card processing if your lead-time before delivery
is short (in the case of selling perishable goods like fruit and
vegetable) or you have a large volume of transactions to process.
It is still early days for
e-commerce and many consumers are yet to be convinced that online
security is robust and bullet-proof enough for online shopping. Fax
and mail order are still necessary. An online store capable of
accepting orders without requiring consumers to enter their credit
card details is also important. In this case, a staff member from
the online store would contact the consumer to confirm the order.
Credit card details can be taken over the phone in some cases.
Why all the fuss about payment? The
point is that consumers will not spend money on something they think
may never turn up at their doors. Giving your customers as many
payment options as possible makes good business sense. Make sure the
store builder you use have all these options available for maximum
flexibility.
Look, Layout &
Editing
Templates are very popular when it
comes to online store builders. However, you definitely don’t want
your online store looking like 100 others. When you get down to
building your store, you will undoubtedly want the flexibility to
place links, text, graphical images and other objects at different
locations. The ability to format pages quickly and easily is also
important – preferably with a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get)
style of editing. Open Malls is one
such online store builder that utilises this type of editing.
Security
Online security is all-important
for consumer confidence. More likely that not, the store builder you
select will use SSL (secure socket layer) security. If this is
implemented properly, the closed padlock symbol on Netscape and
Internet Explorer browsers will be highlighted. This is probably the
most important thing you can do to reassure your customers that
ordering online is secure and safe. Select an online store builder
that implements this automatically. You shouldn’t have to do
anything to bring about this action. A page of explanation regarding
the security used on your site is also a good idea.
Statistics
Reporting
After your store gets up and
running, you will probably want to track your sales performance.
Many online store builders will allow you to analyse your
transactions. Probably the best (and most awarded) store builder in
this respect is
Viaweb
(now Yahoo! Store). You can analyse sales by a number of groups and
categories, page views, conversion rate and so on. You can even find
out where your visitors came from (the referring URL) and what they
were searching for in search engines before arriving at your online
store. Truly incredible!
Order Processing – Email, Fax &
SMS
After an order has been placed on your store, you will want to
know about it as soon as possible. The most popular method is by
Email. As the order is processed, an Email is usually sent to the
consumer confirming the order and another Email sent to the merchant
to notify them of the order. The merchant then retrieves the order
from a password-protected area on the Web site and the order is
processed.
Some online store builders will also send out faxes to alert you
of orders placed on your store. Although I have not seen anyone use
SMS (short text messages) on mobile phones for this purpose, I am
sure this will not be too far away.
To Sum It Up
If you are looking to start your online store, the time is right
now! There are lots going for online store builders with their cost
effectiveness, flexibility and versatile approach. If you have a
product line in demand, start building!
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